Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fāʿilātün fāʿilātün fāʿilātün fāʿilün

ʿAnaṣır-ı ādem içün ḫātime-i ṭīniñdir
Saṭḥıñ ey ḫāk-i siyeh ġayr-ı şeyāṭīniñdir
Saña ey arż öküz üstünde denir kim sebebi
Nefsiñi ṭabʿ-ı behīmiyyete tavṭīniñdir
Oldı mefḳūd meger nevʿ-i nebāt-ı Maḥmūd
Nere baḳsam görinen Ḥanẓal u yaḳṭīniñdir
Ḥiṣṣe-i rūḥ-ı muṭahhar göge itmiş pervāz
Kürreniñ ẕevḳi zinā-kār ile lūṭīniñdir
Beñzemez Kaʿbedeki zemzeme-i tekbīre
O nevāḳīs-i muṭanṭan ki fısılṭınıñdır
Ḥüküm-āmīz edeb-āmūz olamaz şerʾ gibi
O ḫurāfāt ki Petro ile Ḳısṭīniñdir
Baḥṣ iderler Hugodan Şiller ü Şākiŝpirden
Diyemezler şu Ġazālī şu Süyūṭīniñdir
Müslim evlādı ki bī-gāne-i millet olsa
Aña nisbet şeref-i mertebe ḳıbtīniñdir
Ḥaḳḳa şükr itmeli kim dīn-i mübīni ḥıfẓa
Himmet-i ʿāliye sulṭān-ı Selāṭīniñdir

In English

1. O black earth, you are the last halting-place of the clay of man's elements; but your face seems to have been left to devils. (The second line is not entirely clear as read in the thesis.)

2. O earth, they say of you "it rests upon an ox"; the reason is that you have made your home in the nature of beasts.

3. It seems the praiseworthy kind of plant has vanished; wherever I look, what I see is colocynth and gourd.

4. The share of the pure spirit has flown off to the sky; the pleasure of the globe belongs to the adulterer and the pederast.

5. Those pompous bells of Palestine are not like the sound of the takbir at the Kaaba. (The rhyme word is read "fısılṭınıñdır" in the thesis; the rhyme scheme points to the reading "Palestine".)

6. The superstitions of Peter and Constantine cannot be like the sacred law, which holds judgement and teaches manners.

7. They talk of Hugo, of Schiller and of Shakespeare; they cannot say "this is al-Ghazâlî's, this is al-Suyûtî's".

8. If a child of Muslims becomes a stranger to his community, beside him the rank of a Copt is more honourable.

9. One must give thanks to God that the lofty resolve to guard the manifest faith belongs to the sultan of sultans.

Literary and Historical Commentary

A Satire on the World

The language is harsh, the tone satirical, and these nine couplets without a pen name stand apart at once from the Sufi ghazals so common in the divan. The rhymes set before the redif (refrain) "-nıñdır" (belongs to), tîn, şeyâtîn, tavtîn, yaktîn, lûtî, Kıstîn, Süyûtî, Kıbtî and selâtîn, already announce the targets of the satire. The second couplet mocks a well-known belief of folk cosmology, the tale that the earth rests upon an ox: the earth is on the ox because it has made its home in the nature of beasts. By the third couplet the praised plants have given way to bitter colocynth and gourd, in the fourth the pure spirit has withdrawn to the sky and worldly pleasure has been left to the immoral.

Hugo, Schiller and Shakespeare

From the fifth couplet on the satire turns to a definite target. The rhyme word read "fısılṭınıñdır" in the thesis must, given the "-tîn" pattern of the rhyme, be "Filistîniñdir"; the couplet compares the pompous bells of Palestine with the sound of the takbir at the Kaaba. The sixth couplet sets the "superstitions" attached to Peter and Constantine against the sacred law. The seventh couplet openly names the cultural debate of the time: those who talk of Hugo, Schiller and Shakespeare do not know the works of al-Ghazâlî and al-Suyûtî. The eighth couplet ranks the Muslim young who have become strangers to their community below a Copt.

These couplets reflect the tension after the Tanzimat between a new generation acquainted with Western literature and circles attached to the Islamic tradition of learning. What is interesting is that this criticism comes from a poet who translated Lamartine and learned French while he was a teacher; Cûdî's target is less Western literature itself than those who praise it without knowing their own tradition. The last couplet gives thanks to the "sultân-ı selâtîn", the sultan of sultans, for his resolve to guard the faith; since the date of the poem is unknown, which sultan is meant cannot be said with certainty.

Bibliography

  • Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, pp. 31-32 (poem no. 20; manuscript fol. 8a). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf

Online sources