Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefāʿilün feʿilātün mefāʿilün feʿilün

Yürekli Muṣṭafā ṭorlaḳ Kemāl bedrü'ddīn
Naṣıl ṭoparladı az vaḳt içinde çoḳ o bāş
Ḳızılbāş olmaġa toḫm atdılar bir ʿaṣr-evvel
Külāha ʿāşıḳ idi beyni boş olan her bāş
Bu nükteyi seçemez bizdeki müverriḫler
Şeh İsmaʿīli ṣanırlar viren bu mülke telāş
Şeh İsmaʿīl o toḫumuñ ḥaṣādına geldi
Ki gāv-rānd ki maḥṣūl-ḫored ege baş

In English

1. How did Yürekli Mustafa, Torlak Kemal and Bedreddin gather so many heads in so short a time?

2. (Because) a century before they sowed the seed of becoming Kızılbash; every head with an empty brain was in love with the cap.

3. Our historians cannot make out this subtle point; they think it was Shah Ismail who gave this land its turmoil.

4. Shah Ismail came to the harvest of that seed; (the last line looks like a Persian proverb and could not be fully read: it may mean "the ox ploughs, another eats the crop").

Literary and Historical Commentary

Here the debate of the preceding kıtas is carried into history. The three names in the first couplet are the leaders of the great revolt against the Ottoman state in 1416: Sheikh Bedreddin and his disciples Börklüce Mustafa and Torlak Hu Kemal. The poet names "Börklüce" as "Yürekli", stout-hearted; this may be a difference of spelling or a deliberate play on words. The question is this: how did these men gather so many followers in a short time?

The answer is the poet's reading of history: the seeds of Kızılbash belief were sown a century before, and Shah Ismail, with the Safavid movement that shook Anatolia at the beginning of the sixteenth century, was not the sower of this seed but its harvester. The words "our historians cannot make out this subtle point" show that Cûdî followed the history writing of his own day and raised an objection to it. This direct link drawn between the Bedreddin movement and Safavid Kızılbash belief belongs to the poet's polemical view and is disputed among historians. The last line has the air of a Persian proverb; its reading could not be resolved, so the translation gives only a possible sense.

Bibliography

  • Zeynep Adıyahşi, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [43b-87b], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 44 (poem no. 198; manuscript fol. 53b). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116831.pdf

Online sources