Original Arabic Text

کَم مِن مَلِکٍ ربَّ نَبِیٍّ مَبعُوث
کَم عابِدِ حقٍّ وَیعَوُقٍ و یَغُوث
کُلًّا نَفَشَ الدَهرُ قَباعِهنِهِمو
مُلقَونَ علی الارض کَفَرشٍ مَبثوثُ

Reading in Latin letters made for this page:

Kem min melikin rubbe nebiyyin mebʿûs
Kem ʿâbidi ḥaḳḳin ve Yeʿûḳin ve Yeġûs
Küllen nefeşe'd-dehru ke'l-ʿihni humû
Mulḳavne ʿale'l-arḍi ke-ferşin mebsûs

In English

1. How many a king, how many a prophet sent; how many a worshipper of God, and (how many a worshipper of) Ya'ûq and Yaghûth (idols)!

2. Time has teased them all apart like carded wool; they lie cast on the earth like a scattered spread. (The reading of the third line is not certain.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

This Arabic quatrain, which expresses the thought that death makes all equal, is built with images taken from two suras of the Qur'an. In the first couplet kings and prophets, worshippers of God and worshippers of idols are counted in the same list. Ya'ûq and Yaghûth are names mentioned in the sura Nûh (71:23) among the idols worshipped by Noah's people; the poet uses them as two names standing for the whole history of idolatry.

The second couplet recalls the description of the Last Day in the sura al-Qâri'a. On that day men will be "like scattered moths" and the mountains "like carded coloured wool" (101:4-5). Cûdî carries this description from the Last Day to time: time, "dehr", has teased them all apart like carded wool and scattered them over the earth. A word in the third line printed in Arabic script in the thesis looks corrupt, and here it has been read after the sura's phrase "ke'l-ʿihn", like wool; the "ferşin mebsûs" at the end of the last line is likewise close to the sura's "ferâşi'l-mebsûs". The reading and translation, absent from the thesis, are our own attempt, corrections included.

Bibliography

  • Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 101 (poem no. 88; manuscript fol. ). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf

Online sources