Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Outside the rubai metre (no metre is given in the thesis)
Var mı mevlid gibi bir zāʾirī keŝretli mezār
İdemez ṣāḥibine fātiḥasız kimse güẕār
Ser-i ḳabrinde öten ḳuşlar olur mevlid-ḫᵛān
Arada ġulġul-ı tekbīr der-āvāz-ı hezār
In English
1. Is there any grave with as many visitors as the Mevlid? No one can pass its author without reciting a Fâtiha.
2. The birds singing at the head of his grave become reciters of the Mevlid; now and then the roar of the takbir rises in the nightingale's voice.
Literary and Historical Commentary
The Mevlid, the most widely read work in the Turkish world telling of the Prophet's birth, and its author are the subject here. The poem does not give the author's name, but the author of the well-known Mevlid, "Vesîletü'n-Necât", is Süleyman Çelebi. The quatrain's thought is this: whenever the Mevlid is recited its author too is remembered and a Fâtiha is read for him; so no grave has as many visitors as the Mevlid.
Then the thought is carried into a scene of nature. The birds singing at the head of the grave become so many reciters of the Mevlid, and the roar of takbirs mingles with the nightingale's voice. The takbirs said between the sections recited at Mevlid gatherings turn here into the voices of birds. Considered together with the divan's quatrain saying that a scholar's true monument is his work, the idea emerges that the grave of Süleyman Çelebi that is really visited is the Mevlid itself.
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 123 (poem no. 165; manuscript fol. 41b). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
