Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fe‘ūlün / fe‘ūlün / fe‘ūlün / fe‘ūl

Güneş gibi tārīḫ olur müncelī
Ḥisāb it çü ṭoġdı Muḥammed ‘Alī (1240)

In English

1. The chronogram comes forth plain as the sun; count it: "as Muhammed Ali was born".

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

It is a single-couplet birth chronogram in the mütekârib pattern "fe‘ūlün fe‘ūlün fe‘ūlün fe‘ūl", the metre known as the Şehnâme pattern. Babaarslan mentions it together with the Arabic poem just before it in the Dîvânçe and records it as "again, a Turkish chronogram for the birth of the same person (1240)"; the year 1240 corresponds to 1824-25. The two lines of the couplet rhyme on "müncelī" and "‘Alī". 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.

The words "Ḥisāb it" (count it) show that the chronogram follows them: the chronogram is the phrase "çü ṭoġdı Muḥammed ‘Alī" (as Muhammed Ali was born). Written as "چو طوغدی محمد علی", it gives "çü" (çe, vav) 9, "ṭoġdı" 1029, "Muḥammed" 92 and "‘Alī" 110; the total is exactly 1240. If the conjunction "çü" is left out of the count, the total stops at 1231; the poet therefore also used this small word to complete the count. The calculation is ours and assumes that the manuscript spells the words in this way.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet is built on the image of the sun. The first line says that the chronogram is "müncelī like the sun", plain as the sun; the second announces that the child "was born" (ṭoġdı). In Turkish the sun "rises" with the same verb (doğmak) with which a child is born; through this shared verb the poet links the sun and the newborn. This is a congruence of images (tenasüp) and also carries a hidden simile likening the newborn child to the sun. The phrase "tārīḫu Vāżıḥin" (a clear chronogram) in the Arabic chronogram and the word "müncelī" (plain, manifest) in this couplet repeat the same idea in two languages. The analysis is ours.

Historical Context

According to the Arabic poem just before this couplet in the Dîvânçe, Muhammed Ali was born on the last day of the month of Dhu'l-Hijja in the year 1240. In that poem the father is praised with the words "şerîf" and "mazhar", which suggests that the child may have been the son of Vâzıh's friend Mazhar Efendi, known as Şerîf Bey; this is our inference, and Babaarslan and Özçakmak do not name the child's father. The writing of two chronograms, one Arabic and one Turkish, for the same birth recalls the pair of Persian-Arabic and Turkish chronograms Mazhar had earlier sent for Vâzıh's son (Chronograms 8 and 9).

Bibliography

Academic studies

  • Giyasi Babaarslan, "Amasyalı Vâzıh ve Dîvânçesi", Akademik Dil ve Edebiyat Dergisi, 5(4), 2021, pp. 1922-1984 (text of the poem: p. 1979; Mustafa Vâzıh, Dîvânçe, Ankara University, Department of Manuscripts, Mustafa Con A 495/III, fol. 74b). 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; chronograms: pp. 1929-1930). 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, p. 275.

Online sources