Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ (fāʿ) and Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūl
Ey sūre-i iʿcāz-nümā-yı “Baḳara”
Tevrāt nüzūlüñle suḳūṭ itdi yire
Bir ʿaşr-ı şerīfiñdeki esrār-ı ḥikem
Ṣıġmaz yed-i Mūṣādaki levḥ-i ʿaşra
In English
1. O sura "al-Baqara", which displays inimitability! With your coming down the Torah fell to the ground.
2. The secrets of wisdom in one noble "ashr" (ten-verse section) of yours would not fit into the ten tablets in Moses' hand.
Literary and Historical Commentary
This quatrain devoted to al-Baqara, the longest sura of the Qur'an, is built on a play with numbers. In the tradition of Qur'anic recitation the suras are divided into sections of ten verses, each called an "ashr"; and the tablets given to Moses are known as the tablets bearing the Ten Commandments. The poet sets these two "tens" against each other: the wisdom in a single ashr of the sura al-Baqara would not fit into the ten tablets in Moses' hand.
The words "the Torah fell to the ground" in the first couplet also have two senses. According to the Qur'an, when Moses saw his people worshipping the calf he threw the tablets down in anger (al-A'râf 7:150); the poet connects this scene to the lapsing of the Torah's authority with the coming down of the Qur'an. This interpretation reflects in poetry the kalâm view that Islam abrogated the rulings of earlier scriptures. As in almost all the sura quatrains, here too the sura praised is exalted by comparison with earlier books.
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. 79; manuscript fol. 34b). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
