Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

‘Ādeti monlalaruñ maḥbûb sevmekdür ḫaṭîb
‘Āḳil iseñ meẕhebüñ yitirme ‘âriflerden ol

In English

1. O preacher, it is the custom of the mullahs to love the beautiful; if you have sense, do not lose your path (meşrep), be one of the knowers (ariflerden). The couplet can be read in two ways: as words advising the preacher to love beauty as the mullahs do and in this way to take his place among the arifs, the knowers of the heart; or as a mocking remark that pokes fun at this custom of the mullahs and tells the preacher not to follow them, to keep to his own path and to be one of the true arifs. ("Monla" is an old pronunciation of molla; "maḥbûb" is the beloved, the beautiful one; "‘ârif" is one who knows God and the truth through the heart.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This single couplet, which stands as the seventh and last müfred in Mehmet Arslan's edition, is found only in the Ü manuscript in the Istanbul University Library, on folio 77a. Arslan notes that the divan contains seven müfreds in all, amounting to seven couplets, and that in the three manuscripts other than Ü there is only one müfred each. The couplet is written in the remel pattern "Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilün"; by Arslan's count this is the most frequently used pattern in Mihrî's divan, found in 91 poems, that is, in more than a third of all the poems. The two lines end in "ḫaṭîb" and "ol" and do not rhyme, as is the case in single-couplet poems. To whom it was addressed, and on what occasion, is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first line opens with an observation: it is the custom of the mullahs to love the beautiful. In the Ottoman world "molla" was the name given to those who had received a madrasa education and risen to learned offices (ilmiye) such as müderris (professor) and kadı (judge). In divan poetry, loving beauty is also bound up with the idea of seeing in human beauty a reflection of divine beauty, which is why the word "‘ârif" in the couplet is important. The arif is one who draws his knowledge from the heart rather than from books and who knows the truth by intuition; in divan poetry he is often set against the zahid, the ascetic bound to dry learning. Mihrî's divan has other examples of this opposition; in a couplet quoted by Gülşen Kaya, the poet tells the müderris who has not studied the beloved that love cannot be learned by reading.

The difficulty of reading the couplet comes from the direction of the advice not being clearly marked. "Meẕheb" here means less a school of jurisprudence than the path a person follows, his temperament (meşrep). In the first reading the poet tells the preacher to follow the way of the mullahs, to take up the love of beauty as a matter of the heart and to be one of the arifs. In the second reading this custom of the mullahs is lightly mocked, and the preacher is asked to leave his own path and not resemble them, choosing true arifhood. Since no conjunction links the two lines, the text is open to both readings. The words monla, ḫaṭîb, meẕheb and ‘ârif make up a family of words belonging to the learned profession and religious life, and there is a congruence of images (tenasüp) among them in the couplet.

The word "ḫaṭîb" used in the address is also noteworthy. Apart from this müfred, the word occurs in Mihrî's divan only once more, in the second couplet of ghazal 51: "Bühtânlar eylemiş bize ra‘nâ deyü ḫaṭîb / Şâ‘irlerüñ birincisi ġâyet yalancıdur." ("The preacher has slandered us, calling us vain; the first of the poets is utterly a liar.") In Âşık Çelebi's biographical anthology (tezkire) this ghazal is recorded under the heading "Cevâb-ı Mihrî", as the reply to a ghazal that Makâmî had sent to Mihrî. According to Âşık Çelebi, Makâmî was a poet and musician who had served as imam to Sultan Ahmed and afterwards taught the palace pages, and he and Mihrî exchanged poems at Ahmed's court. Kaya also notes that in this exchange Mihrî addresses Makâmî as preacher and poet. There is, however, no record as to whether the preacher in the müfred is the same person; the only thing the two poems share is this word, and the resemblance cannot be taken beyond a possibility.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, pp. 185-186, Müfred 7 (Ü 77a); Ghazal 51, pp. 77-78; introduction, pp. 11-14. ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
  • Âşık Çelebi, Meşâ‘irü'ş-Şu‘arâ, ed. Filiz Kılıç, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı e-kitap, p. 353 (entry on Makâmî). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

Academic studies

  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010, pp. 66, 93-95. openaccess.firat.edu.tr