Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ (fāʿ) and Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūl
Ey zāde-i ādem sen idiñ ādem-zā
Nūruñdı iş ādemi tekrīme sezā
Sen fātiḥa-i ḫilḳate bir besmelesiñ
Āmīn daḫi ḫātime-i rūz-ı cezā
In English
1. O son of Adam, it was you who gave birth to Adam; what made Adam worthy of honour was your light.
2. You are a basmala to the Fâtiha of creation; and you are the "amen" at the close of the Day of Judgement.
Literary and Historical Commentary
The Prophet is the son of Adam, yet he is also the one who "gave birth" to Adam: the quatrain opens with this paradox. In the Sufi tradition the "Nûr-ı Muhammedî", the Light of Muhammad, is expressed through the belief that the Prophet's light existed before all creation; according to this, the angels prostrated before Adam because of this light he bore on his brow. Cûdî fits this belief into two lines in the first couplet: what made Adam worthy of honour, of reverence, was the Prophet's light.
The second couplet reads creation like a book. Creation is a Fâtiha, an opening sura; the Prophet is the basmala at the head of that sura. The Day of Judgement is the end of this book, and, like the "amen" said after the Fâtiha has been recited, at the very end there is again the Prophet; the belief in intercession is expressed here through the image of a prayer. Thus the Prophet stands at both the beginning and the end of being.
In the quatrain section the divan passes, after praise of and supplication to God, to the Prophet, and then turns to the Qur'an and its suras. This order is like a small-scale repetition in the quatrains of the arrangement of tevhid, münacat and na't at the beginning of divans.
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 97 (poem no. 72; manuscript fol. ). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
