Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fā‘ilātün Fā‘ilātün Fā‘ilātün Fā‘ilün

Ehl-i diller mecma‘ı meyḫāneler gördüñ mi hīç
Gizlü genc ile ṭolu vīrāneler gördüñ mi hīç
Dāmen-i ṣaḥrāda zencīrin sürer Mecnūn-veş
Pā-bürehne bir nice dīvāneler gördüñ mi hīç
Ḫançer-i şem‘ ile baġrın pāre pāre eylemiş
Ḳana ġarḳ olmış yatur pervāneler gördüñ mi hīç
Baydaḳ-ı ḫūrşīde şeb gibi ṣalar esb-i siyāh
Bu bisāṭ-ı çarḫda pervāneler gördüñ mi hīç
Gül gibi çāk-ı girībān lāle gibi baġrı ḳan
Çārsū-yı ‘ışḳda mestāneler gördüñ mi hīç
Ṭopṭolu sīmīn ṣanemle bu ḫarāb-ābādda
Nüh felek gibi bugün büt-ḫāneler gördüñ mi hīç
Ḳanlu yaş ile pür olmış dīde-i ‘āşıḳ gibi
Bezm-i ġamda Fażliyā peymāneler gördüñ mi hīç

In English

1. Have you ever seen taverns where the people of the heart gather; have you ever seen ruins full of hidden treasure?

2. Have you ever seen the many barefoot madmen who drag their chains like Mecnun along the skirts of the desert?

3. Have you ever seen moths lying drowned in blood, their breasts torn to pieces by the dagger of the candle?

4. Have you ever seen "pervāne"s that, on this chessboard of the turning sky, drive a horse black as night against the pawn of the sun? (The meaning of the couplet is obscure; it may describe, in chess terms, the night covering the sun.)

5. Have you ever seen drunkards in the market of love, their collars torn like the rose and their breasts bleeding like the tulip?

6. Have you ever seen, in this ruined world today, idol-houses filled to the brim, like the nine heavens, with silver-bodied idols (beauties)?

7. O Fazlî, have you ever seen cups in the gathering of grief filled with bloody tears like the lover's eye?

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of seven couplets, written in the "fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün" pattern of the remel family of aruz (quantitative metre). The redif (refrain word) is the phrase "gördüñ mi hīç" (have you ever seen); Özkat counts this ghazal among those whose redif is a group made of a suffix and a Turkish word. The rhyme is formed by the sound "-āne" in the words "meyḫāne, vīrāne, dīvāne, pervāne, mestāne, büt-ḫāne, peymāne"; the rhyme word "pervāneler" is used twice, in the third and fourth couplets. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet in the form "Fażliyā". The ghazal is the fifty-third in Özkat's edition and does not appear in the miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library; the text rests only on Pervâne Beg's anthology of response poems "Mecmû‘atü'n-Nezâ'ir", Bağdat Köşkü 406 (fol. 98b), and Özkat takes it from the text in H. İbrahim Demirkazık's thesis. It is not known to whom or when it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal proceeds through a question put to the reader and in each couplet sets before him an astonishing sight of love. In the first couplet the taverns are the meeting place of the people of the heart, and the ruins are places where hidden treasures are kept; the idea in divan poetry that treasure is found in ruined places is tied to the thought that the treasure of love is hidden in the ruined heart. The second couplet names the barefoot madmen dragging their chains like Mecnun, the third the moths whose breasts have been torn apart by the candle's flame; the candle and the moth are among the best-known conventional images (mazmun) of the lover's burning and perishing for the beloved. Here the candle flame is likened to a dagger.

The fourth couplet is built with chess terms: "baydaḳ" is the pawn, "esb" the horse (knight), "bisāṭ" the chessboard, and the turning sky is thought of as a chessboard. The driving of the black horse against the pawn of the sun may describe night's defeat of day; but the meaning of the word "pervāneler" in this couplet is not clear, and the rhyme word occurs unchanged in the preceding couplet as well. In the fifth couplet the opened petals of the rose are likened to a torn collar and the dark spot in the middle of the tulip to a bleeding breast; the drunkards of the market of love are like these two flowers. In the sixth couplet the world is called "ḫarāb-ābād" (the ruined dwelling), and idol-houses full of silver-bodied beauties are likened to the nine heavens. In the last couplet the cups resemble the lover's eye filled with bloody tears; this likeness between cup and eye is also seen in other ghazals of Fazlî.

The Nazire Relation

According to Özkat, this ghazal was written as a nazire (response poem) to Revânî's ghazal whose opening couplet is "Günde yüz biñ cān alur cānāneler gördüñ mi hīç / Āşināluḳdan ḳaçar bīgāneler gördüñ mi hīç", and this ghazal of Revânî's was answered by one ghazal each from Fazlî and Şinâsî. Özkat identifies Revânî as İlyas Şücâ Çelebi, one of the well-known poets of the reign of Selim I, thought to have been born in Edirne in 1475, and states that he died in Istanbul in 1524; he also records that Fazlî wrote nazires to two of his ghazals. Fazlî keeps Revânî's metre and the rhyme and redif "-āneler gördüñ mi hīç". Whereas Revânî's opening couplet speaks of beloveds who take lives and behave as strangers, Fazlî turns the same question pattern to the tavern, the ruin and the madmen.

Bibliography

  • Mustafa Özkat, Kara Fazlî'nin Hayatı, Eserleri, Edebî Kişiliği ve Dîvânı (İnceleme-Tenkitli Metin), MA thesis, Marmara University Institute of Turkic Studies, Istanbul 2005, pp. 315-316, ghazal no. 53 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Bağdat Köşkü 406, fol. 98b); also p. 69 (redifs) and pp. 96 and 98 (response poems), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.
  • H. İbrahim Demirkazık, Pervâne Beg Nazire Mecmuası (67b-100b): Transkripsiyonlu, Edisyon Kritikli Metin, unpublished MA thesis, Marmara University Institute of Turkic Studies, Istanbul 2002, pp. 227-228 (as cited by Özkat). katalog.marmara.edu.tr