Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Teşnedür dil ṣun lebüñden çeşme-i ḥayvân aña
Mürdedür cismüm ġamuñdan n'ola virseñ cân aña
Geldügince cân tenden ḳarşu çıḳsa ṭañ mıdur
Mülket-i dilde ḫayâlüñ oldı çün sulṭân aña
Revzenüñden ẕerre-veş üstüñe düşer Müşterî
Gördi beñzer gün cemâlüñ oldı ser-gerdân aña
Yâ ḳaşuñuñ tîrile dil ḫânesin zeyn eyledi
Sînede ġamzeñ ḫayâli olalı mihmân aña
Eyledüm yoluña îs̱âr itmek içün ḫusrevâ
Gözlerümüñ ḳanlu yaşın dürr ile mercân aña
Ḫâliṣ-i zer ḳılmaġ içün ḳalbini ‘âşıḳlaruñ
Genc-i ḥüsnüñ cevherin ṣaḳlar dil-i vîrân aña
Gülşen-i ḥüsnüñde bülbül murġ-ı ḫoş-elḥân oḳur
Her seḥer gül defterinden nâme-i ‘unvân aña
Bezm-i ḥüsnüñ içre lâle sâḳî olsa ṭañ mıdur
Ṭolılar içüre gülistânda gül-i ḫandân aña
Almaġa âsân idi cennet cemâli mîvesin
Ruḫlarında olmasa s̱u‘bân ṣaçı bâġ-bân aña
Kimdür ol Sulṭân Aḥmed kim cihân ḫusrevleri
Āsitânında olupdur bende-i fermân aña
Muṣḥaf-ı ḥüsnine her nâdân ḳılursa bir naẓar
Keşf olur ol demde ezber şübhesiz Ḳur’ân aña
Ruḫları şevḳine bülbül nice nâlân olmasun
Yaraşur gül ḳarşusına nâle vü efġân aña
Gülşen-i ḥüsninde zülfin depredüp bâd-ı ṣabâ
Gösterür ṭâvûs-veş her dem-be-dem cevlân aña
Kûy-ı yâri bir nefes terk eylemez ḥuccâc-ı ‘aşḳ
Ehl-i ‘aşḳa Ka‘be'dür yeter ruḫ-ı cânân aña
Çeşmüñüñ ḳaṣdı eger cân ise ey şâh-ı cihân
Yolına olsun fedâ bir cân nedür biñ cân aña
‘Īd-i vaṣlıdur bugün gel âsitânında şehüñ
Vaḳtidür Mihrî ḳıl imdi cânuñı ḳurbân aña
‘Īd-i aḍḥâsın mübârek ḳılsun ol Ḥayy-ı Ḳadîm
Devlet-i rif‘atde virsün ‘ömr-i câvîdân aña

In English

1. The heart is thirsty; offer it the water of life from your lips. My body has died of your sorrow; what harm if you gave it life? (In divan poetry the beloved's lip is the water of life that grants immortality.)

2. Since your image has become the sultan of the realm of the heart, is it surprising if each time it comes the soul leaves the body to go out and meet it? (This alludes to the custom of the people going outside a city to receive a sultan on his arrival; for the soul to leave the body means to die.)

3. Jupiter (Müşterî) falls upon you from your window like a speck of dust; evidently it has seen your sun-like face, and marvelling at it has grown dizzy. (The image is of motes of dust turning in a ray of sunlight that enters through a window: even the greatest planet is no more than a speck before you.)

4. Since the image of your glance became a guest in my breast, the bow of your eyebrow has adorned the house of the heart with arrows. ("Yâ" means a bow in old Turkish; the eyebrow is likened to a bow, and the eyelash and glance to an arrow.)

5. O ruler, to scatter on your path I have turned the bloody tears of my eyes into pearls and coral. (Gold and jewels were scattered on the road where great men passed; the jewels the poet will scatter are the white of her tears and the red of her blood.)

6. To turn the hearts of lovers into pure gold, the ruined heart keeps for it the jewel of the treasure of your beauty. (Treasures are found hidden in ruins; "ḳalb" means both a heart and a debased, counterfeit coin. The beloved's beauty is a jewel that turns the lover's counterfeit heart into pure gold.)

7. In the rose garden of your beauty, the sweet-voiced nightingale reads to it every morning a letter of address from the register of the rose. (The nightingale sings to the rose in the mornings; here it is like one reading an official letter of address written to beauty.)

8. Is it surprising if the tulip were cupbearer in the gathering of your beauty? The laughing rose, opening in the rose garden, has filled the cups for it. (The tulip is likened in shape to a goblet; the cupbearer who serves wine in the gathering is the tulip, and the one who fills the cups is the rose.)

9. It would have been easy to pick the fruit of its paradise-like beauty, had its hair not been a snake acting as gardener on its cheeks. (Hair is likened to a snake for its curls; the snake is also held to be the guardian of treasure and of the garden.)

10. Who is he? He is Sultan Ahmed; the rulers of the world have become servants at his threshold, watching for his command.

11. If any ignorant person once looked at the Qur'an of his beauty, in that moment the Qur'an would, without doubt, be revealed to him by heart. (The beautiful face, with its lines and beauty marks, is likened to a page of the Qur'an.)

12. How should the nightingale not lament in longing for his cheeks? Lamenting and crying out suits it before the rose.

13. In the garden of his beauty the morning wind stirs his curls and shows them off at every moment, swaying like a peacock. (Hair rippling in the wind is likened to a peacock spreading its tail and swaying.)

14. The pilgrims of love do not leave the beloved's street even for a breath; for the people of love, the beloved's cheek is enough as the Kaaba.

15. O sovereign of the world, if the purpose of your eye is to take life, let a life be sacrificed on that road; what is one life, let a thousand lives be sacrificed.

16. Today is the festival of union; come to the sultan's threshold. O Mihrî, now is the very time, sacrifice your life to him.

17. May God, the Eternal and ever-living, make his Feast of Sacrifice blessed; in exalted fortune may He give him everlasting life.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a short kaside of seventeen couplets. Its heading in the edition is "Ḳaṣîde-i Sulṭân Aḥmed". The metre is the aruz pattern "Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilün". The rhyme is the sound "-ân" (ḥayvân, cân, sulṭân, ser-gerdân, mihmân), and the redif is the word "aña" (to him, to it), repeated at the end of every couplet. The kaside is a long verse form presented to a great person, in which, as in the ghazal, the two lines of the first couplet and the second lines of the following couplets rhyme. The redif "aña" turns the speech in every couplet once more toward the person praised or toward his beauty.

The sections of the kaside are short but orderly. The first nine couplets are a praise of a beloved in the manner of a ghazal: lip, eyebrow, glance, hair, rose garden. That the beloved is addressed as "ḫusrevâ" (O ruler) in the fifth couplet in this section hints that the beloved has been the ruler himself from the start. The tenth couplet is the girizgâh: the name of the person praised is given with the question "Kimdür ol Sulṭân Aḥmed". Couplets 11 to 15 praise Prince Ahmed's beauty and power, the pen name appears in the sixteenth couplet, and the seventeenth is a prayer. In the Ankara National Library copy the part of the kaside after the tenth couplet is missing; in this copy the poem ends with the couplet that names the prince.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The notable feature of the kaside is that the praise is made in the language of a love poem. Praising a ruler as a beloved is a familiar course in divan poetry, but in this kaside almost all the praise is a description of beauty; the usual subjects of kaside praise, such as war, justice or generosity, are passed over in a few words. The prince's face is a Qur'an, his hair sways like a peacock, his cheek is the Kaaba of the pilgrims of love. Beside the emphasis on the sun, the sword and justice in the Bayezid II kasides of the divan, this poem shows the poet addressing the prince's circle in Amasya in a closer and more intimate tone.

The poem is woven from the familiar conceits (mazmun) of divan poetry. In the first couplet the lip is likened to the water of life and the body to a dead man; between "teşne" (thirsty) and "çeşme" (spring), and "mürde" (dead) and "cân" (soul), there is both congruence and contrast. The second couplet imagines the beloved's image as a sultan coming to the realm of the heart, and describes the soul's leaving the body to meet it, that is, dying, as a ceremony of welcome. In the third couplet the image of the speck of dust turning in the light that falls through a window belittles a great planet like Jupiter; this is an example of hyperbole. The comparisons of eyebrow to bow and glance to arrow in the fourth couplet are among the commonest similes of divan poetry. The word "ḳalb" in the sixth couplet is a double entendre (tevriye): it means both the heart and a debased, counterfeit coin. The poet joins these two meanings with the words "ḫâliṣ-i zer" (pure gold), "genc" (treasure) and "cevher" (jewel), turning the beloved's beauty into an alchemy that refines the lover's heart. In the seventh, eighth, twelfth and thirteenth couplets the rose, nightingale, tulip and morning wind are used together as parts of the same garden scene.

The poem's real mastery lies in the way the religious festival and the language of love interweave toward the last couplets. In the fourteenth couplet lovers are likened to pilgrims and the beloved's cheek to the Kaaba. The fifteenth speaks of sacrificing one's life, the sixteenth of offering up one's life as a "ḳurbân" on the day of the "‘îd-i vaṣl" (festival of union), and in the last couplet the "‘Īd-i aḍḥâ", the Feast of Sacrifice, is named outright. Thus the words pilgrimage, Kaaba, sacrifice and festival are arranged in congruence as the elements that make up the Feast of Sacrifice itself. A poem written as a festival greeting joins the meaning of the festival with the conceit of sacrificing one's life to the beloved. The likening of the face to a Qur'an in the eleventh couplet is also part of this web of religious words.

In the pen-name couplet the poet addresses herself and says "sacrifice your life to him"; this is the usual stance of the lover in divan poetry. That a woman poet directs these words to a prince, when read together with what the tezkires write about Mihrî, shows that she freely uses, in her own name, the lover's language of a tradition dominated by male poets. Aşık Çelebi's remark that Mihrî's poetry contains "nâmahrem" (improper) words can also be considered together with this frankness.

Historical Context

The kaside was presented to Prince Ahmed, as the heading and the tenth couplet make clear, and the last couplet states openly that it is a greeting for the Feast of Sacrifice. When Bayezid II took the throne in 1481 and left Amasya, his son Ahmed took his place and remained there as sanjak governor for some thirty years. Like his father, the prince gathered poets, musicians and illuminators around him; Mihrî Hatun took her place in this assembly along with poets such as Âfitâbî, Münîrî and Makâmî. According to Mehmet Arslan, who prepared the edition of the divan, ten of the seventeen kasides in the divan were presented to Prince Ahmed, and nearly all of them were written as greetings for Ramadan or Sacrifice festivals. Sehî Bey also records in his tezkire that Mihrî gave Sultan Ahmed many kasides and ghazals. This kaside is one of the clearest examples of these festival greetings; but for which year's festival it was written is not known.

That Ahmed is called "Sulṭân Aḥmed" in the poem accords with the usage of the period, when princes were referred to by the title "sultan". Expressions such as "ey şâh-ı cihân" and "the rulers of the world have become servants at his threshold" are hyperbole seen in praise addressed to princes. In the Istanbul University copy the heading reads "Velehu Fî Medḥihi Ṭâbe Mes̱vâhu" (again his, in praise of him; may his abode be sweet). "Ṭâbe mes̱vâhu" is a prayer said for someone who has died; it shows that this copy was written down after Prince Ahmed's death.

Bibliography

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