Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Feʿilātün feʿilātün feʿilātün feʿilün
Ādeme secde imiş sırr-ı ṭarīḳat didiler
Şirki tevḥīd ṣanup ḥaylice herze yediler
Secde-i ādeme şeyṭān u melāʾik meʾmūr
Nāsa şāmil mi olur nās o zamān yoḳ idiler
Oḳuyuñ diḳḳat ile naṣs-ı "ve iz ḳulnā"yı
"Lil-melāʾik"deki taḥṣīṣi görüñ kör gidiler
In English
1. They said "prostration to Adam is the secret of the path"; mistaking polytheism for the oneness of God, they talked a good deal of nonsense.
2. Satan and the angels were commanded to prostrate to Adam; does (the command) include mankind? Mankind did not exist then.
3. Read with care the text of the verse "And when We said"; see the restriction in "to the angels", you blind fellows!
Literary and Historical Commentary
Bektashi and some Sufi circles explained the reverence shown to the perfect man or the spiritual guide through the story of the prostration to Adam; Cûdî's three couplets object to that explanation. The Qur'an tells that the angels were commanded to prostrate to Adam and that Iblis refused. Some Sufi readings have taken this prostration as reverence shown, in the person of Adam, to the divine manifestation in man.
Cûdî answers with the method of a theologian and exegete: in the verse of the sura al-Baqara, "And when We said to the angels, 'Prostrate to Adam'" (2:34), the command is openly addressed to the angels; mankind did not exist then, so the command does not include them. The restriction in the word "lil-melâike", to the angels, that is, the confinement of the ruling to a particular group, is the poet's support in this debate. The six-couplet kıta that follows directly continues the same debate with the examples of Jesus and the Prophet.
Bibliography
- Zeynep Adıyahşi, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [43b-87b], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 43 (poem no. 196; manuscript fol. 53a). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116831.pdf
Online sources
