Kara Fazlî was an Istanbul-born poet and secretary of the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent. Most biographical anthologies give his real name as Mehmed; Fazlî is his pen name, and his dark complexion earned him the nickname "Kara Fazlî" (Black Fazlî). He owes his place in literary history to the mesnevi Gül ü Bülbül (The Rose and the Nightingale), the best-known rose-and-nightingale story in Turkish literature. His connection with Amasya rests on the most productive ten years of his life: after the death of Şehzade Mehmed (Prince Mehmed) in the autumn of 1543, Fazlî became divan secretary to Şehzade Mustafa, sanjak governor of Amasya, and remained with him until the prince was killed in October 1553. He completed Gül ü Bülbül in 960 (1553) and presented it to Mustafa, wrote kasides (qasidas) for the prince and chronograms and elegies for people of his circle, and praised Lâdik, near Amasya, in one of his ghazals.

No ordered divan of Fazlî has come down to us. In 2005 Mustafa Özkat searched the poetry miscellanies, gathered roughly three thousand couplets of his verse in the arrangement of a divan and published a critical text. This compilation is one of the richest sources of literary testimony on Şehzade Mustafa's court in Amasya. The details of his life are told in his biography in the Historical Figures section of our site; here the emphasis is on his works and his poetry.

Life and Years in Amasya

Gelibolulu Mustafa Âlî writes that Fazlî was the son of a saddler and was born and raised in Istanbul; Âşık Çelebi calls him "serrâc-zâde", the saddler's son. His name appears in three different forms in the sources: Mehmed, Mahmud and Ali. Özkat points out that the records giving the name Ali should not be dismissed either, because in the pen-name couplet of one of his ghazals the poet says "Murtażā ḥaḳḳı 'Alī olmasun adum Fażliyā", and he suggests that his name may have been Mehmed Ali. His date of birth is unknown. In a miscellany in the Süleymaniye Library the date 927 (1521) is given for his birth, but Özkat shows that this date does not agree with the events of 1530.

Fazlî first studied Arabic morphology and syntax and learned Persian from Riyâzî of Skopje. When he took to poetry, he frequented Zâtî, who told fortunes in the courtyard of the Bayezid Mosque and whose shop was a gathering place for young poets; the biographers call him Zâtî's "ḫāṣṣü'l-ḫāṣṣ şāgirdi", his most intimate pupil. According to Ahdî he became a disciple of the Halveti sheikh Zarîfî Hasan Efendi. The turning point of his life was the circumcision festival held in the summer of 936 (1530) for Süleyman's sons Mehmed, Mustafa and Selim. As Kınalızâde and Beyânî relate, Zâtî, after reciting his kaside in the sultan's presence, asked leave with the words "Fażlī nām bir şāgird-i be-nāmum vardur" (I have a renowned pupil named Fazlî), and Fazlî recited his own kaside after him. This event opened the way for Fazlî to become divan secretary to Şehzade Mehmed when the prince went out to the sanjak of Manisa.

When Şehzade Mehmed died young in Şaban 950 (November 1543), Fazlî, in Âşık Çelebi's words, "nıṣf-ı fażla gibi ṭaşra ḳaldı", that is, he was left out in the cold, and he wrote elegies for the prince. He then became a secretary in the divan of Şehzade Mustafa, sanjak governor of Amasya. Kınalızâde describes these years as "niçe zamān ol gülistān-ı pür-ṣafāda bülbül-i gūyā olmış idi": for a long time Fazlî had been a speaking nightingale in Mustafa's rose garden full of delight. According to Âşık Çelebi, it was in this period that the poet matured in the arts of poetry and prose composition and began to write "nefis nāmeler ve iyü ḳaṣīdeler", exquisite letters and good kasides.

Describing Şehzade Mustafa's court in Amasya, Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar writes that the prince was very fond of literature and gathered men of learning and letters around him to converse with them, and among the officials who were poets he names "kâtib-i dîvânı Fazlî Çelebi", his divan secretary Fazlî Çelebi, beside the chancellor (nişancı) Hamdî Hamdullah Çelebi and the treasurer Lutfî Bey. In the same circle were poets such as Kâmî Mehmed Çelebi, Tayyibzâde Lutfî, Seyrekzâde Ânî, Hacı Beyzâde Edâyî, Zamânî and Emânî; the prince's tutor Sürûrî had also completed his commentary on the Gulistan in Amasya. Many poems in Fazlî's divan are tied to the daily life of this court: kasides for the prince, chronograms for a young man raised to the office of sword-bearer, for the appointment of a tutor to the prince's son and for the death of the son of the prince's vizier Sun'ullah Beg, a chronogram for a banquet, an elegy.

Şehzade Mustafa was killed on his father's order in Şevval 960 (October 1553) at the army camp on the plain of Konya. Fazlî wrote at least two elegies for him. He then became divan secretary to Şehzade Selim, sanjak governor of Manisa, and did not leave Selim's side during his governorships of Konya and Kütahya. In these years he drafted the correspondence on the struggle for the throne between Selim and his brother Bayezid. Âlî writes that around 970 Fazlî became chief of the secretaries (reisülküttap) with a fief of sixty thousand akçe, and that he lived only two years after this. Kınalızâde places his death in Ramazan 970 (May 1563); the date given by Âlî, Ahdî and Riyâzî, however, is 971 (1564). Âşık Çelebi reports that he died in Kütahya.

Works

The biographers say that Fazlî wrote a "ḫamse" or a "sitte", that is, five or six mesnevis. Of these only one survives in full.

  • Gül ü Bülbül. A mesnevi in the metre fe'ilâtün mefâ'ilün fe'ilün, of 2444 couplets according to Özkat and TEİS and about 2450 according to the TDV encyclopedia. It was completed in 960 (1553) and presented to Şehzade Mustafa. It tells the story of the Nightingale who falls in love with the Rose, son of King Spring (Bahar Şah); the seasons are personified as hostile kings. At the end of the work the poet explains that King Spring is reason, the Rose the soul, the Rose Garden (Gülşen) the body and the Nightingale the heart. In the section on the occasion of composition an old friend advises the poet to write his work in the name of the virtuous Şehzade Mustafa. Two copies of the work made in 960 are held in the Süleymaniye Library (Âşir Efendi 314/1) and the Yapı Kredi Sermet Çifter Library (951). Joseph von Hammer published the text with a German translation in 1834. Nezahat Öztekin prepared a critical text of the work as a doctoral thesis in 1987 and published it as a book in 2002.
  • Hümây u Hümâyûn. His first mesnevi, which Latîfî describes as a book of five thousand couplets "Ḫüsrev ü Şīrīn ṭarzında", in the manner of Khusraw and Shirin; it is thought to have been inspired by the work of the same name by the Persian poet Khwaju of Kirman. No copy has been found. Latîfî quotes ten couplets from a descriptive scene of the work in his anthology.
  • Lüccetü'l-esrâr. According to Âlî and Âşık Çelebi, a mesnevi written in the manner of Nizami's Makhzan al-asrar. No copy is known.
  • Nahlistân. A Turkish work in mingled verse and prose in the manner of Sa'di's Gulistan. Âşık Çelebi states that it was an original composition, not a translation. No copy is known.
  • Rubâiyyât. Âşık Çelebi and Âlî write that Fazlî had a work consisting of a thousand quatrains. It has not been found.
  • Divan. Latîfî and Kafzâde Fâizî mention him as the author of a divan. In a section added later to a miscellany in the Topkapı Palace there is an incomplete "Dîvân-ı Fażlī" dated 1149 (1736) and bearing the note "yarım kaldı" (left unfinished). By searching this section and other poetry miscellanies, Özkat established a divan text consisting of 34 kasides, 38 musammats (stanzaic poems), 8 chronograms, 153 ghazals, 20 kıt'as (fragments) and short poems, and 2 single couplets. Twenty-nine of the ghazals lack their beginning or end because of missing leaves in the miscellanies.
  • Works in mingled verse and prose. A Tehniyetnâme (letter of congratulation) written when Ahmed Çelebi became treasurer of the Rumelian fiefs in 954 (1547), and a Duânâme (book of prayer) written for a prince, are recorded in the miscellany Âşir Efendi 314. The ghazal praising Lâdik is found in this duânâme.
  • Chancery prose. Fazlî drafted the prose Cengnâme describing Şehzade Selim's victory over Bayezid at Konya, which was sent to Süleyman, and the letter written to Shah Tahmasp after Bayezid took refuge in Iran.

The Persian mesnevi Keşfü'l-ârifîn dated 915 (1509) in the Mevlânâ Museum Library is also by a poet with the pen name Fazlî. Because of the mismatch between this date and Kara Fazlî's life, Özkat doubts that the work is his and considers Ebü'l-Fazl Çelebi, son of İdris-i Bitlisî, a more plausible candidate. A Leylâ vü Mecnûn ascribed to Fazlî in some catalogues rests only on conjecture.

The Amasya Years in His Divan

The divan compiled by Özkat contains seven kasides written for Şehzade Mustafa (15, 20-23, 25, 26) and a muaşşer (ten-line stanza poem). In kasides 22 and 25 the poet asks the prince for a horse; kaside 26 is a winter poem (şitaiyye) that opens with a description of winter. The chronograms written for people serving at Mustafa's court belong to the years 957 (1550) and 958 (1551): the appointment of a tutor to the prince's son Mehmed, the promotion of a young man named Behrâm to sword-bearer, and the banquet given on Mount Taşan by Mîr Yahyâ in honour of Şehzade Mustafa. A kaside was written for the prince's vizier Sun'ullah Beg, and three chronograms and a nine-stanza elegy were composed on the death of his son Mahmud in 955 (1548). In a nine-stanza murabba (quatrain stanza poem) the poet speaks for the poets around the prince: "Sāḳiyā ṣun cāmı Sulṭān Muṣṭafālīlerdenüz" (Cupbearer, pass the cup, we are of Sultan Mustafa's men). The eleven-stanza murabba elegy and the three-stanza terkib-bend elegy written after the prince's death close these years.

Literary Persona

The biographers pass quite different judgements on Fazlî. Latîfî counts him "şu'arā-yı 'aṣruñ ḳābillerinden ve fenn-i şi'rüñ kāmillerinden", among the able poets of the age and the masters of the art of poetry, and writes that he composed verse very quickly and very well and "sözüñ rūḥın bulmış", had found the soul of speech; he sees it as a gift of God that so much refinement and intelligence should be found in a man who looked "dīvāne-nāḳış u sāde-dil abdāl-veş", simple-hearted and dervish-like. Ahdî finds his kasides artful, his ghazals beautiful and his quatrains admired. Kınalızâde praises Fazlî as a rare and accomplished poet.

Gelibolulu Âlî, who worked with Fazlî as chief scribe while Fazlî was reisülküttap in Şehzade Selim's divan in Kütahya, is harsher. He describes him as "'abūsü'l-veche", sour-faced, heavily built and withdrawn; he writes that his poems are "şütür-gürbe", ill-matched like a camel standing beside a cat, that if he composed seven or nine couplets only one would be found worth liking, and that his prose was as disordered as his verse. The same Âlî calls Gül ü Bülbül the poet's "iḫtirā'-ı ḫāṣṣı", his own invention. Âşık Çelebi, too, finds Fazlî's poetry from the period when he was Zâtî's pupil "şütür ü gürbe ve mutavassıṭ", uneven and mediocre, and says that the poet reached real maturity in the service of Şehzade Mustafa. Özkat sees an element of jealousy in Âlî's assessment.

Fazlî's language is close to the "Türkî-i basit" (plain Turkish) tendency of his time and to the manner of his master Zâtî. His poems are rich in idioms, proverbs and everyday speech. Özkat regards the poet's description of a small Anatolian town such as Lâdik alongside distant place names from Persian poetry such as Kandahar, Badakhshan and Khitai, and his use of local geography as a term of comparison in couplets such as "Tīre-dil Ḳaradeñiz'dür gözlerümdür Aḳdeñiz" (my darkened heart is the Black Sea, my eyes are the White Sea), as early traces of an attitude that would appear in Nedim in a later century. The miscellanies also contain Fazlî's tahmises (five-line expansions) of ghazals by Necâtî, Zâtî and Âhî, and a nazire (response poem) to a ghazal by Revânî. His confidence in his own poetry is high; in one couplet he calls himself "naẓm bāzārınuñ ṣarrāfı", the money-changer of the market of verse.

In Europe Fazlî became known through Hammer's translation of Gül ü Bülbül published in 1834. E. J. W. Gibb writes in A History of Ottoman Poetry that the work is among the most graceful of its class and that he knows of no Persian poem in which the rose-and-nightingale myth is thus extended into a complete allegorical romance; but he adds that the story would seem too fantastic to the modern reader.

Examples of His Poetry

The examples below are taken from Özkat's critical text and from quotations in the biographical anthologies. This section also contains twelve poems as separate articles with the original text, a modern rendering and a commentary.

From Gül ü Bülbül: "Söyle ey bülbül-i sühan-perdâz"

Söyle ey bülbül-i sühan-perdâz
K'açılur sözüñ ile perde-i râz
Ya'nî Rûm içre var idi bir şâh
Lutf-ı tab' ile hurrem ü dil-hâh

The first and ninth couplets of the section in which the story proper begins. The poet first addresses the eloquent nightingale: "Speak, O nightingale, master of words; the veil of the secret is lifted by your speech." Then the story begins: "That is, in the land of Rûm there was a king, cheerful by the grace of his nature and pleasing to the heart." This king is King Spring, who stands for reason. The text is as published by Gencay Zavotçu in TEİS.

Kıt'a: "Reh-rev-i rāh-ı ma'ānī çābük-i meydān-ı naẓm"

Reh-rev-i rāh-ı ma‘ānī çābük-i meydān-ı naẓm
İkidür Fażlī cihān içinde meşhūr-ı cihān

"Travellers on the road of meaning, nimble riders in the field of verse: there are two Fazlîs in the world whose names are known throughout the world." In the rest of the kıt'a the poet says that one was born in Istanbul and the other in Edirne, and needles his namesake from Edirne, known as Fazlî-i Leng (the Lame Fazlî) because of his limp, by calling his poetry "limping" (Özkat, Kt. 11).

Ghazal: "Ḳalbe rāḥat-baḫşdur el-ḥaḳ hevāsı Lādiḳ'üñ"

Ḳalbe rāḥat-baḫşdur el-ḥaḳ hevāsı Lādiḳ'üñ
Cān baġışlar cāne āb-ı cān-fezāsı Lādiḳ'üñ

"Truly, the air of Lâdik gives ease to the heart; the life-increasing water of Lâdik grants life to the soul." This is the opening couplet (matla) of the five-couplet ghazal praising Lâdik, north of Amasya, which today belongs to the province of Samsun. Özkat finds it remarkable that a small Anatolian town should be described in this way in divan poetry (G. 117).

Murabba: "Ṣanmañuz kim 'ıyşdan bir laḥẓa ḫālīlerdenüz"

Ṣanmañuz kim ‘ıyşdan bir laḥẓa ḫālīlerdenüz
Meşreb-i ṣāfīli rind-i lāübālīlerdenüz
İtmezüz dehr-i denīye meyl ‘ālīlerdenüz
Sāḳiyā ṣun cāmı Sulṭān Muṣṭafālīlerdenüz

"Do not think us empty of pleasure for a single moment; we are of the carefree libertines (rind) of pure disposition. We give no heart to this base world; we are of the high-minded. Cupbearer, pass the cup; we are of Sultan Mustafa's men." It is one of the poems that best convey the atmosphere of Şehzade Mustafa's assembly in Amasya (M. 26).

Elegy: "Ḳanı ol şeh ki nāmı velvele ṣalmışdı devrāna"

Ḳanı ol şeh ki nāmı velvele ṣalmışdı devrāna
Şecā‘atde naẓīri gelmedi hergiz bu meydāna
Dirīġā geçdi erbāb-ı ġaraż Sulṭān Süleymān'a
Meded begler meded ẓulm oldı ġāyet Muṣṭafā Ḫān'a

"Where is that king whose name set the world astir? In courage no equal of his ever came to this field. Alas, the men of ill intent prevailed upon Sultan Süleyman. Help, O beys, help; a great wrong has been done to Mustafa Han." The first stanza of the eleven-stanza murabba elegy, based on the text Mustafa İsen took from Ayhan Güldaş (M. 27).

From Hümây u Hümâyûn: "Yazılmış gördi bir taṣvīr-i dil-keş"

Yazılmış gördi bir taṣvīr-i dil-keş
Ḥarīr-i nīlgūn üzre münaḳḳaş

"He saw a heart-stealing picture painted, worked upon blue silk." The first couplet of the ten-couplet descriptive passage from the lost mesnevi quoted by Latîfî.

Chronology

936 (June 1530): At the circumcision festival of Süleyman's sons he recited his kaside in the sultan's presence after Zâtî.

Şaban 950 (November 1543): Şehzade Mehmed, whose divan secretary he was, died in Manisa; he then became divan secretary to Şehzade Mustafa in Amasya.

954 (1547): He wrote his tehniyetnâme for Ahmed Çelebi's appointment as treasurer of the Rumelian fiefs.

955 (1548): He wrote chronograms and an elegy on the death of Mahmud, son of Şehzade Mustafa's vizier Sun'ullah Beg.

957 (1550): He wrote chronograms for the appointment of a tutor to the prince's son Mehmed and for Behrâm's promotion to sword-bearer.

958 (1551): He composed a chronogram for the banquet given on Mount Taşan by Mîr Yahyâ in honour of Şehzade Mustafa.

960 (1553): He completed Gül ü Bülbül and presented it to Şehzade Mustafa.

Şevval 960 (October 1553): Şehzade Mustafa was killed; Fazlî wrote elegies for him and became divan secretary to Şehzade Selim.

970 (1562-1563): According to Âlî, he became reisülküttap in Şehzade Selim's divan.

Ramazan 971 (May 1564): He died in Kütahya (Ramazan 970, May 1563, according to Kınalızâde).

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Books

Online sources