Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Feʿūlün feʿūlün feʿūlün feʿūl

Mināreyle minber iderdi cidāl
Anı gūş idüp yazdı bir ehl-i ḥāl
Mināre diyordı hemān minbere
Seniñ ḫidmetiñ haftada bir kere
Benim günde beş kerredir ḫidmetim
Niçün senden ednā yine ḳıymetim
Seni cāmiʿiñ cānına ḳatdılar
Beni bābdan ṭaşraya atdılar
İçerüdesin āsūdesiñ nāzile
Ṭışārda baña her belā nāzile
Aña oldı minber icābet-nümā
Ki ey kec derūn istiḳāmet-nümā
Benim ḳalbim Allāhıma ṭoġrıdır
Degil sen gibi sīreti uġrıdır
Ḥużūr-ı ḫudāda ḳabūle sebeb
Degil keŝret ḫidmet ancaḳ edeb

In English

1. The minaret and the pulpit used to quarrel; a man of spiritual insight heard it and wrote it down.

2. The minaret was saying to the pulpit: "Your service is once a week.

3. My service is five times a day; why then is my worth still below yours?

4. They placed you in the very heart of the mosque, and threw me out of the door.

5. You are inside, at ease and pampered; outside every calamity falls upon me."

6. The pulpit answered it: "O you who are crooked within and make a show of straightness!

7. My heart is straight towards my God; my nature is not crooked like yours.

8. What brings acceptance in the presence of God is not the amount of service, but good manners alone."

Literary and Historical Commentary

The minaret and the pulpit of a mosque argue about which is worth more. The title "Manzûmât-ı Ahlâkından", from the moral poems, suggests that these eight couplets are a selection from Cûdî's didactic verse. The metre is mütekârib, known from Firdawsî's Shâhnâme and Sa'dî's Bûstân, and it lets the short story flow like a tale. The subject comes from the fable tradition in which two inanimate things are made to speak.

The minaret's complaint seems just. It serves five times a day with the call to prayer, while the pulpit is used once a week, for the Friday sermon; yet the pulpit has been placed inside the mosque, in its "heart", and the minaret thrown out of the door and left open to every calamity. The pulpit's answer rests on an unexpected conceit. It scolds the minaret as "kec-derûn", crooked within; the staircase inside a minaret really does climb round and round, while its outside looks straight as a rod. The steps of the pulpit, by contrast, rise straight. The poet turns this architectural detail into a moral measure: the one who looks straight outside but is crooked within is set apart from the one whose heart is straight towards God.

The last couplet gives the moral of the story: what brings acceptance with God is not the amount of service but good manners. The divan's ghazals that mock hypocrisy arrive at the same place: showy labour cannot stand in for rightness within.

Bibliography

  • Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 69 (poem no. 51; manuscript fol. 22b-23a). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf

Online sources