Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Feʿilātün feʿilātün feʿilātün feʿilün

Āferīnler saña sulṭān-ı ṣalāḥ-āver-i dīn
Ravża-i pākiñ ola bāġçe-i ḫuld-ı berīn
Ḳāmet-i himmetiñe olsa sezā ṭāḳ-ı ẓafer
Şu semāvāt-ı muraṣṣaʿ-ı kemer çarḫ-ı zerīn
Bir avuç ʿasker ile düşmeni milyon milyon
Yire serdiñ bu ne himmet ne bülend-i güzīn
Kāfiriñ habsini kāfir ḳanına yıḳatdıñ
İyledi arż-ı muḳaddes seni taḳdīse ḳarīn
Fażlıña ḥüsn-i şehādet ider aʿdā-yı ʿanūd
Ebedī şān u şeref pāyıña hem vażʿ-ı cebīn

In English

1. Bravo to you, O sultan who brought welfare (salâh) to the faith (dîn); may your pure tomb be a garden of the lofty eternal Paradise.

2. If an arch of triumph were to suit the stature of your resolve, it would be these heavens with their jewelled girdle, the golden wheel.

3. With a handful of soldiers you laid low enemies in their millions; what resolve, what lofty distinction!

4. You washed the unbeliever's filth away with the unbeliever's blood; the Holy Land made you near to sanctification. (The reading of the word in the first line is not certain.)

5. Even stubborn enemies bear fine witness to your virtue; eternal glory and honour lay their brows at your feet.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The sultan praised here is never openly named in the five couplets, but the wording of the first couplet betrays who he is: "sultân-ı salâh-âver-i dîn", the sultan who brought salâh, welfare, to the dîn, the faith. The juxtaposition of the words "salâh" and "dîn" mirrors the name Salâh al-Dîn; the sultan who defeated millions of enemies with a handful of soldiers, cleansed the Holy Land of the enemy and attained to the sanctity of the Holy Land is Saladin, who took Jerusalem back from the Crusaders in 1187. The title "Himmet-i Lâ Tuhût" may be read as a resolve that cannot be encompassed.

The second couplet says that the only arch of triumph fit for the sultan's resolve would be the heavens: the sky with its jewelled girdle and the golden wheel, that is, the sphere in which the sun turns. The triumphal arch is an image that would be familiar to a reader who knew the monumental gates of European cities. The harsh language of the fourth couplet reflects the traditional stance of Muslim historiography and poetry towards the Crusades.

The last couplet carries the most interesting claim: even stubborn enemies bear witness to the sultan's virtue. Saladin's generosity and chivalry became legendary in European literature too, and he was known in the West through tales and novels about him. Whether Cûdî knew this cannot be learned from the poem, but the couplet names exactly this fame. Read together with this praise poem, the condemnation, in the preceding poem of the divan, of a cleric who stirred up the Crusaders suggests that the two poems are two faces of the same historical subject.

Bibliography

  • Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, pp. 89-90 (poem no. 64; manuscript fol. 30a). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf

Online sources