Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefā‘īlün Mefā‘īlün Mefā‘īlün Mefā‘īlün

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
Yolında pādişāhuñ ṣādıḳ iken ol şeh-i a‘lā
Dirīġā itdi ‘iṣyān töhmetin bühtān idüp a‘dā
Gör āḫir ol ṣadāḳat birle başın virdi bī-pervā
Meded begler meded ẓulm oldı ġāyet Muṣṭafā Ḫān’a
Cihānı ‘adl ü dād ü luṭf-ı cūd ile ṭutup nāmı
Ḳul itmişdi muḥabbet birle cümle hāṣ ile ‘āmı
Dirīġā ol muḥabbet āfet oldı gör ser-encāmı
Meded begler meded ẓulm oldı ġāyet Muṣṭafā Ḫān’a
O bir şeh-bāz idi ṣaḥrā-yı devletde hümā-pervāz
Nice ‘anḳālar olmışdı şikārı çāpük ü mümtāz
Geçerken murġ-ı zīrek dāme düşdi āḫir ol şeh-bāz
Meded begler meded ẓulm oldı ġāyet Muṣṭafā Ḫān’a
Ḳanı ol yāl ü bāl ü ḥüsn ü ḫulḳ ü ṣūret-i mevzūn
Ḳanı ol luṭf-ı cūd ü ‘adl ü dād ü ḥüsn-i rūz-efzūn
Dirīġā rūzgār itdi o ḥüsn ü ḫulḳı diger-gūn
Meded begler meded ẓulm oldı ġāyet Muṣṭafā Ḫān’a
Şecā‘at mīşe-zārında o bir şīr idi merd-efgen
Niçe şīri zebūn itmişdi ḳahr-ı ḫavf ü ḫaşyetden
Zebūn itdi velīkin fitne ile rūbeh-i düşmen
Meded begler meded ẓulm oldı ġāyet Muṣṭafā Ḫān’a
Ḳatı ḥayf oldı bu ḥayfâ firāḳ adıyla cān yansun
Ne cān cümle cihān belki zemīn ü āsümān yansun
Bu derde kāfir aġlasun demidür müslümān yansun
Meded begler meded ẓulm oldı ġāyet Muṣṭafā Ḫān’a
Gözüm ḳan aġla kim ḳan aġlamaḳ oldı senüñ kāruñ
Çün aldı çıḳdı ḥayf ü ẓulm ile şāh-ı cihāndāruñ
Bu mıṣrā‘ birle olsun ḥaşr olınca āh ile zāruñ
Meded begler meded ẓulm oldı ġāyet Muṣṭafā Ḫān’a
Yolında pādişāhuñ yoḳ idi bir ẕerre noḳṣānı
Ne oġul cānla olmış idi anuñ ḳul u ḳurbānı
Dirīġā başın aldurdı ‘adüvvün ḳurı bühtānı
Meded begler meded ẓulm oldı ġāyet Muṣṭafā Ḫān’a
Ḳarār itmişdi milk-i Rūm’da ol şāh-ı nīkū fer
Olup ser-ḥadde Ye‘cūc-ı fitenden sedd-i İskender
Çü gitdi fitneden ṣanmañ ki ḫālī ola bu kişver
Meded begler meded ẓulm oldı ġāyet Muṣṭafā Ḫān’a
Demidür ḳulları tā ḥaşr olınca eyleyüp efgān
Yanup bu āteş ile her biri ḳalsun ciger biryān
Muṣībet-dīde Fażlī gib’olsun derd ile giryān
Meded begler meded ẓulm oldı ġāyet Muṣṭafā Ḫān’a

In English

1. 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 had their way with Sultan Süleyman. Help, O beys, help; a great wrong has been done to Mustafa Han.

2. While that exalted prince was loyal on the padishah's path, alas, his enemies slandered him and charged him with rebellion. See, in the end, with that loyalty, he gave up his head without flinching. Help, O beys, help; a great wrong has been done to Mustafa Han.

3. Having filled the world with his name through justice, equity, kindness and generosity, he had made the elite and the common people alike his servants through love. Alas, that love became his ruin; look at the end of it. Help, O beys, help; a great wrong has been done to Mustafa Han.

4. He was a royal falcon soaring high like the huma bird in the desert of fortune; many a swift and noble anka (phoenix) had been his prey. As the clever bird passed by, that royal falcon in the end fell into the snare. Help, O beys, help; a great wrong has been done to Mustafa Han.

5. Where is that stature and bearing, that beauty, that character and well-proportioned form? Where is that kindness, generosity, justice, equity and ever-growing beauty? Alas, fate has turned that beauty and that character into something else. Help, O beys, help; a great wrong has been done to Mustafa Han.

6. In the thicket of courage he was a lion that felled brave men; he had cowed many a lion with the dread and terror of his wrath. But the enemy fox brought him down by sedition. Help, O beys, help; a great wrong has been done to Mustafa Han.

7. It is a great pity; whenever this pitiful parting is named, let souls burn. Not souls alone, let the whole world, nay earth and sky, burn. Let even the infidel weep for this grief; now is the time for the Muslim to burn. Help, O beys, help; a great wrong has been done to Mustafa Han.

8. O my eye, weep blood, for weeping blood has become your task. The king who ruled the world has been taken from you by injustice and wrong. Until the Day of Judgement let your sighs and moans be with this line: Help, O beys, help; a great wrong has been done to Mustafa Han.

9. On the padishah's path he had not an atom of fault. What a son he was; with his very soul he had become his father's servant and sacrifice. (The line can also be read: "with his soul, as a son, he had become his servant and sacrifice.") Alas, the enemy's baseless slander cost him his head. Help, O beys, help; a great wrong has been done to Mustafa Han.

10. That king of fair countenance had settled in the land of Rûm and become, on the frontier, the wall of Alexander against the Gog of sedition. Now that he is gone, do not think this realm will be free of sedition. Help, O beys, help; a great wrong has been done to Mustafa Han.

11. Now is the time for his servants to lament until the Day of Judgement; burning in this fire, let the liver of each of them be left roasted. Let them all weep in grief like Fazlî, who has seen this calamity. Help, O beys, help; a great wrong has been done to Mustafa Han.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is an elegy (mersiye) in the form of a murabba (quatrain stanza poem) of eleven stanzas. The murabba is a verse form built of four-line stanzas; here the fourth line of every stanza is repeated as the refrain "Meded begler meded ẓulm oldı ġāyet Muṣṭafā Ḫān'a", which makes the poem a murabba with a refrain (mütekerrir). The first three lines of each stanza rhyme among themselves, and the refrain is tied to the rhyme of the first stanza. The metre is "mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün" of the hezec family. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last stanza in the phrase "Muṣībet-dīde Fażlī". Mustafa Özkat published this elegy as the 27th musammat of the divan. The source of the text is not a manuscript: Özkat takes the poem from Mustafa İsen's anthology of elegies Acıyı Bal Eylemek, and İsen took it from Ayhan Güldaş's article "Bilinmeyen Şehzade Mustafa Mersiyeleri" (Unknown Elegies for Prince Mustafa), published in Kubbealtı Akademi Mecmuası in 1989. As Özkat notes, neither publication uses transcription marks; the diacritics of the transliteration are Özkat's.

Özkat notes that Fazlî devoted most of his murabbas to love and to the praise of beautiful youths, but that on the killing of Şehzade Mustafa he wrote an elegy in the murabba form, "contrary to custom". With eleven stanzas this is the longest murabba in the divan.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The main idea of the elegy is that the prince was killed although innocent. This idea is developed in several ways through the stanzas. In the second and ninth stanzas Mustafa's loyalty to his father is stressed: he was loyal "on the padishah's path" and had not an atom of fault, but the enemy's "bühtān", baseless slander, cost him his head. The phrase "‘iṣyān töhmeti", the charge of rebellion, names directly the accusation that the prince was preparing to rise against his father, and rejects it. The third stanza rests on a paradox: the justice and generosity that endeared Mustafa to the people became in the end an "āfet", a ruin, for him.

To describe the prince the poet uses images of hunting and animals. In the fourth stanza Mustafa is a "şeh-bāz", a royal falcon soaring high like the huma in the desert of fortune and hunting ankas, yet in the end he falls into the snare; the contrast between falcon and snare is an antithesis (tezat). In the sixth stanza he is a lion that cows lions in the thicket of courage, and the one who brings him down is a "rūbeh", a fox. The contrast of lion and fox says that the hero was defeated not in open battle but by guile. The poem does not say who the fox or the "erbāb-ı ġaraż" (men of ill intent) are. In the tenth stanza Mustafa is likened to the wall which, in the Qur'an and in the stories of Alexander, was built against the people of Gog and Magog; this allusion (telmih) says that he was a barrier against sedition on the frontier. In divan poetry the phrase "milk-i Rūm" usually means the Ottoman realm; it may also call to mind the province of Rûm, to which Amasya belonged.

The opening of the refrain with "meded" gives the poem the tone of a cry for help and of protest. The poet addresses the "begler", the beys, that is, he imagines his audience as the prince's servants and circle. In the seventh stanza the grief is raised to a universal scale: let not only souls but earth and sky burn, let even the infidel weep. In the eighth stanza the poet addresses his own eye and declares the refrain itself a line of lament to last until the Day of Judgement.

Historical Context

Şehzade Mustafa was killed in Şevval 960 (October 1553) at the army camp on the plain of Konya on the order of his father, Süleyman the Magnificent. Fazlî had been his divan secretary in Amasya since the death of Şehzade Mehmed in 1543 and had presented Gül ü Bülbül to him that same year. Maruf Çakır notes that Şehzade Mustafa was the statesman for whom the greatest number of elegies was written in Ottoman literature, and that after Taşlıcalı Yahya's elegy openly said that the padishah had erred, other poets too expressed their feelings more freely; the number of elegies for Mustafa identified by scholars has reached sixteen. Yahya's well-known elegy also opens with "Meded meded".

Fazlî's elegy is notable because it tells the event as one of the prince's close circle. Sultan Süleyman's name occurs in the first stanza, but the blame is laid on the "erbāb-ı ġaraż" who had their way with him. Özkat attributes the brevity of Fazlî's second elegy for Mustafa, a terkib-bend of three stanzas, to the caution arising from the prince's death by execution; in this murabba, by contrast, the poet uses the word "ẓulm", injustice, openly. When the elegy was written, to whom it was recited and under what heading it was recorded in a miscellany are not stated in the sources; the identity of the manuscript used by Güldaş could not be traced in this study.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Books

  • Mustafa İsen, Acıyı Bal Eylemek: Türk Edebiyatında Mersiye, 2nd ed., Ankara: Akçağ, 1994, pp. 318-319 (as quoted in Özkat).
  • Ayhan Güldaş, "Bilinmeyen Şehzade Mustafa Mersiyeleri", Kubbealtı Akademi Mecmuası, 18/3 (July 1989), pp. 37 ff. (as quoted in Özkat).

Online sources