Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ and Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūl

Ādem yaradılmış ü çamur artmışdı
Olmaḳda idi ṭīn-i ṭeʿaffün-āver
Allāha ricā itdi melekler: Yā Rab
Bundan da yarat bārī bir insān diger
Ḫalḳ itdi Ḫudā andan ikinci şaḫṣı
"Bā" yoḳdı ola tāc-ı kerāmet bir ser
Öz ṭıynetine nisbet ile dinmekde
Evvelki "Ebu'l-beşer" ikinci "bü'ş-şer"
Şeklen müteşābih görinür neslleri
Efʿāl ile aḫlāḳ iledir farḳı meger

In English

1. Adam had been created and clay was left over; the clay was beginning to rot.

2. The angels pleaded with God: "O Lord, at least make another human being from this too."

3. God created a second person from it; (but) no "b" was left to be a crown of honour on its head.

4. In relation to their own clay, the first is called "Ebu'l-beşer" (father of mankind), the second "bü'ş-şer" (father of evil).

5. In shape their descendants look alike; their difference, it turns out, lies in deeds and character.

Literary and Historical Commentary

This kıta, whose heading is "Türkçe tahyîl ve nazmı", the Turkish imagining and versing of the same thought, turns the judgement "man is two" of the previous Arabic nazire into a small creation story. The story is invented and playful: after Adam was created, clay was left over and began to rot; so that it should not go to waste, the angels ask that a human being be made from it too.

The whole wit of the poem lies in the third and fourth couplets. Adam's epithet is "Ebu'l-beşer", father of mankind. When the turn of the second person comes, no letter "b" is left to be put at its head; when the "b" falls from the word "beşer", "şer", evil, remains, and the second person becomes "Ebu'ş-şer", father of evil. That the letter "be" stands at the head of the word in Arabic script allows it to be thought of as a "tâc-ı kerâmet", a crown of honour. The last couplet gives the judgement: the children of the two lines look alike in shape; the difference lies only in deeds and character. So the three-link chain that began with al-Ma'arrî stretches from an Arabic philosophical couplet to a Turkish witticism.

Bibliography

  • Zeynep Adıyahşi, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [43b-87b], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 33 (poem no. 189; manuscript fol. 47b). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116831.pdf

Online sources