Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ûlü Fâ‘ilâtü Mefâ‘îlü Fâ‘ilün

Düşmenler üstine ṣanemüñ el üşürdiler
Yatlu ḫaberle uş beni gözden düşürdiler
Hecr âteşiyle dil ḫod ezelden kebâb idi
Sînemde yaḳdılar cigerümde bişürdiler
Öldürdüm idi müdde‘iyi bir çalmada tîz
Neylersin itler ‘av‘avı ‘aḳlum şaşurdılar
Öldürmesi ġazâ deyü ‘uşşâḳ cem‘ olup
Kâfir raḳîbe her birisi bir ṭaş urdılar
Dertlü yürek i Mihrî cefâya ideydi ṣabr
Cevri zamâne ḫûbları ḥadden aşurdılar

In English

1. The enemies (rivals) joined hands against that idol-like beauty; with reports from strangers' mouths they have, look, made me fall from her eye. (The couplet can be read in two ways: the first line can also be understood as "because of the rivals they made her withdraw her hand from me". "Yatlu" comes from "yad", meaning stranger, in old Turkish; manuscript F writes this word "yanlu".)

2. The heart, by the fire of separation, had been a kebab from pre-eternity; and now they set it alight in my breast and cooked it in my liver.

3. I would have killed the rival at once with a single blow; what can you do, the barking of the dogs bewildered my mind. (The dogs are those who circle around the beloved and carry gossip. In manuscripts F and S the first line reads "Öldürmedi müddeî", that is, "the rival did not kill".)

4. Saying "To kill him is a holy war", the lovers gathered and each of them threw a stone at the unbelieving rival.

5. O Mihrî, the sorrowful heart would have borne the cruelty patiently; but the beauties of the age have exceeded all bounds in their tyranny.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The thirty-seventh ghazal of the divan has five couplets (beyit) and is written in the aruz (quantitative metre) pattern "Mef‘ûlü Fâ‘ilâtü Mefâ‘îlü Fâ‘ilün", of the muzâri metre. The ghazal (gazel) is the verse form that treats love and beauty, generally between five and ten couplets long, whose first couplet has its two lines rhyming with each other and whose last couplet carries the poet's pen name (mahlas). Here the rhyme is built on the sounds "-şür/-şur" (üşür, düşür, bişür, şaşur, aşur); the redif (refrain word) is "-diler/-dılar", formed from the past-tense plural ending. In the fourth couplet the rhyme is split between two words: "ṭaş urdılar" (they struck a stone) overlaps in sound with "şaşurdılar" and "aşurdılar". The poem is found in all four manuscripts (F 40a, M 56b, S 42b, Ü 36a). There is no record of whom or on what occasion it was written for.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The subject of the ghazal is the anger of a lover who has fallen from the beloved's eye because of the rivals' gossip. In divan poetry the rival is the person who circles around the beloved, envies the lover and slanders him; in this ghazal, too, the subject of all the verbs is that crowd. In the opening couplet the beloved is called "ṣanem", that is, an idol. Gülşen Kaya notes that in Mihrî's divan the word sanem expresses both the beloved's beauty and her stone-like coldness and deafness toward the lover, and gives this couplet as the example. The sound similarity between "el üşürmek" and "gözden düşürmek" gives the first couplet an internal harmony.

The second couplet describes the burning of the lover's inside by the fire of separation in the images of the kitchen. The heart has long been a kebab; the rivals set it alight once more in the breast and cook it in the liver. Kaya includes this couplet among the examples in the divan where separation is conceived as a fire. The word "ezelden" (from pre-eternity) also recalls the belief that the pain of love is written into the lover's creation.

The tone hardens in the third and fourth couplets. The lover says he could have killed the rival with a single blow, but "the barking of the dogs" confused his mind. In the following couplet the rival is openly called an "unbeliever" and killing him is deemed a holy war (gaza); the lovers gather and stone him. Kaya mentions this couplet in the section where she collects the couplets in the divan in which the rival is an unbeliever and killing him is a holy war, and shows that the same idea appears in the eighth ghazal as advice to the beloved: instead of killing innocent lovers, she should kill the unbelieving rival and earn the reward of holy war. Here, by contrast, the lovers themselves do the job. The stoning scene is an example of the exaggeration of the tradition; anger at the rival is magnified in religious language.

In the closing couplet (makta) Mihrî addresses herself and anger gives way to a complaint. The heart is ready to bear the cruelty, but "the beauties of the age" have carried the tyranny to an immoderate place. Kaya cites similar couplets when saying that cevir and cefa (tyranny and cruelty) first produce patience and then reproach in the lover. The phrase "zamâne ḫûbları" generalizes the complaint from a single beloved to the beauties of the era; this is a style of closing seen in other ghazals of Mihrî as well.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, p. 70, Gazel 37 (F 40a, M 56b, S 42b, Ü 36a). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

Academic studies

  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010, p. 38, 138, 233, 235. openaccess.firat.edu.tr
  • Sabiha Gemici, Mihrî Hatun Divanı: Karşılaştırmalı Metin, Cümle Yapısı ve Cümle Türleri, doctoral thesis, Uludağ Üniversitesi, Balıkesir 1990 (comparative text of the ghazal).

Online sources