Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Dil cemālüñ muṣḥafından ḫaṭṭuñı Ḳur’ān oḳur
Ṣūret-i raḥm anda ẓāhir sūre-i Raḥmān oḳur
İtdüġüñce nāle eyler ṣanma ben dil-ḫastenüñ
Başı üzre oḳlaruñ Yāsīn-i ve’l-Ḳur’ān oḳur
Ḫaṭṭ-ı lā‘lüñ vaṣf ider dil ḫalḳa men‘-i ‘ışḳ-içün
Her belālardan emīn olmaġa ḥırz-ı cān oḳur
Derd ṭūmārıdur oḳuñ neyse yazu görelüm
Gönder anı iy ḳaşı yā dil bu şeb mihmān oḳur
Cām māl-ā-māl elinde sāḳi ḥüsnüñ vaṣf ider
Gūyiyā kim Şeyḫ Cāmī’dür Bahāristān oḳur
Ben bahāristān-ı ḥüsnüñ naḳl idersem lāl olur
Gerçi bülbül geh Gülistān u gehī Büstān oḳur
Cem’ile dīvānı taḥḳīḳ ger yazarsa nesḫ ider
Ḫaṭṭuñ evṣāfında Fażlī tāzeler dīvān oḳur

In English

1. From the Qur'an-codex of your beauty the heart reads the down of your cheek as the Qur'an; the form of mercy is manifest there, and (the heart) recites the Sura of the Merciful (Raḥmān).

2. Do not think that I, the heart-sick one, am lamenting; at my bedside your arrows are reciting Yâsîn and the Qur'an.

3. To keep the people from love, the heart describes the writing of your ruby lip; to be safe from every affliction, it recites an amulet for the soul. (The first line of the couplet is obscure.)

4. Your arrow is a scroll of pain; let us see what is written on it. O you with brows like a bow, send it; tonight the heart invites (reads) it as a guest.

5. With the brimming cup (cām) in his hand the cupbearer describes your beauty; it is as if he were Şeyh Câmî reading the Bahâristân.

6. If I were to recount the spring garden (bahâristân) of your beauty, I would be struck dumb; though the nightingale reads now the Gülistân, now the Bostân.

7. If (Fazlî) compiles and verifies the divan in writing, he abrogates (the former ones); in praise of the down of your cheek Fazlî recites ever new divans. (A play on the names of calligraphic scripts can be sensed in the couplet; its meaning is not entirely clear.)

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 "oḳur" (reads, recites); Özkat counts this ghazal among those with a Turkish single-word redif. The rhyme is formed by the sound "-ān" in the words "Ḳur’ān, Raḥmān, Ḳur’ān, cān, mihmān, Bahāristān, Büstān, dīvān"; "Ḳur’ān" serves twice as a rhyme, in the first and second couplets. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is the seventy-third 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. It is not known to whom or when it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal ties the verb "okumak" (to read, to recite) of its redif to a different text in each couplet: the Qur'an, the Sura of the Merciful, Yâsîn, an amulet, a scroll of pain, the Bahâristân, the Gülistân and the Bostân, a divan. The opening couplet is one of Özkat's examples of the figure of congruence (tenasüp). The beloved's face is likened to a codex of the Qur'an (muṣḥaf) and the down on the cheek to its writing; the words "muṣḥaf", "ḫaṭṭ" (script, down), "Ḳur’ān" and "sūre" form a congruence of images. There is a closeness of sound between "ṣūret" (face, form) and "sūre" (sura), and derivation (iştikak) between "raḥm" (mercy) and "Raḥmān" (the Merciful). In the second couplet the whizzing of the arrows at the lover's bedside is likened to the Yâsîn recited at the head of one who is dying.

In the fourth couplet a play of sound is set up between "oḳ" (arrow) and "oḳumak" (to read), and the word "oḳur" can also be read in the sense of "invites": the beloved's arrow is a scroll of pain, and tonight the heart calls it in as a guest. This double meaning is our own observation. The fifth and sixth couplets are Özkat's example concerning the works Fazlî read. According to Özkat, in this ghazal Fazlî names the Bahâristân of Molla Câmî (1414-1492/93), the great Persian mystic and scholar, and the Bostan and Gülistan of Sâdî of Shiraz (1213-1292), and he must have read these works. Özkat describes the Bahâristân as a work in mixed verse and prose that Câmî wrote in 1487 in the name of Sultan Hüseyin Baykara, made up of short stories modelled on Sâdî's Gülistan and written to instruct while entertaining; he names the Bostan as an ethical and didactic mesnevi written in 1257 and the Gülistan as a book of counsel in mixed verse and prose written in 1258.

In these two couplets the titles of books are interwoven with images of beauty: the cupbearer who describes the beloved's beauty with a "cām" (cup) in his hand is likened to Câmî because of the likeness of sound in the name, and "bahāristān" is both the title of Câmî's work and means "spring garden". In the sixth couplet the nightingale's singing in the rose garden and the orchard is described as reading the Gülistân (rose garden) and the Bostân (orchard). In the last couplet the words "taḥḳīḳ", "nesḫ" and "dīvān" seem to set up a play as being also the names of calligraphic scripts (muhakkak, nesih, divanî); the fact that the word "ḫaṭṭ" means both the down on the cheek and script supports this play. This interpretation is our own, and the meaning of the couplet is not entirely clear.

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, p. 327, ghazal no. 73 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 238a); also p. 69 (redifs), p. 83 (figures of speech), pp. 94-95 (works he read) and pp. 119-120 (description of the manuscripts), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

Online sources