Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ūlü Fā‘ilātü Mefā‘īlü Fā‘ilün

Kime beraber eyleyeyin ben gedā seni
Mīzān-ı ‘aḳla urmuşam iy pādişā seni
Yūsuf mis̱āl eyleyüp ehl-i bahā seni
Vezn eylemek degül zer ile serverā seni
Dünyayı bir yaña ḳosalar bir yaña seni
Baña seni gerek seni iy bī-vefā seni
Ben kim ḳapuñda bende-i dil-dāde kim ḳadīm
Her-dem elif mis̱āl ṣırāṭuñda müstaḳīm

In English

1. O sovereign, to whom shall I, a beggar, liken you? I have put you on the scales of reason and weighed you; even if those who know worth were to value you like Joseph (bringing you to market), O lord, you cannot be weighed against gold. If they set the world on one side and you on the other, it is you I need, you, O faithless one, you.

2. (Only the first two lines of the stanza remain.) I, who have long been a devoted servant at your door, stand ever upright on your path like the letter alif.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a müseddes (six-line stanza poem), but it has reached us incomplete. Because of a missing page in the manuscript, only the first stanza and the first two lines of the second remain. In the first stanza all six lines end with the redif (refrain word) "seni" (you), and the words "gedā, pādişā, bahā, serverā, yaña, bī-vefā" carry the rhyme "-ā/-a". The two surviving lines of the second stanza pass to a new rhyme, "-īm" (ḳadīm, müstaḳīm); it appears that each stanza was built on its own rhyme. The metre is the "mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātü mefā‘īlü fā‘ilün" pattern of the muzari family.

Özkat publishes the poem as the thirty-fifth musammat of the divan. The text is found only in the Fazlî divan section (fol. 241b) of the miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library. According to Özkat, because this last müseddes, which treats the subject of love, is incomplete, no full interpretation of it can be made.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The surviving stanza is built on the idea of measuring the beloved's worth. The lover calls himself "gedā" (beggar) and the beloved "pādişā" (sovereign), and asks to whom he should liken him. Then comes the image of the scales: the lover has put the beloved on the scales of reason. The third and fourth lines allude to the story of Joseph: Joseph is the beauty on whom a price was set when he was sold in Egypt; but the beloved is too precious to be weighed against gold, even if those who know worth were to bring him to market like Joseph. The words "mīzān" (scales), "vezn" (weighing), "zer" (gold) and "bahā" (worth, price) form a congruence of images (tenasüp). In the fifth line the scales grow larger: the world is placed in one pan and the beloved in the other.

The last line of the stanza, "Baña seni gerek seni iy bī-vefā seni", is the most striking place in the poem. Özkat says that this expression recalls Yunus Emre, and sees a strong resemblance between this müseddes and Yunus Emre's hymn whose opening couplet is "‘Işkuñ aldı benden beni bana seni gerek seni / Ben yanaram düni güni bana seni gerek seni". Özkat names Yunus Emre as the first of the poets who influenced Fazlî. In Fazlî the hymn's words addressed to God are turned toward a beloved and fitted to the language of love poetry with the address "iy bī-vefā" (O faithless one).

The two lines left from the second stanza speak of the lover's faithfulness. The lover is a servant who has long waited at the door, and he is upright like the letter "alif". Alif, the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, is a straight, upright stroke; in divan poetry it is the symbol of rectitude and standing upright. The words "ṣırāṭ" (path) and "müstaḳīm" (straight) also recall the phrase "the straight path" in the Fatiha, the opening sura of the Qur'an.

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. 263, musammat no. 35 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 241b); also p. 58 (on the müseddeses), p. 96 (Yunus Emre's influence) and pp. 119-120 (description of the manuscripts), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.
  • Mustafa Tatçı, Yunus Emre Dîvânı II: Tenkitli Metin, Ankara: Ministry of Culture Publications, 1990, p. 383 (as cited by Özkat).

Online sources