Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

N'ola begüm keremüñden bizümle yâr olsañ
Güzeller içre ne var sen bir iḫtiyâr olsañ
Vefâ ḳılam dimiş idüñ cefâlaruñ çekene
Naẓîrüñ olmaz idi ‘ahde ber-ḳarâr olsañ
Ġamuñla sen daḫi bilseñ neler çeker ‘âşıḳ
Bu cevri itmez idüñ ṭâlib-i dîdâr olsañ
Bahâr faṣlı vü gül devri ġonca ‘âlemidür
Demidür imdi i dil sen daḫi hezâr olsañ
Cihânda ‘izz ü sa‘âdet yeterdi Mihrî saña
Ayaġı ṭopraġına dilberüñ ġubâr olsañ

In English

1. My lord, what would it matter if, out of your generosity, you became a friend to us? What would it matter if you made a choice among the beauties? (The couplet can be read in two ways: "iḫtiyâr" means choosing, so the line can be understood as "if you chose one from among the beauties, that is, us", or as "if you were a chosen one among the beauties".)

2. You had said that you would be faithful to the one who bears your cruelties. Had you kept your word, you would have had no equal.

3. If you too knew what a lover suffers through your sorrow, if you too yearned to see a face, you would not do this cruelty. (Dîdâr means seeing the beloved's face; ṭâlib-i dîdâr is one who longs to see the face of the beloved.)

4. It is the season of spring and the age of the rose, the time of the rosebud's opening. O heart, now is exactly the moment: if only you too were a nightingale. (Hezâr means both "nightingale" and "thousand"; the nightingale is also called "hezâr-destân", "of a thousand tales".)

5. O Mihrî, if you became dust on the beloved's foot-soil, that would be enough for you of honor and happiness in this world.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The ninety-third ghazal of the divan has five couplets and is composed in the müctes meter of the aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "Mefâ‘ilün Fe‘ilâtün Mefâ‘ilün Fe‘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 sound "-âr" (yâr, iḫtiyâr, ber-ḳarâr, dîdâr, hezâr, ġubâr); the redif (refrain word) is "olsañ", "if you were". This redif gives the whole ghazal a mood of wishing and supposition; every couplet is built as "if only you were thus". In Sıtkı Nazik's comparison of refrains, the redif "olsañ" appears in Mihrî's divan only in this ghazal. The ghazal is found only in manuscript Ü (49b). There is no record of whom it was written for or on what occasion.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first three couplets of the ghazal are a reproachful address made directly to the beloved. In the first couplet the beloved is called "begüm", "my lord". In divan poetry it is a familiar conception that the beloved is a lord or sultan and the lover his slave; Mihrî also addresses the beloved in this way in other ghazals. The lover asks the beloved to show generosity, to be a friend to the speaker out of "keremüñden", out of kindness. In the second couplet the reproach rests on the recollection of a promise. The beloved had said that fidelity would be shown to whoever endured the cruelty; had the word been kept, the beloved would have been without equal. The closeness in sound of the words cefa and vefa (cruelty and fidelity) marks the two poles of the couplet.

In the third couplet the lover asks the beloved to take the lover's place. If the beloved too yearned to see a face, the beloved would understand what the lover suffers and would not practice this cruelty. In divan poetry the beloved is mostly unaware of the lover's state and indifferent to it; this couplet attributes that indifference to the beloved's never having been in love.

In the fourth couplet the address turns from the beloved to the lover's own heart, and a spring scene is drawn. It is the season of spring, the age of the rose, the roses are opening; the heart too is expected to become a nightingale in this season, that is, to sing and lament toward the rose. The word "hezâr" is a tevriye (double entendre, the use of a word so as to suggest two meanings at once) here: it evokes both the nightingale and the number "thousand". The words spring, rose, bud and hezâr also form a tenasüp (congruence of images, the use together of words close in meaning).

In the closing couplet Mihrî addresses herself and says that the greatest honor attainable in the world is to become dust on the beloved's foot-soil. When Gülşen Kaya explains the value that the dust of the beloved's foot holds for the lover in the divan, she notes that the lover's greatest happiness and station is to become dust on the beloved's foot, and gives this couplet as an example; she cites the same couplet again in the section on the element of earth. There she says that although earth lies underfoot and is held worthless, for the lover it is a mark of fortune and a source of happiness and honor. The contrast between "izz ü sa‘âdet" (honor and happiness) and "ġubâr" (dust), that is, between the highest honor and the lowest dust, is the antithesis (tezat) that carries the meaning of the couplet.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, p. 100, Ghazal 93 (Ü 49b only). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

Academic studies

  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010, pp. 187, 272. 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 96).

Online sources