Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilün

Nice zülf ü nice mû ‘anber-i gîsûdur bu
Var ise sünbül ü reyḥâna viren budur bû
Bir naẓarda nice ‘âşıḳları Ferhâd eyler
Nice Şîrîn nice dilber nice meh-rûdur bu
Çeşmi ṣalmış dili zülfi ḫamına ṭuymadı cân
Allah Allah nice ‘ayyâr u ne câdûdur bu
Saña âl itmesün aldanma i dil ġamzesine
Dilleri ṣayd idici gözleri âhûdur bu
Diḳḳat ile naẓar itmekden aña inceldüm
Bilmedüm daḫi miyân mı veyaḫud mûdur bu
Yaş degüldür gözüm aḳıtduġı ḳaddin göricek
Serv ayaġına yüzin sürmek içün ṣudur bu
Dir gören ol ṣanem-i lâle-ruḫı birbirine
Mihrî bî-çâreyi âşüfte ḳılan budur bu

In English

1. What a curl, what a hair; these are ambergris-scented tresses. If there is anything that gives scent to the hyacinth and basil, it is this. (With the reading "‘anber-i sârâ" in the F manuscript, the hair is likened to pure ambergris.)

2. With one glance she turns many a lover into a Farhad; what a Shirin, what a beauty, what a moon-faced one this is. (Farhad is the legendary lover who pierced mountains for love of Shirin. The word "şîrîn" carries both the heroine of this story and the meaning "sweet".)

3. She has cast her eye, tied the heart to the bend of her curl, and the soul did not even notice; God, God, what a trickster, what a sorceress this is.

4. O heart, do not be fooled by her languid glance, lest she trick you; this is a gazelle-eyed beauty who hunts hearts.

5. From looking at her attentively I too have grown thin and wasted away; I still could not tell whether this is a waist or a hair. (In divan poetry the beloved's waist is imagined as thin as a hair.)

6. What my eyes are shedding on seeing her stature is not tears; this is water, flowing so that they may rub their face on the cypress's foot. (The beloved's stature is likened to the cypress; the cypress is a tree that loves water. This couplet is absent from the F and Ü manuscripts.)

7. Those who see that tulip-cheeked idol say to one another, "This is the one who has driven poor Mihrî distracted."

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The hundred and thirty-ninth ghazal has seven couplets and is written in the remel metre in the pattern "Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilün". The redif (refrain word) is "-dur bu" and the rhyme the sound "-û" (gîsû, meh-rû, câdû, âhû, mû, ṣu). The second line of the opening couplet reverses the redif: "budur bû", that is, "this is what gives scent". The "budur bu" of the closing couplet repeats the same words once more, so that the beginning and the end of the ghazal are bound together in sound. The ghazal is found in the F, S and Ü manuscripts; the sixth couplet is absent in F and Ü. It stands in the section of the letter Vâv in the Divan. It is not known to whom it was written. In Havlioğlu's text it appears as ghazal 142; there the second line of the opening couplet reads "Var ise sünbül ü reyḥâna viren būdur bu".

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal is a description of beauty from beginning to end, and in each couplet one part of the beloved is taken up: hair, glance, eye, waist and stature. The demonstrative pronoun "bu" (this) in the redif gives the poet a way of speaking as if pointing at the beloved with a finger; each couplet brings a feature of the beloved onto the stage with "here, this". Such a sequence ties to the descriptive tradition of divan poetry in which the beloved is praised from head to foot.

In the opening couplet the hair is ambergris-scented tresses; even the hyacinth and basil take their scent from it. Gülşen Kaya cites this couplet when explaining that in the Divan it is the curl that gives scent to the hyacinth and basil of the world. The second couplet alludes to the story of Farhad and Shirin. In his article examining the effects of the Shahnameh on Mihrî's Divan, Mahmut Başaran takes up this couplet under the heading Shirin and notes that the poet presents Shirin as a beautiful woman who with one glance makes men fall in love with her and brings them to Farhad's state. Kaya, for her part, draws attention to the fact that in the same couplet the word "şîrîn" is used as a double entendre (tevriye): the word recalls both the heroine of the story and the meaning "sweet".

The third and fourth couplets describe the eye. Kaya says that in the Divan the eye is called "câdû", sorceress, because it bewitches the lover; that in this couplet the eye binds the heart together with the hair and the lover does not notice, and that there is also an allusion here to sorcery formerly being worked with a strand of hair. In the fourth couplet the eye is a gazelle's eye that hunts hearts. Kaya explains through this couplet that the gazelle's eye, large and black, is the subject of the simile, and that gazelle-eyed beauties hunt the lover's heart. Among the words "âl" (trick), "ṣayd" (prey) and "âhû" (gazelle) there is a congruence of images (tenasüp) with associations of hunting; the relation between hunter and prey is reversed here.

The fifth couplet rests on a familiar hyperbole of divan poetry. The beloved's waist is so thin that the lover, the more attentively she looks, herself grows thin and weak, but still cannot make out whether what is before her is a waist or a hair. Kaya illustrates through this couplet that the beloved's waist is imagined as thin as a hair, and that however carefully the lover looks she cannot tell the waist from the hair. In the sixth couplet the beloved's stature is a cypress and the lover's tears turn into water that waters the cypress. Kaya notes that the cypress's being a tree that loves water brings forth the image of a beloved nourished by tears. Because the couplet offers a poetic reason for the tears, it is also an example of hüsn-i ta‘lil (fantastic etiology).

In the closing couplet the word is left to others. Those who see that tulip-cheeked beauty say to one another that this is the one who has driven Mihrî distracted. That the poet makes her own love known by leaving it to the tongues of others is a subtle touch that carries the ghazal from a description into a scene of gossip.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, pp. 123-124, Ghazal 139 (F 62b, S 64b, Ü 59a). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

Academic studies

  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010, pp. 151, 157, 159, 189, 198, 271. openaccess.firat.edu.tr
  • Mahmut Başaran, "Şehnâme'nin Mihrî Hatun Dîvânı'na Etkileri", Avrasya Beşeri Bilim Araştırmaları Dergisi 3/1 (2023), pp. 116-132 (p. 129 for this couplet).

Other sources

  • Didem Havlioğlu (ed.), "Ğazeliyyāt-ı Mihri-i Hāqīre", türkoloji-iran, 2007 (a different transliteration of the ghazal, ghazal 142).

Online sources