Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Āh kim ġurbetde göñlüm oldı yārından cüdā
Bülbül-i gūyā gibi bāġ u bahārından cüdā
Bir dem olmaz dehr-i dūnuñ inkisārından cüdā
Kimse yā Rab olmasun yār u diyārından cüdā
Bir yaña dilber ġamı yaşumı gül-gūn eyledi
Bir yaña ġurbet belāsı baġrumı ḫūn eyledi
Bu iki miḥnet benüm ḥālüm diger-gūn eyledi
Kimse yā Rab olmasun yār u diyārından cüdā
Baḥt nā-hemvār u ṭāli‘ nā-müsā‘id ten ża‘īf
Yār bī-pervā vü dil bī-ṣabr u ben ġāyet naḥīf
Luṭfuña ḳaldı benüm aḥvālüm ancaḳ bā-laṭīf
Kimse yā Rab olmasun yār u diyārından cüdā
Bend-i yārān baḥr-i cānān ḳahr-ı dehr-i pīre-zen
Zecr-i ġurbet ṭa‘n-ı düşmen miḥnet-i ḥubb-ı vaṭan
Şeş cihātum aldı miḥnet ḳıldı ara yirde ben
Kimse yā Rab olmasun yār u diyārından cüdā
Araya fürḳat düşelden Fażliyā ol şāh ile
Çekdügüm miḥnetleri ben bilürüm Allāh ile
Ṣafḥa-i gerdūna bu mıṣrā‘ı yazdum āh ile
Kimse yā Rab olmasun yār u diyārından cüdā

In English

1. Ah, in a strange land my heart has been parted from its beloved, like the singing nightingale parted from its garden and its spring. It cannot escape for a moment from the harshness of the base world. O Lord, let no one be parted from beloved and homeland.

2. On one side grief for the beloved has made my tears rose-coloured, on the other the calamity of exile has turned my breast to blood; these two afflictions have changed my state entirely. O Lord, let no one be parted from beloved and homeland.

3. Fortune is unkind, luck unfavourable, the body weak; the beloved heedless, the heart impatient, and I am wasted away. O Gracious One (God, abundant in grace), my state is now left to your grace alone. O Lord, let no one be parted from beloved and homeland.

4. Attachment to friends, the sea of the beloved, the wrath of the old crone of a world, the torment of exile, the reproach of the enemy, the affliction of love for one's homeland: affliction has seized my six directions and left me in the middle. O Lord, let no one be parted from beloved and homeland. (Six troubles are counted in the first two lines and likened to the six directions.)

5. O Fazlî, since separation fell between us and that shah, I know the afflictions I have suffered, and God knows them too. On the page of the sphere I have written this line with a sigh: O Lord, let no one be parted from beloved and homeland.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a murabba (quatrain stanza poem) of five stanzas. Each stanza consists of four lines; the first three rhyme among themselves, and the fourth is repeated in every stanza as the refrain "Kimse yā Rab olmasun yār u diyārından cüdā". In the first stanza the refrain also rhymes with the other lines and shares the redif (refrain word) "-ından cüdā". Redifs are used in other stanzas too: "eyledi" in the second and "ile" in the fifth. The rhyme of the third stanza is "-īf", that of the fourth "-en". The metre is the "fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün" pattern of the remel family. 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 second musammat of the divan. The text is found only in the Fazlî divan section (fol. 220a) of the miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library. Like all twenty-eight of Fazlî's murabbas, this poem is a murabba with a refrain (mütekerrir), and, as Özkat notes, like most of the murabbas it has five stanzas.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The subject of the poem is two separations laid one upon the other: separation from the beloved and separation from the homeland. The pair "yār u diyār" (beloved and homeland) in the refrain gathers these two sorrows into a single prayer. The second stanza says so openly: on one side grief for the beloved has made the tears bloody, on the other the calamity of exile has turned the breast to blood; "these two afflictions" have changed the poet's state. In the first stanza the heart in a strange land is likened to a nightingale parted from its garden and its spring; the motif of the rose and the nightingale here becomes an image of longing for home.

In the third and fourth stanzas a list of troubles is drawn up by enumeration (taksim). In the third stanza fortune, luck, the body, the beloved, the heart and the poet himself are each named with a short epithet. In the fourth stanza six troubles are counted: attachment to friends, the sea of the beloved, the wrath of the old crone of a world, the torment of exile, the reproach of the enemy and the affliction of love for the homeland. In the third line these six troubles are said to besiege the poet on every side as the "şeş cihāt", the six directions; a skilful link is made between the number and the image. The world being called a "pīre-zen", an old crone, is a motif often seen in divan poetry. In the last stanza the poet says that he has written the refrain line on the page of the sphere with a sigh; thus the repeated line also finds its place within the poem as a piece of writing. The language is plain; the phrases are short and the sentences 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, pp. 231-232, musammat no. 2 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 220a); also pp. 57-58 (on the murabbas) and pp. 119-120 (description of the manuscripts), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

Online sources