Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ūlü Mefā‘īlü Mefā‘īlü Fe‘ūlün

Dil milkini fetḥ eyledi bir şāh-ı muẓaffer
Kim dirler anuñ nām-ı şerīfine muẓaffer
Server yolına server iseñ cān-ile iy dil
Ser virmeyene ‘āşıḳ olan dimeye server
Gezdürdi felek şehri sürüp yüzüne ḳara
Beñzetdi idi ḥüsnüñe meh kendüyi beñzer
Sehv ile didüm müşg-i Ḫaṭā kākül-i yāre
Düşmiş işidüp gice anı sünbül-i tartar
Dil milketine buldı ẓafer eyledi ġāret
İy Fażlī anuñ-çün didiler aña muẓaffer

In English

1. A victorious (muẓaffer) shah has conquered the realm of the heart, whose noble name, they say, is Muzaffer.

2. O heart, if you are a leader (server) on the path of that leader, be so with your soul; a lover does not call "leader" one who does not give his head (ser).

3. The moon had likened itself to your beauty; the sky smeared black on its face and paraded it through the city (exposed it to shame).

4. By mistake I called the beloved's forelock the musk of Khitai; hearing this, the Tatar hyacinth fell (to the ground) in the night.

5. (That shah) won victory in the realm of the heart and plundered it; O Fazlî, that is why they called him "Muzaffer".

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of five couplets, written in the "mef‘ūlü mefā‘īlü mefā‘īlü fe‘ūlün" pattern of the hezec family of aruz (quantitative metre). It has no redif; Özkat counts this ghazal among those with half rhyme. The rhyme is formed by the sound "-er/-ar" in the words "muẓaffer, muẓaffer, server, beñzer, tartar, muẓaffer". The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is the seventy-second in Özkat's edition and is found only in the Fazlî divan section (fol. 238a) of the miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library. Özkat says nothing about whom the ghazal was written for.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The opening and closing couplets of the ghazal are built on the same word: "muẓaffer" is an adjective meaning "victorious" in the first line and the beloved's name in the second. That both lines of the opening couplet end with the same word, used in two different senses, forms a pun (cinas); in the last couplet the same name is named again as the result of winning victory in the realm of the heart. On this basis the ghazal can be read as a poem addressing someone named Muzaffer or playing on that name; but who this person was is not known, and this interpretation is our own. The thought of the heart as a realm and of the beloved as a shah who conquers it runs through the whole ghazal.

In the second couplet there is a play between the words "ser" (head) and "server" (one who is the head, leader): to be a leader on the path of the leader means to give one's head; one who does not give his head is not called "server". The third couplet is among Özkat's examples of the idioms "kara çalmak (kara sürmek)" (to smear black, to disgrace) and "yüzü kara" (black-faced, disgraced): when the moon set out to liken itself to the beloved's beauty, the sky smeared black on its face and paraded it through the city. The dark spots on the moon are thus explained as the marks of a punishment. In the fourth couplet, when the beloved's forelock is mistakenly likened to the musk of Khitai, the Tatar hyacinth hears this and falls to the ground; Khitai and Tatary are far eastern lands associated with musk and sweet scent. The likeness being found wanting and the hyacinth's envy are an indirect way of saying that the beloved's hair surpasses everything.

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. 326-327, ghazal no. 72 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 238a); also p. 69 (rhyme), pp. 93-94 (idioms) and pp. 119-120 (description of the manuscripts), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

Online sources