Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Feʿilātün feʿilātün feʿilātün feʿilün
ʿAcele itme anıñ mehrini fekk eylemege
Gerçi ḳonmuşdur aña mehr-i muʿaccel dirler
İncü terhīni ile virmededir hep viresi
Kendi pīşīn ise de ḥaḳḳı müʾeccel dirler
In English
1. Do not hurry to break her dower (her seal), though they say a prompt dower was set for her.
2. She is always paying her due by pledging pearls; though she herself is paid in advance, they say her right is deferred (the couplet is not entirely clear).
Literary and Historical Commentary
The terms of the dower in Islamic family law are the material of this two-couplet witticism. The mehir is the property the man undertakes to give the woman in marriage and is divided in two: the "mehr-i muaccel", given promptly at the marriage, and the "mehr-i müeccel", paid later, mostly at divorce or death. The poem uses these two terms together and also takes advantage of the likeness in writing between the word "mehr", dower, and "mühr", seal: to break the dower also means to open a seal.
The expressions "pledging pearls", "in advance" and "deferred right" in the second couplet continue a language of trade and debt, but what the witticism means cannot be fully resolved as read in the thesis. If one thinks of the place in an earlier kıta where marriage is described through a seal, the poem may be a playful observation on marriage and brides. Since the sense is not settled, the translation too should be read as an approximation.
Bibliography
- Zeynep Adıyahşi, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [43b-87b], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, pp. 105-106 (poem no. 253; manuscript fol. 76a). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116831.pdf
Online sources
