Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Ḳoca Vāżıḥ didi yigit gibi bir tām tārīḫ
Ḳocacıḳ Mescidi ta‘mīr ile hāy genceldi (1211)

In English

1. Old Vâzıh, like a young man, uttered a complete chronogram: "With its repair the Kocacık Mosque, ah, grew young".

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This is a one-couplet chronogram of a repair, in the remel pattern "fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilün". Babaarslan records it as "chronogram for the repair of the Kocacık Mosque (1211)"; the year 1211 corresponds to 1796-97. 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 date is given by the whole second line, "Ḳocacıḳ Mescidi ta‘mīr ile hāy genceldi". The words "tām tārīḫ" (complete chronogram) in the first line indicate that the whole line enters the calculation, with nothing added or subtracted to correct the total.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

From beginning to end the couplet plays with words of age and youth. The poet calls himself "Ḳoca Vāżıḥ" (old Vâzıh), though in 1211 he was thirty-four. The building whose date he gives is a mosque called "Kocacık" (the little old one), which has "grown young" through its repair. Between "Ḳoca" and "Ḳocacıḳ", and between "yigit" (young man) and "genceldi" (grew young), there is a contrast and congruence of both sound and sense. The young poet calling himself "old" and the old mosque becoming "young" through renewal give the couplet a playful air. The interjection "hāy" is a cry of joy from spoken language. This analysis is ours.

Historical Context

The Kocacık Mosque is in Amasya. Hüsameddin describes the Kocacık quarter as lying below the Uzun Mustafa quarter and bordering the Saraçhane quarter to the north, and writes that it took its name from Hoca Hacı Ahmed Çelebi, nicknamed "Kocacık", who built a small mosque, a school and a fountain here in 871 (1466-67). According to him the mosque was renewed many times: Hacı Beyzâde Mehmed Bey restored it and endowed it in 1071, it burned again, and in 1230 the merchant Benderli Hacı Feyzullah Ağa rebuilt it. Vâzıh's couplet documents a repair of 1211 that Hüsameddin does not mention separately; his remark that the mosque "was renewed repeatedly" covers such intermediate repairs. The couplet does not say who carried out the repair of 1211.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Online sources