Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilün

Bu gice bir ḳaṣr-ı ‘âlî içre bir şeh-bâz ile
‘İşret itdük ṣubḥa dek meh-tâba ḳarşu sâz ile
Zühre çengin yere çaldı çarḫ hem çâr-pâresin
Her ḳaçan ol mâh-rûlar ırladı âvâz ile
Ḳâmetüm çeng eyleyüp düzdi nevâda râstı
Çekdi tenüm ḳıl ḳılup ‘uşşâḳı ḫoş şehnâz ile
Ol Süleymân-ı zamânuñ meclis-i ḫâṣında ḫoş
Zülfi ‘anber ḫûb-rûlar ḫıdmet ider nâz ile
Gördüm ol ḳaṣr-ı mu‘allaḳ kim yapılmış lâ-naẓîr
Gök yüzinde ṣandum uçardı hümâ pervâz ile
Ḥamdü-lillah Egribük'de ṣoḥbet itdük Mihriyâ
Bu gice bir ḳaṣr-ı ‘âlî içre bir şeh-bâz ile

In English

1. Tonight, in a lofty palace, with a royal falcon, we feasted until morning, facing the moonlight, to the sound of instruments. (The shahbaz is a large, noble hawk used in falconry; in divan poetry it stands for the beautiful and noble beloved, and here for the master of the gathering. İşret is a drinking gathering with conversation.)

2. Whenever those moon-faced ones sang with their voices, Venus dashed her harp to the ground, and the heavens their çârpâre. (In divan poetry Zühre, that is Venus, is the musician of the sky. Her throwing her own instrument to the ground on hearing the voices of the beauties means giving up her art before them. The çârpâre is a kind of clapper or castanet worn on the fingers.)

3. My stature, turned into a harp and bent, set the râst in the nevâ mode; my body, thinned hair by hair, drew the uşşâk with a fine şehnâz. (The mode names in the couplet each carry two meanings: "nevâ" is both a mode and voice and state; "râst" both a mode and straight, true; "uşşâk" both a mode and lovers; "şehnâz" both a mode and the shah's coquetry. The lover's stature, bent by the pain of love, is likened to a harp, and her thinned body to the instrument's string.)

4. In the private gathering of that Solomon of the age, beauties with amber-scented hair serve with coquetry. (Solomon is in divan poetry the symbol of great sovereignty; the phrase "Süleymân-ı zamân" also points to the person praised, whose name is Süleyman.)

5. I saw that palace, built without equal and seeming to hang in the air; I thought a huma bird was flying in the sky with beating wings.

6. Thanks be to God, O Mihrî, tonight in Eğribük we kept company in a lofty palace with a royal falcon.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The ghazal (gazel) has six couplets (beyit) and is written in the remel metre of the aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "Fâ'ilâtün Fâ'ilâtün Fâ'ilâtün Fâ'ilün". The redif (refrain word) is the particle "ile", and the rhyme rests on the sound "-âz" in the words "şeh-bâz, sâz, âvâz, şehnâz, nâz, pervâz". The second line of the last couplet is an exact repetition of the first line of the opening couplet. This closing, called redd-i matla in divan poetry, returns the ghazal to where it began and places "bu gice" (tonight) at both the beginning and the end of the poem. The ghazal is found in only two manuscripts, M and Ü. One of the manuscript variants is important: in the Ü manuscript the first line of the last couplet reads "añdı bu gün" in place of "Egribük'de"; the place name occurs only in the M manuscript. In the M manuscript the fourth couplet has "mâh-rûlar" in place of "ḫûb-rûlar", and "iderler" in place of "ider". It carries the same refrain "ile" as the previous ghazal; Sıtkı Nazik shows that this refrain is used in three ghazals in Mihrî's divan and in two ghazals in the divan of Tâcîzâde Cafer Çelebi.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The poem is a description of an entertainment gathering. Gülşen Kaya points to this ghazal as the most notable example among the gathering scenes in the divan: the gathering met at night, the company feasted with instruments facing the moonlight, moon-faced beauties sang to the accompaniment of the harp, and cupbearers known for their beauty served. Kaya also notes that in divan poetry gatherings are mostly held at night and in moonlight; in this ghazal the moonlight gives both the time and the brightness of the place.

The second and third couplets are built on music. Kaya writes that in Mihrî Zühre is mentioned, in keeping with the classical conception, as the çengî, that is the musician, of an entertainment gathering, and that the second couplet is an example of this use. That the star that plays an instrument in the sky should put down her instrument before the voices of the beauties on earth is a hyperbole (mübalağa); the music of the gathering outdoes that of the heavens. The third couplet is woven from the names of modes. Kaya gives this couplet as an example of the couplets in which the modes uşşak, râst, nevâ and şehnâz are used as double entendres within a congruence of images (tenasüp). The likening of the lover's bent stature to a harp and of her thinned body to a string joins the music of the gathering and the lover's own state in a single image.

The fourth and fifth couplets praise the place and its master. The phrase "Süleymân-ı zamân" is an allusion (telmih) to the legendary sovereignty of Solomon. Kaya, treating the birds in the divan, notes that the shahbaz is used in this ghazal to describe the person praised, and that the huma is a comparison used for princes and sultans. In the fifth couplet the likening of the palace on the hill to a huma flying in the sky expresses both the height of the building and the fortune of its master; the word "pervâz" forms a congruence with the huma. The word "Ḥamdü-lillah" in the last couplet shows that the ghazal closes its praise with a feeling of thanks.

Historical Context

The edition does not explain the addressee of the ghazal. Gülşen Kaya counts this ghazal among the poems Mihrî wrote in the name of Prince Süleyman and says that it describes a music gathering held in the prince's palace at the place called Eğribük. According to Kaya, Eğribük is a village belonging to Amasya, and the "ḳaṣr-ı 'âlî" in the poem is the prince's palace built on a hill. The same researcher writes that Mihrî lived in Amasya under the patronage of Prince Ahmed and his son Prince Süleyman, and points to other poems in the divan written in Süleyman's name: a muvaşşah ghazal (G.79) that gives the name "Süleymân" when the first letters of each couplet are read from top to bottom, and another ghazal in which this name is given by way of a riddle.

The name Eğribük appears once more in the divan. In the third stanza of the murabba (four-line stanza form) praising a rope acrobat called Cânbâz Haydar, the acrobat is said to perform at Eğribük on a rope stretched in the air "Şeh Süleymân'uñ öñinde" (before Shah Süleyman), and in the last stanza of the same poem Mihrî says she watched this show in the shah's gathering. Read together, the two poems show that Eğribük entered Mihrî's poetry as a place of entertainment and spectacle for a ruler or prince named Süleyman. Even so, the manuscript variant mentioned above should be kept in mind: the place name occurs in only one manuscript, and in the other the same line carries no place name. On the identity of the person praised the edition gives no explanation; the identification as Prince Süleyman is Kaya's interpretation.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Online sources