Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ (fāʿ ) and Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūl
Bilmem ki cehūl olması mı itdi ẓalūm
Ẓālimligi mi cehle sebeb nā-maʿlūm
Ḥālā ki ẓalūmdur vü ḥālā cāhil
Ādem geleli ʿāleme meşġūl-i ʿulūm
In English
1. I do not know whether it was being ignorant that made (man) unjust, or whether his injustice was the cause of his ignorance; it is not known.
2. Though Adam has been busy with the sciences since he came into the world, he is still unjust and still ignorant.
Literary and Historical Commentary
A well-known verse of the Qur'an underlies the quatrain. In the sura al-Ahzâb it is said that man took up the trust which the heavens, the earth and the mountains shrank from bearing, and that he is "zalûm ve cehûl", very unjust and very ignorant (33:72). Cûdî asks about the relation between these two attributes as a question: did man become unjust because he was ignorant, or did he remain ignorant because he was unjust? No answer is given: "nâ-ma'lûm", it is not known.
A bitter observation is added to the question in the second couplet: Adam has been busy with the sciences since he came into the world, yet he is still both unjust and ignorant. The accumulation of knowledge does not mean that morals have advanced as well. This doubt, coming from a poet who spent his life teaching and who in many places in the divan counts knowledge the key to salvation, also shows the limits of his trust in learning.
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 116 (poem no. 141; manuscript fol. 39b). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
