Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: eleven-syllable syllabic metre

Alemi iyiyle yarattı Allah
Doksan bin evliya zuhur olacak
Muhammed Ali’den gelen emrullah
Adlı adilliye sahip gelecek
Sahip gelir adil eyler alemi
Belli olur şahın gülü gülamı
Her ayette tefsir eyler alemi
Dedi kepli olan matta kalacak
Matta kalır fırsat vermez hazara
Çoğunun işini döker pazara
Zalimkarlık eden vezir vizare
Allah gayip olmaz adil olacak
Adil olur yâdlar Ali’m gelince
Mühür’ü sancağı ele alınca
Kudret nişanını elde tutunca
Tam bağlıyı Edirne’ye sürecek
Kul Hüseyin uyanmıştır şahından
Acem eyaleti kopar şahından
Altı kral yedi padişahınan
Din yoluna bir toy düğün olacak

In English

1. God created the world with goodness; ninety thousand saints will appear. By God's command that comes from Muhammad and Ali, a master whose name is just will come.

2. The master comes and makes the world just; the Shah's rose and his slave become plain. He interprets every verse for the world; he said the one in the cap will be checkmated.

3. He is checkmated and gives no chance to the wary; he spills the business of most of them into the market. The work of the vizier who practises tyranny comes to nothing; God is not absent, there will be justice.

4. When my Ali comes, the strangers become just; when he takes the seal and the banner in his hand, when he holds the sign of power in his hand, he will drive the one fully bound to Edirne.

5. Kul Hüseyin has woken at the voice of his Shah; the province of Persia breaks away from its Shah. With six kings and seven sovereigns there will be a feast, a wedding, on the road of the faith.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

Işık describes this nefes as a "prophecy of the future", and the line endings speak of the future too: lines two and four end in the future suffix ("olacak, gelecek, kalacak, olacak, sürecek, olacak": will be, will come, will remain, will drive). Lines one and three rhyme on: "Allah, emrullah", "alemi, gülamı, alemi", "hazara, pazara, vizare", "gelince, alınca, tutunca", "şahından, şahından, padişahınan". The third line of the fourth quatrain is lost; according to the article it was completed in an Alevi gathering on the grounds that "Kul Hüseyin must have said it thus". The metre of the five quatrains is the eleven-syllable syllabic measure, and the pen name (mahlas) "Kul Hüseyin" stands in the last stanza. The text was collected from Erdoğan Koç. The article glosses "kep" as the cap of non-Muslim soldiers and "vizare" as that which will come to nothing.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

In Alevi poetry deyiş that carry a prophecy of the future usually tell of the coming of the Mahdi, the "master of the age", at the end of time and the establishment of justice. Kul Hüseyin's deyiş joins this expectation with the world of his own day: ninety thousand saints will appear, a just master will come, the work of tyrannical viziers will come to nothing, those "in caps", that is, foreign soldiers, will be checkmated. The fourth quatrain describes Ali taking the seal and the banner in his hand and holding the sign of power.

The last quatrain says that the province of Persia will break away from its Shah and that, together with six kings and seven sovereigns, a wedding feast will be held on the road of the faith. The source does not explain to which historical events these lines point, and the language of prophecy is deliberately left veiled. Işık writes that Kul Hüseyin lived in the last period of the Ottoman Empire and that events such as the closing of the Janissary corps and of the Hacı Bektaş lodge affected the region; in such a period a strengthening of the expectation of justice is understandable, but tying the deyiş to a particular event is not something we can do.

Bibliography

Online sources