Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Vezin: Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilün

Hâşimî ṣoḥbet-i mey it heme ḫânlar ile
‘Ayş u ‘işretle ṣafâ sür şeh-i ḫûbânlar ile
Mest-i ‘aşḳ ol yüri çâk eyle girîbânuñı
Hem-dem ol ‘ârif iseñ zülf-i perîşânlar ile
Külḫana girseñ eger bulursun ehl-i kemâl
Gülşene girme ḥaẕer it hele nâdânlar ile
Gâh rüsvâ vü ḫarâbât olup it ‘âlemi geşt
Gâh ḥaşr ol gice gündüz şeh-i devrânlar ile
Sen de Mihrî gibi gül yüzlilerüñ şevḳi ile
Oḳı dîvânuñı bülbül gibi efġânlar ile

In English

1. Hâşimî, hold a wine gathering with all the khans and lords; pass your time in pleasure and revelry with the kings of the beautiful.

2. Be drunk with love, walk on, tear your collar (go mad for love); if you are a knower (ârif), keep company with the dishevelled locks (with the beauties who own those locks and with those distraught because of them).

3. If you enter the furnace-house (külhan), you will find there the people of perfection, the mature; do not enter the rose garden, beware of the ignorant. (The külhan is the place where a bathhouse is heated, and a shelter for the homeless, the vagabonds and the qalandar dervishes.)

4. At times, disgraced and notorious, fall into the taverns and roam the world; at other times keep company, night and day, with the kings of the age.

5. You too, like Mihrî, with longing for the rose-faced, recite your divan with laments like the nightingale.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The 173rd ghazal (gazel) of the divan has five couplets (beyit) and is composed in the remel metre of aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilün". Its redif (refrain word) is "ile"; the rhyme (kafiye) is built on the sound "-ânlar": ḫânlar, ḫûbânlar, perîşânlar, nâdânlar, devrânlar, efġânlar. The poem is found, of the four manuscripts, only in the M manuscript. All the couplets of the ghazal address a second person, "you"; this person is named in the first line: Hâşimî. Mihrî mentions her own name too in the makta couplet, holding herself up to Hâşimî as an example.

Historical Context

Gülşen Kaya, listing the persons named in Mihrî's divan, presents Hâşimî as a sixteenth-century divan poet; she says that he came from Iran to Anatolia with his father in the time of Bayezid II, that his poems are included in the tezkires (biographical anthologies of poets), and that his name occurs in the divan only in this ghazal. Kaya adds that, on the basis of the phrase "dîvânuñı oḳı" in the makta couplet, it is also stated that Hâşimî had a divan.

The tezkires give more information about this poet. Latîfî writes that Hâşimî came from the land of the Persians, from a family of sayyids, and that while Selim the Grim (Yavuz Sultan Selim) was governor of the sanjak of Trabzon he was beside him as poet, companion (musahib) and scribe of his poems. Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi likewise records that his father emigrated from Iran and came to Ottoman lands, that Hâşimî took this pen name because he descended from the Prophet's line, and that he was one of Sultan Selim's companions. According to the two tezkires his father was wounded and died in the war Selim fought with his own father Sultan Bayezid; Kınalızâde adds that Hâşimî himself died while serving as a judge in Rumelia, and describes the manner of his poetry as "Türkâne ve tarz-ı garîb üzre" (in a Turkish and strange style).

Latîfî's entry holds an important detail for this ghazal. According to the tezkire, Hâşimî was the first poet to find the rhyme "cânânlar ile", and the other poets who composed naziras followed him. As an example Latîfî gives Hâşimî's ghazal beginning with the matla "Bezm-i mey eylemişüm dûn gice sulṭânlar ile / Nice sulṭânlar ile bî-ser ü sâmânlar ile"; Kınalızâde too reports the same matla as Hâşimî's poem. Mihrî's ghazal also is written with the rhyme and redif "-ânlar ile", and its first line too speaks of a wine gathering and addresses Hâşimî. In Hâşimî's ghazal "sulṭânlar" and "bî-ser ü sâmânlar" (the aimless, the distraught) are named side by side; in Mihrî's ghazal too, on one side there are khans and the kings of the age, on the other those in the furnace-house and those who are "rüsvâ vü ḫarâbât". These shared features suggest that the ghazal may be a reply or nazire to Hâşimî's poem; however, the sources contain no explicit record that Mihrî's ghazal was written in answer to Hâşimî. Where and when the two poets met is also not known.

In Sıtkı Nazik's table showing the redifs shared by Mihrî Hatun and Tâcîzâde Cafer Çelebi, this ghazal is placed in the same row as Cafer Çelebi's 178th ghazal with the redif "-lar ile". The table shows only the sharing of the redif; it says nothing about the rhyme of Cafer Çelebi's ghazal or its relation to Hâşimî.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal takes the form of a series of counsels, and the counsels gather around gathering life and the rind way of living. The first couplet invites Hâşimî to a wine gathering with lords and beauties. In the second couplet, drunkenness with love and tearing the collar are the familiar signs in divan poetry of losing one's mind for love; "zülf-i perîşân" suggests both the dishevelled lock and the lovers distraught because of that lock. The word "‘ârif" gives the couplet a Sufi meaning: one who knows the truth does not flee the distraction of love.

The third couplet is the most striking of the ghazal. The külhan is the place where a bathhouse is heated, and in old cities a shelter for the homeless, the vagabonds and the qalandar dervishes. Gülşen Kaya notes that in another couplet of Mihrî's divan it is said that the place of the strangers is the külhans, and that an allusion is made to the homeless staying in bathhouses because they are warm. In this couplet Mihrî, against expectation, looks for the people of perfection in the külhan; and she counsels staying away from the rose garden, because the ignorant are there. The similarity in sound and the opposed meanings of the words "külḫan" and "gülşen" give the couplet both a sound play close to paronomasia (cinas) and an antithesis (tezat).

The fourth couplet places two extreme lives side by side with the "gâh ... gâh" (at times ... at times) structure: on one side disgrace and the tavern, on the other being together, night and day, with the kings of the age. This duality also coincides with Hâşimî's life in the court circle told in the tezkires, but the couplet does not say so openly. In the makta couplet Mihrî offers herself as the example: Hâşimî too, like Mihrî, should recite his divan with laments like the nightingale, in longing for the rose-faced. The words nightingale and rose, lament and longing, form a congruence of images (tenasüp) in the couplet. Tezkires tell of Mihrî's exchange of poems with contemporaries such as Necâtî, Maḳâmî and Ḫâtemî; this ghazal is one of the few poems in the divan in which another poet is addressed by name.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, p. 141, Ghazal 173 (M 94a). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
  • Latîfî, Tezkiretü'ş-Şu‘arâ ve Tabsıratü'n-Nuzamâ, ed. Rıdvan Canım, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı e-kitap, 2018, p. 557 (entry on Hâşimî). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
  • Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi, Tezkiretü'ş-Şu‘arâ, ed. Aysun Sungurhan, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı e-kitap, p. 912 (entry on Hâşimî). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

Academic studies

  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010, pp. 67, 104. openaccess.firat.edu.tr
  • Sıtkı Nazik, "Benzer Redifli Şiirleri Bağlamında Mihrî Hatun ve Tâcî-zâde Cafer Çelebi'nin Karşılaştırılması", Uluslararası Amasya Âlimleri Sempozyumu Bildiriler Kitabı II, Amasya 2017, p. 140.

Online sources