Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Heading: PEDER-İ MERḤŪM LİSĀNINDAN TĀRĪḪ-İ VİLĀDET-İ FAḲĪR-İ ḤAḲĪRDİR

Metre: fe‘ilātün / fe‘ilātün / fe‘ilātün / fe‘ilün

Sāl-i mīlādıñı itmek diler iseñ ma‘lūm
Naẓar it gel hele tārīḫiñe cānım oġlum (1177)

In English

1. If you wish to know the year of your birth, come, take a look at your chronogram, my dear son.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This single couplet, which opens the chronogram section of the Dîvânçe, is not from the poet's own pen. Its heading, "Peder-i merḥūm lisānından tārīḫ-i vilādet-i faḳīr-i ḥaḳīrdir", says: "This is the chronogram of the birth of this humble one, from the tongue of my late father." Vâzıh recorded in his Dîvânçe the couplet that his father, Kara Müftî İsmâil Hâtif Efendi, had composed for his birth. The couplet is in the remel pattern "fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilün" and gives the year 1177 (1763-64). A chronogram (tarih) gives the year of an event through a phrase or line whose letters, added up by their numerical values (the ebced system), yield that year.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet is framed as a father speaking to his son: "If you want to know your year, look at your chronogram." The words "cānım oġlum" (my dear son) at the end of the second line turn out to be the chronogram itself. Written as "جانم اوغلوم", their letters add up to 3+1+50+40 and 1+6+1000+30+6+40, that is 94 and 1083, a total of 1177. This calculation is ours and assumes that the manuscript spells the words in this way. By giving his son's year in the words "my dear son", the father turns the chronogram from a dry calculation into a word of affection.

Historical Context

Babaarslan concludes from this couplet, and from the information the poet gives at the end of his Belâbilü'r-Râsiye, that Vâzıh was born in Amasya in 1177. Some sources make him a native of Çorum; Babaarslan and Özçakmak explain the confusion by the fact that his father, whose family was from Amasya, had been born in Çorum. Hüsameddin writes that İsmâil Hâtif Efendi was the first professor of the Sungurlu Madrasa, served three times as mufti of Amasya, and was "versed in literature and conversation, a poet" who left poems and a work of Persian examples. This chronogram is therefore also valuable as a surviving sample of the father's poetry. For the chronogram Vâzıh wrote on his father's death see Chronogram 23.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

  • Giyasi Babaarslan, "Amasyalı Vâzıh ve Dîvânçesi", Akademik Dil ve Edebiyat Dergisi, 5(4), 2021, pp. 1922-1984 (text of the poem: p. 1973; Mustafa Vâzıh, Dîvânçe, Ankara University, Department of Manuscripts, Mustafa Con A 495/III, fol. 72b). https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/akaded/article/993264
  • Giyasi Babaarslan, "Amasyalı Vâzıh ve Dîvânçesi", Akademik Dil ve Edebiyat Dergisi, 5(4), 2021, pp. 1924-1930 (life and description of the Dîvânçe). https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/akaded/article/993264
  • Fatma Özçakmak, "Mustafa Vâzıh Efendi ve Dîvânçe'si", Kesit Akademi Dergisi, 7(26), 2021, pp. 255-278, pp. 257-259.

Online sources