Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Vezin: Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilün

Ādemi yelden yaratdı çün Ḫudâ
Yele ṭayanma ki olursın hebâ
Ġaflet uyḫusından uyan ölmedin
Mihrî ‘âlem lâ-beḳâdur lâ beḳâ

In English

1. Since God created Adam from wind, that is, from air, do not lean on the wind (do not trust in empty things that blow in and pass like a breeze), or you will become dust scattered through the air. ("Hebâ" means a speck of dust seen in a beam of sunlight, and so something wasted and lost.)

2. Wake from the sleep of heedlessness before you die; O Mihrî, the world has no permanence, no permanence.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

These two couplets, titled "Bâd" (wind or air), are the fourth and last piece of the "Çâr-‘Anâṣır" (Four Elements) section appended to the end of the Tażarru‘-nâme. In Mehmet Arslan's edition the section comes after couplet 461 of the mesnevi and consists of four qit‘as (short pieces) of two couplets each, on earth, water, fire and air. According to Arslan's footnote, these qit‘as are absent from manuscripts F, M and S and appear only in manuscript Ü, held in the Istanbul University Library. Sabiha Gemici likewise notes that they occur only in manuscript Ü and in the text published by Elena Maštakova. In Gemici's text the second hemistich of the first couplet reads "Yile ṭayanma" and the first hemistich of the second couplet reads "ölmeden"; the meaning does not change.

The metre is the "Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilün" pattern of the remel metre, which is also the metre of the Tażarru‘-nâme. The rhyme scheme is aa xa: "Ḫudâ" and "hebâ" rhyme in the first couplet, and the last word of the second couplet, "beḳâ", joins that rhyme. The poet's pen name (mahlas) appears in the final line. Within the four-qit‘a section the pen name is used only in the first piece, on earth, and in this last one, so that the section opens and closes with the poet's name. Nothing is known about for whom or when the qit‘a was written. Arslan thinks the Tażarru‘-nâme was probably written in the last years of the poet's life; these small pieces may belong to the same period, but this does not go beyond a guess.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

Gülşen Kaya notes that in Mihrî's divan the wind is called by names such as bâd, nesîm, sabâ and yel, and appears as one of the four basic elements. In the love ghazals the sabâ wind is a messenger bringing news from the beloved; in this qit‘a, however, the wind is a symbol of transience and untrustworthiness. The first couplet draws a warning from the fact that man was created from air: man must not lean on the wind. The phrase "yele dayanmak" (to lean on the wind) means to rely on something empty that cannot be held, like the wind. The end of such reliance is to become "hebâ", a speck of dust blown about before the wind. There is a congruence of images (tenasüp) between wind and hebâ, because dust is scattered by wind; that man, made of wind, should vanish like dust scattered by the wind again lends the couplet a bitter fitness.

The second couplet, read within the section and together with the Tażarru‘-nâme, is like the closing counsel of the whole supplication. Heedlessness (gaflet) is man's forgetting death and the hereafter by absorbing himself in the world; the poet sees it as a sleep and asks to wake from it before death comes. In the final line, "lâ-beḳâdur lâ beḳâ", the repetition of the word for impermanence, the figure called tekrir, reinforces the certainty of what is said. Mihrî again addresses this counsel to herself by name; the address "Mihrî" shows that the advice is first of all given to the poet herself. This agrees with what Arslan says of the Tażarru‘-nâme, that it is the voice of a believing woman who counsels her own soul and asks forgiveness for her sins.

When the four qit‘as are read together, a certain order stands out. In each, it is first said that man was created from that element, and then a lesson is drawn from the element's nature. Earth reminds one to keep away from the dirt of the world; water, of the regret of the man who on the day of reckoning will say "would that I were dust"; fire, of reaching light by withdrawing from the world; and wind, of waking from the sleep of heedlessness. As Kaya also observes, two couplets are given to each element, and this symmetry suggests that the section was deliberately placed at the end of the mesnevi as a closing.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: Republic of Turkey Ministry of Culture and Tourism Publications (Cultural Works Series 576), 2018, p. 227, Çâr-‘Anâṣır: Bâd (Ü) and footnote; introduction, p. 12.
  • Sabiha Gemici, Mihrî Hatun Divanı: Karşılaştırmalı Metin, Cümle Yapısı ve Cümle Türleri, doctoral dissertation, Uludağ University, Balıkesir 1990, pp. 346, 411.

Academic studies

  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat University Institute of Social Sciences, Elazığ 2010, pp. 269, 274. openaccess.firat.edu.tr

Online sources