Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefāʿīlün mefāʿīlün mefāʿīlün mefāʿīlün

Naṣıl maʿbūd olur şems ü ḳamer, encüm ki āfildir
Benim Rabbim ne āfildir ne zāʾildir ne ġāfildir
Nücūmı, āteşi biẕẕāt ḫulḳ-ı ẓan iden maḫlūḳ
ʿUlüv-i fikre mālik olmayan ṣınf-ı esāfildir
Bu esfellerden esfeldir ki dir cehlen "ene'l-aʿlā"
Gerek firʿavn-ı mıṣrīdir gerek nemrūd-ı bābildir
Ne aġreb ki peder: heykeltrāş-ı ḳavm olan āzer
Meʿābidde muḳīm-i ṣaff u ʿubbād-ı heyākildir
Benim ʿaḳlım şehādet eyler: Allāh Rabb-i vāḥiddir
Vücūd u ḳudret ü ʿilminde ferd-i bī-mümāsildir

In English

1. How can sun and moon and stars, which set, be worshipped? My Lord neither sets nor ceases nor is heedless.

2. The creature who supposes the stars and fire to be creators in themselves belongs to the lowest class, those who have no loftiness of thought.

3. The lowest of these low ones is he who in ignorance says "I am the most high", be he Pharaoh of Egypt or Nimrod of Babylon.

4. How strange that his father Âzer, the sculptor of his people, sits in the temples in the ranks of the worshippers of idols.

5. My reason bears witness: God is the one Lord; in His being, His power and His knowledge He is unique and without peer.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The Qur'anic story of Abraham is rebuilt from the speaker's own mouth in the five couplets titled "Usûl-i İbrâhîmiyye yâhud Hanîfiyyet", the way of Abraham or the hanîf faith. The first couplet rests on the scene in the sura al-An'âm in which Abraham sees a star, the moon and the sun and, as each sets, says "I do not love those that set" (6:76-79): a thing that sets cannot be worshipped. The word "âfil", setting, joining in the rhyme with "zâil", ceasing, and "gâfil", heedless, shows God free of all change.

The third couplet sets side by side two who said "I am the most high": the Pharaoh who says these words in the sura al-Nâzi'ât (79:24), and Nimrod, whom tradition names as the ruler who had Abraham thrown into the fire. The fourth couplet names Âzer, mentioned in the Qur'an as Abraham's father, as the sculptor of his people, and finds his place before the idols strange. The last couplet ties Abraham's way to the witness of reason: the oneness of God is a judgement of reason. "Hanîfiyyet" is the name used in the Qur'an for the religion of Abraham, in the sense of pure monotheism far from polytheism; the long poem that follows directly in the divan discusses how this common root ought to unite Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Bibliography

  • Zeynep Adıyahşi, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [43b-87b], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 68 (poem no. 222; manuscript fol. 62b). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116831.pdf

Online sources