Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefā’īlün mefā’īlün mefā’īlün mefā’īlün

Ḫadeng [ü] nāvek-i müjgāna ebrūsun kemān eyler
Dili evvel hevādār eyledi şimdi nişān eyler
Nigāh-ı ġamzesi cellād elinden tīġ-ı Ꜥuryāndır
Teraḥḥüm bendeler bilmez ol āfet-gūnda cān eyler
Zebūn-ı ḫalḳa (….) alır (….) cān olsa
Lisān-ı ḥāl ile cānā sözün her dem emān eyler
Gehī būs-ı mey-i laꜤliñ gehī būs-ı kenār ister
Göñül dīvānedir şimdi ḫayāl-i ebruvān eyler
Çekildikçe berāt-ı ḥüsne Mihrī ḫaṭṭ-ı Ꜥanber-fām
Bize belīd-i cāh-ı Ꜥaşḳ-ı yār-ı dil-sitān eyler

In English

1. The beloved makes a bow of the eyebrow for the arrows of the eyelashes; first she made the heart her devoted admirer, and now she makes it her target.

2. Her languid glance is a bare sword drawn from the sheath in the executioner's hand. The second line is not clear; on the most plausible reading: that marvel of beauty knows no mercy for her servants and takes their lives. (The phrase "cān eyler" can also be understood as "sets her mind on killing".)

3. Two words in the first line could not be read in the anthology; the legible part seems to speak of taking the life of the wretched among the people. The second line: O beloved, in the language of my state your word begs for mercy at every moment. (The full sense of the couplet cannot be reconstructed because of the missing words.)

4. The heart wants now a kiss from your wine-red lip, now an embrace; the heart has gone mad by now and keeps dreaming of your eyebrows.

5. O Mihrî, as the amber-coloured down is drawn like writing across the diploma of beauty, the well of love for the heart-stealing beloved leaves us dazed. ("Belīd" means fool, dullard, and its reading is doubtful. "Cāh" means both well and high rank; the couplet can also be understood as "the station of love makes us dull-witted".)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This ghazal (gazel) is not found in Mihrî Hatun's divan. It appears on folio 58b of the poetry anthology numbered 43 Va 2871 in the Kütahya Vahid Paşa Provincial Public Library, and it is the twelfth of the twenty ghazals with the pen name (mahlas) Mihrî published by Mutlu Muhammet Aktaş in 2023. Aktaş regards it as a strong possibility that these ghazals belong to Mihrî Hatun, but he also states that the clues at hand do not suffice for a firm judgment. The attribution of this ghazal to Mihrî Hatun is therefore uncertain. It is not known to whom it was addressed.

The ghazal has five couplets (beyit) and is composed in the hezec metre, in the aruz (quantitative metre) pattern "mefā’īlün mefā’īlün mefā’īlün mefā’īlün". The redif (refrain word) is "eyler", and the rhyme (kafiye) is the sound "-ân": kemān, nişān, cān, emān, ebruvān, dil-sitān. Because this folio of the anthology is worn, two places in the first line of the third couplet could not be read, and a conjunction in the first couplet has been supplied in the edition. The second and fifth couplets also contain words that are hard to read, so the meaning of the ghazal can be given only approximately in places.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first two couplets of the ghazal are built on the imagery of archery and weapons, one of the most established sets of images in divan poetry. The eyebrow is the bow (kemān), the eyelashes are the arrows (ḫadeng, nāvek), and the lover's heart is the target (nişān). Gülşen Kaya observes that in Mihrî's divan the eyebrow is mentioned as a bow in almost every couplet and is treated, together with the eyes and lashes, as one of the elements that pierce the lover's breast; that the lash is most often likened to an arrow and that it is shot from the bow of the eyebrow at the target of the heart. The couplet in the anthology presents this picture in a temporal sequence: the beloved first made the heart her devoted admirer (hevādār), and now makes it her target. The scene resembles a hunter who first draws the quarry close and then strikes.

In the second couplet the ġamze, that is, the beloved's languid glance, is likened to the bare sword (tīġ-ı ʻuryān) in the executioner's hand. According to Kaya, in Mihrî's divan too the ġamze is likened to cutting and piercing instruments as the chief element that wounds the lover. The executioner and sword is an image of harsher violence than the bow and arrow of the first couplet; the beloved is no longer a hunter shooting from afar but an executioner who takes lives at close range.

In the fourth couplet the heart is compared to a madman: now it wants a kiss from the lip, now an embrace, and it dreams of the eyebrows. "Mey-i laʻl" (wine the colour of the ruby) describes both the colour of the lip and its intoxicating power. The last couplet rests on an image taken from the world of writing and documents. Beauty is a berat, that is, an edict or a charter of privilege granted by the sultan; the down (ḫaṭ) that appears on the beloved's face is the writing drawn upon this charter. Kaya notes that in Mihrî's divan the word "hat" in the sense of down is used with a double entendre (tevriye) with "hat" in the sense of script, the face being likened to a page and the down to the writing on that page. The divan also contains a couplet in which the morning breeze carries the beloved's charter of beauty to the rose garden. The adjective "ʻanber-fām" (amber-coloured) conveys both the dark colour and the pleasant scent of the down.

Bibliography

  • Mutlu Muhammet Aktaş, "Mihrî Hatun'un Yayımlanmamış Gazelleri", Hikmet-Akademik Edebiyat Dergisi 9/18 (Spring 2023), pp. 105-126, doi:10.28981/hikmet.1200789; ghazal 12 (Kütahya Vahid Paşa İl Halk Ktp. 43 Va 2871, f. 58b), pp. 118-119; discussion pp. 110-112.
  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010, pp. 122-123, 153, 159-160, 162-163, 170-171. openaccess.firat.edu.tr

Online sources