Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: mefā‘īlün / mefā‘īlün / mefā‘īlün / mefā‘īlün

Raḳīb bir ṣūfī-i nā-ṣūret iletmiş bugün yāra
Deve gördüñ mi yiydin olsun ey dostum nedir çāre
Bu ṣu işi imiş diyü hemān a‘rāż-ı vech eyler
Sirişkin gösterince ‘āşıḳ-ı miskīn dil-dāra
Taḳarrub eylemişler ṣandılar bir ḫasteye neşter
Baṣīretle baḳanlar ġamze ile çeşm-i bīmāra
Semek ḳarnında ḳalmışdır mis̱āl-i Ḥażret-i Yūnus
O nūn-ı ebruvānı içre baḳ ḫāl-i siyehkāra

In English

1. Today the rival has taken an ugly-faced Sufi to the beloved; "Did you see a camel?" (say you saw nothing), let it be eaten, my friend, what can be done.

2. When the poor lover shows his tears to the heart-stealer, he at once turns his face away, saying "So this is a matter of water".

3. Those who look with insight at the glance and the sick eye thought that a lancet had been brought close to a sick man.

4. Look at the black beauty spot within the nūn of his eyebrows: it has stayed in the belly of the fish like the Prophet Jonah.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is the fourteenth piece in the Mukatta‘ât section of the Dîvânçe. Babaarslan describes it as a nazm; it has no pen name (mahlas). It has four couplets and is written in the hezec pattern "mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün". The rhyme rests on the "-āra" of "yāra, çāre, dil-dāra, bīmāra, siyehkāra".

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first couplet opens with a scene from everyday speech. The rival has taken an ugly-faced Sufi to the beloved; the poet answers this with the words "Did you see a camel?". In Turkish these words begin a saying which advises one to treat what one has seen as unseen and keep silent. We have not been able to fix the exact meaning of the part "yiydin olsun"; in the translation we have given a literal sense matching the words of the edition. In the second couplet the beloved turns his face away from the lover's tears, saying "so this is a matter of water"; since tears are water, the phrase becomes a play on words. The details of this couplet too are not entirely clear.

In the third couplet the glance is compared to a lancet used for bloodletting and the sick eye to a patient. The glance approaching the sick eye resembles a physician touching a patient with a lancet; the words "neşter, ḫaste, bīmār" (lancet, sick man, patient) form a congruence of images (tenasüp) drawn from medicine. The last couplet holds the most skilful comparison of the poem. The arch of the eyebrows is compared to the Arabic letter nūn (ن), and the dot inside the letter is the black beauty spot between the brows. The word "nūn" means fish in Arabic, and in the Qur'an the Prophet Jonah is called "Zünnûn" (he of the fish). The beauty spot inside the letter nūn thus becomes Jonah himself, held in the belly of the fish.

Bibliography

Online sources