Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ (fāʿ)
Ey sūre-i “Ve’n-necm” eyā nażm-ı celīl
Ey vaḥy-i ilāhī feleginde ḳandīl
Secde ider iʿcāzıña küffār-ı ʿArab
Müʾmin yire sürmez mi cibāh-ı tebcīl
In English
1. O sura "Ve'n-Necm", O majestic composition; O lamp in the heaven of divine revelation!
2. Even the unbelievers of Arabia prostrate before your inimitability; will the believer not lay his reverent brow on the ground?
Literary and Historical Commentary
The second quatrain devoted to the sura al-Najm brings the story of the first to a conclusion. The first couplet names the sura "nazm-ı celîl", a majestic composition of words, and a lamp in the heaven of revelation; the association of the word "necm", star, continues here too, and the sura becomes a light burning in the sky.
The second couplet rests openly on the account pointed to in the previous quatrain: even the unbelievers of Arabia fell prostrate before the inimitability of this sura. The conclusion drawn from this comes in the form of a question: if the polytheists prostrated, will the believer not lay his reverent brow on the ground? The phrase "cibâh-ı tebcîl", brows of reverence, stresses that prostration is an act of exaltation and respect. The copyist's note "likâ-yı" on the last line shows another wording of the line.
That two quatrains are written to the same sura suggests the poet's particular interest in this sura and in the scene of prostration; read together, one tells a personal experience and the other the moral conclusion drawn from it.
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 98 (poem no. 78; manuscript fol. ). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
