Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Maṭla‘-ı ḥüsnüñ gibi bir burc-ı a‘lâ görmedük
Mâh ruḫsâruñ gibi bir şems-i ġarrâ görmedük
Çoḳ cihân gülşenlerin seyr itdük ammâ râstî
Müntehâ ḳaddüñ gibi bir serv-i ra‘nâ görmedük
Görseler bu noḳṭa-i ḥüsnüñ kirâmen-kâtibîn
Diyeler kim Allah Allah böyle inşâ görmedük
Sünbül ü gül-pûşlar çoḳdur cihân bâġında lîk
Bu külâlüñ gibi bir zülf-i semen-sâ görmedük
Ḥayy ider bir demde biñ ‘aẓm-i remîm olmışları
Ḥaḳ bilür kim böyle enfâs-ı Mesîḥâ görmedük
Dil ġarîbin gerçi bend itdi hevâ-yı zülf-i dost
Āh kim cân ḳurtarur biz bundan aṣlâ görmedük
Gerçi ey Mihrî cihânda ġonca-leb maḥbûblar
Çoḳdur ammâ biz bunuñ mânendi ḳaṭ‘â görmedük

In English

1. We have never seen a lofty tower of the zodiac like the rising-place of your beauty; we have never seen a radiant sun like your moon-bright face. (Matla is the place where the sun and stars rise; burc, "tower", also means a sign of the zodiac. Matla is also the name of the opening couplet of a ghazal.)

2. We have strolled through many of the world's rose gardens, but truly, we have never seen so graceful a cypress as your supremely tall stature. (Müntehâ means "the furthest point, the highest degree". In manuscript F this word is replaced by "Şehâ", that is, the address "O king".)

3. If the angels who record people's good and bad deeds were to see this dot in your beauty, they would say: "Allah, Allah, we have never seen such writing." (Kirâmen kâtibîn are, in the belief, the two angels who record a person's deeds. The dot is both the dot of a written letter and the beauty mark on the face; inşâ means fine composition in writing and in speech. Manuscripts F, M and S read "a dot" in place of "this dot".)

4. There are many beauties in the world's garden adorned with hyacinths and roses, but we have never seen a jasmine-scented tress like this curl of yours. (Külâl is a curled lock of hair. Manuscripts F and S read "sünbül-i gül-pûşlar"; F, S and Ü read "mülkinde", "in the realm", in place of "bâġında", "in the garden".)

5. In a single moment it revives thousands of the dead, bones long rotted away; God knows we have never seen a breath of Jesus like this. (Jesus is believed to have raised the dead with his breath. The beloved's word or breath likewise gives life to the lover.)

6. Although the longing for the friend's tress has bound the poor heart, alas, we have never seen anyone save his life from this bond.

7. O Mihrî, although rosebud-lipped beloveds are many in the world, we have never seen the like of this one.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The ninety-second ghazal of the divan has seven couplets and is composed in the remel meter of the aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilün". The ghazal is the verse form devoted to love and beauty, in which the two lines of the opening couplet rhyme and the closing couplet carries the poet's pen name (mahlas). The rhyme rests on the long "â" (a‘lâ, ġarrâ, ra‘nâ, inşâ, semen-sâ, Mesîḥâ, aṣlâ, ḳaṭ‘â); the redif (refrain word) is "görmedük", "we have not seen". In Sıtkı Nazik's comparison of refrains, this redif appears in Mihrî's divan only in this ghazal. The poem is found in all four manuscripts (F 54a, M 75b, S 56b, Ü 49b). There is no record of whom it was written for or on what occasion.

All the couplets of the ghazal rest on the same structure. The first line of each couplet names a part of the beloved's beauty or something compared with it, and the second line, in the pattern "... gibi bir ... görmedük" ("we have not seen a ... like ..."), says that there is no equal to that beauty. This repetition gives the poem the order of a list of praises; face, stature, beauty mark, hair and breath are named in turn, and each is declared unique.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The opening couplet is built with words taken from astronomy. Matla is the rising-place, burc the zodiacal tower, mâh the moon, and şems the sun. Gülşen Kaya cites this couplet when she explains that the divan compares beauty to the sunrise alongside the sun and the moon; she returns to the same couplet among the examples in which the beloved's face is exalted by being named together with the sun and the moon. One subtlety of the couplet lies in the word "matla": the opening couplet of a ghazal is also called a matla, so the poem speaks of the rising-place of beauty in its own matla.

The second couplet takes the stature as its subject. Kaya notes that in the divan stature is most often likened to the cypress, and that in this couplet the words "râstî", "müntehâ", "ḳad" and "serv-i ra‘nâ" are used with tenasüp (congruence of images, the use together of words close in meaning) to describe stature. "Râstî" conveys truth and uprightness, "müntehâ" the highest point; and the cypress is a perfectly straight, tall tree.

The third couplet is built on the words for writing and the pen. The angels who record people's deeds, the kirâmen kâtibîn, would say, if they saw the "dot" on the beloved's face, that is, the beauty mark, that they had never seen such an "inşâ" (composition). The words scribe, dot and inşâ complement one another. Kaya lists this couplet, in which the recording angels are astonished at the perfection of the beloved's beauty mark, among the examples where beauty is conceived as writing and a book.

In the fourth couplet it is the turn of the hair. There are many beauties in the world's garden dressed in hyacinths and roses, but there is no jasmine-scented hair like the beloved's curl. Kaya gives this couplet as an example when she says that the hyacinth, violet and jasmine are used for hair in the divan. The fifth couplet carries the heaviest image of the ghazal. The beloved's breath revives in a single moment thousands of the dead, bones turned to decay ("‘aẓm-i remîm"). In the section of her thesis on religious elements, Kaya counts this couplet among the allusions to Qur'anic verses and explains the phrase "rotted bones" with the related words of the Qur'an. The question in the Qur'an about the resurrection of rotted bones (Yâsîn 36/78) is a well-known passage; the couplet joins that expression to the breath of Jesus that raises the dead, and likens the beloved's breath to the breath of the Messiah.

In the sixth couplet the praise turns into a complaint: the heart is bound by the longing for the friend's hair, and no one has been seen to escape this bond. In the closing couplet Mihrî grants that rosebud-lipped beloveds are many in the world, but says she has not seen the like of this one. The ghazal thus descends from the celestial praise of the first couplet to a comparison with earthly beauties, and closes on the same refrain.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, pp. 99-100, Ghazal 92 (F 54a, M 75b, S 56b, Ü 49b). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

Academic studies

  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010, pp. 14, 123-124, 165, 181, 257, 285. 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, pp. 133-148 (refrain tables, pp. 136-137).

Books

  • Didem Havlioğlu (ed.), Ğazeliyyāt-ı Mihrī, OTAP electronic edition, 2007 (transliteration published on the türkoloji-iran site, ghazal 95).

Online sources