Kara Fazlî, Kıt'a 13: The Poet and the Poetaster

Kıt‘a (fragment) 13 — Ṣanma kim her müteḫalliṣ geçinen şā‘ir olur

Amasya05 Editorial Board • Editor: Mevlüt Erdem Öztürk • 01 October 2026 • Updated: 07 October 2026 • 4 min reading

Kara Fazlî's kıt'a, taken from one of his kasides, separating the poet from the poetaster: the Antichrist and the Prophet are both called Messiah, yet differ.

Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fe‘ilātün Fe‘ilātün Fe‘ilātün Fe‘ilün

Ṣanma kim her müteḫalliṣ geçinen şā‘ir olur
Var delīlüm bu söze itmez-iseñ ger bāver

İkisinüñ de Mesīḥ olmaġ-ile nāmları
Dem-i Deccāl ile bir mi nefes-i Peyġamber

In English

1. Do not think that everyone who takes a pen name and passes for a poet is a poet; if you do not believe these words, I have a proof.

2. Even though both bear the name Messiah, is the breath of the Antichrist (Deccal) the same as the breath of the Prophet?

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a kıt'a (fragment) of two couplets (beyit); the words "bāver" and "Peyġamber" at the end of the second lines rhyme, and Özkat counts this kıt'a as having half rhyme. The metre is "fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilün" of the remel family. There is no pen name (mahlas). The kıt'a is found in the Fazlî divan section of the miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library (fol. 249b).

These two couplets are the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth couplets of the fifteenth kaside (qasida), which Fazlî wrote for Prince (Şehzade) Mustafa. Özkat says that Fazlî must have liked these two couplets very much, since he also took them into his divan as a separate kıt'a, and he cites this kıt'a as an example of the poet reusing elsewhere couplets he had liked in one poem. The kaside is in miscellany no. 314 of the Âşir Efendi collection in the Süleymaniye Library, while the kıt'a is in the Hazine miscellany. There are spelling differences between the two texts: the kaside has the forms "itmez iseñ", "olmaġ ile" and "Peyġāmber".

Meaning and Figures of Speech

Özkat states that the Persian twelfth kıt'a and the Turkish thirteenth kıt'a, which stand side by side in the divan, reflect Fazlî's thoughts on poetry and on those who pass for poets. In the Persian kıt'a a poet lacking learning is likened to a merchant without capital who is nonetheless proud, and to someone who claims kingship without army or subjects. In this kıt'a, in Özkat's words, just as the Antichrist, who is called by the epithet Messiah, is not the same as the true prophet, so the poet and the poetaster cannot be the same. The force of the kıt'a comes from this allusion: both Jesus and the Antichrist are called "Messiah", but the breath of the one gives life, while that of the other is sedition. This explanation, which rests on the belief that the breath of Jesus raised the dead, is our own. The word "müteḫalliṣ", one who has taken a pen name, is also subtle: for Fazlî, bearing a pen name is not enough to make a man a poet. Özkat mentions this kıt'a together with a ghazal couplet that shows the importance Fazlî gave to lyricism.

Historical Context

The fifteenth kaside, the original home of the couplets, was written for Prince Mustafa according to its heading in the edition. When and by whose hand the kıt'a was compiled separately from the kaside is unknown.

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. 380, kıt'a no. 13 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 249b); also p. 40 n. 118 and p. 46 (relation to kaside 15), p. 65 (on the kıt'as), p. 69 (rhyme), p. 82 (poet and poetaster), p. 115 (repetitions) and pp. 167-171 (kaside 15), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

Online sources