Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ (fāʿ)
Ḳurʾān u eḥādīŝ-i nebiy-yi Maḥmūd
Aḥyādan ider kendini dāʾim maʿdūd
ʿĪsā diridir dinse de bundan ne çıḳar
Meydānda ne İncīli ne kendi mevcūd
In English
1. The Qur'an and the sayings of the praised Prophet (Mahmûd) always count themselves among the living.
2. Even if it is said "Jesus is alive", what follows from that? There is in plain view neither his Gospel nor himself.
Literary and Historical Commentary
The divan's polemical poems concerning Christianity are compressed here into four lines. Its thought rests on a comparison: the Qur'an and the sayings of the Prophet are counted "among the living" because they have been preserved in writing and continue to be read. According to Islamic belief Jesus did not die but was raised to heaven; the poet accepts this, but then asks: what follows from that? Today neither is Jesus among us, nor is the original form of the Gospel revealed to him in view.
The sharpness of the quatrain comes from its using the word "alive" in two senses. Jesus may be alive in body; but the real life of a prophet within a community is the preservation and reading of the word he left. Thus the legacy of the Prophet, counted "dead", is shown as living, and that of Jesus, counted "alive", as lost. This is a versified form of a well-known argument in the Muslim tradition of kalâm, based on the idea that the Gospel was altered.
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. 76; manuscript fol. ). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
