Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefā‘īlün Mefā‘īlün Fe‘ūlün

Belā-yı ‘ışḳuñı başuma aldum
Elem baḥrine baḥrī gibi ṭaldum
Viṣāle irmedüm āvāre ḳaldum
Yüri şāhum yüri Allah’uma ṣaldum
Hezārān şīve ile yā ḥabībī
Alup göñlümi redd itdüñ ġarībi
İdündüñ kendüñe maḥrem raḳībi
Yüri şāhum yüri Allah’uma ṣaldum
Raḳīb-ile varup cān u ten olduñ
Cefā vü cevrde ṣāḥib-fen olduñ
Ḳadīmī dostuñ ile düşmen olduñ
Yüri şāhum yüri Allah’uma ṣaldum
Baña ‘arż eyledüñ evvel maḥabbet
Hezārān ‘izz ü nāz ile hey āfet
Çün alduñ göñlümi itdüñ ferāġat
Yüri şāhum yüri Allah’uma ṣaldum
Varup aġyār ile yār olduñ iy ḫān
İşin Fażlī’nüñ itdüñ āh u efġān
Aña sen olasın bir gün peşīmān
Yüri şāhum yüri Allah’uma ṣaldum

In English

1. I took the calamity of your love upon my head, I plunged like a sailor into the sea of pain. I did not attain union, I was left a wanderer. Go, my shah, go; I have left you to my God.

2. O my beloved, with a thousand coquetries you won the heart of this stranger and then turned him away; you made the rival your confidant. Go, my shah, go; I have left you to my God.

3. You went with the rival and became one soul and body with him, you became a master of cruelty and oppression, you became the enemy of your old friend. Go, my shah, go; I have left you to my God.

4. Hey, you calamity of beauty, at first you showed me love with a thousand graces and coquetries; and when you had won my heart, you gave me up. Go, my shah, go; I have left you to my God.

5. O khan, you went and made friends with strangers, you turned Fazlî's lot into sighs and laments. I hope that one day you will regret it. Go, my shah, go; I have left you to my God.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a murabba (quatrain stanza poem) of five stanzas. The murabba is a verse form in which each stanza consists of four lines. In this poem the first three lines of each stanza rhyme among themselves, and the fourth line is repeated in every stanza as the refrain "Yüri şāhum yüri Allah'uma ṣaldum"; in the first stanza this refrain also rhymes with the other lines (aldum, ṭaldum, ḳaldum, ṣaldum). Murabbas of this structure are called "mütekerrir" (with a refrain). According to Özkat, all twenty-eight of Fazlî's murabbas are of this kind, and twenty of them, like this poem, have five stanzas. The metre is the "mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün fe‘ūlün" pattern of the hezec family. The rhymes of the stanzas are, in order: "-aldum", "-ībī", "-en olduñ" (with the redif, or refrain word, "olduñ"), "-at" and "-ān". The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last stanza. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Özkat publishes the poem as the first poem of the musammat section of the divan. The text is found only in the Fazlî divan section (fol. 220a) of a miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library. According to Özkat's description, this part of the miscellany was copied in 1149 (1736) and later bound in; it bears the note "left unfinished", and some of its leaves are missing.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The poem is the reproach of a lover complaining of the beloved's faithlessness. The lover took the calamity of love upon his head of his own will and was left a wanderer without attaining union. The beloved at first showed love with a thousand coquetries and graces, gave the lover up once his heart was won, made the rival a confidant and became the enemy of an old friend. The stanzas tell of this betrayal from different sides: in the second stanza the heart is won and turned away, in the third the beloved becomes "soul and body" with the rival, in the fourth the first love proves false, in the fifth the beloved makes friends with strangers. The words "Allah'uma ṣaldum" (I have left you to my God) in the refrain recall a formula of imprecation that lives on in popular speech, meaning to leave a wrong to God and the settling of the account to Him; the whole anger of the poem is gathered in this single line.

Özkat says that Fazlî's musammats have a fairly plain language and manner of expression, that this plainness is seen most clearly in the murabbas, and gives the first stanza of this murabba as an example. Indeed, Arabic and Persian construct phrases are almost absent from the poem; expressions from everyday speech such as "belayı başına almak" (to take a calamity upon one's head) and "gönül almak" (to win someone's heart) come to the fore. Among the idioms collected by Özkat, "gönül almak" is illustrated from the second and fourth stanzas of this poem. Addressing the beloved as "shah" and "khan" is one of the familiar conventions of divan poetry. The comparison "baḥrī gibi" in the first stanza likens the lover plunging into the sea of pain to a sailor. In the last stanza the lover hopes that the beloved will one day regret it; this shows that the reproach of the poem ends in a hope.

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. 231, musammat no. 1 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 220a); also pp. 57-58 (on the murabbas), p. 92 (idioms) and pp. 119-120 (description of the manuscripts), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

Online sources