Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâilâtün Fâilâtün Fâilâtün Fâilün

Ḳahramân ol nefsiñe meyl etme câh-ı devlete
Faḳr-i ḥâli iḫtiyâr et raġbet eyle ḫalvete
Bil bu dünyânıñ beḳāsın bak ki bizden ‘ibret al
Eylediñ on altı itmâm senemizde riḥlete
Eylemez taġyîr vü taḳdîrin Ḫudâ yoḳ şüphemiz
Bi’t-tamâm olduḳda evḳāt emr olundu hicrete
Ey meded yâ Rab ki senden merḥamet şefḳat kerem
Sen kerîm ekrem raḥīmsiñ ḳıl vesîle raḥmete
Ey beni ‘arż eyleyen iḫvân-ı yârân bâ-ṣafâ
Her ne ḳılsa râżı ol fermân-ı Rabb-i ‘izzete
Âh edip ḳan aġlar-i-dim ḥasretiñden ey atâ
Şükr kim ḳıldı ki ḳabûl dergâh-ı ḫâk-i ‘İṣmet’e
Düştü tâm târiḫ Bahâ’eddîn’e mir’ât etdi âh
Gitdi yaz güzden Bahâ’eddîn maḳām-ı cennete

In English

1. Be a hero against your self, do not incline to rank and fortune; choose the state of poverty, long for retreat.

2. Know the permanence of this world, look, take a lesson from us: you completed sixteen of our years and set out on the journey.

3. God's decree does not change, we have no doubt; when the times were complete, the command to depart was given.

4. Help, O Lord; mercy, compassion and generosity are from You; You are generous, most generous, compassionate; make me a means to mercy.

5. O brothers and friends of purity who present me before God, whatever He does, be content with the command of the Lord of Might.

6. O father, I sighed and wept blood from longing for you; thanks be that He accepted me into the soil of İsmet's threshold.

7. A complete chronogram fell for Bahâeddîn; the mirror sighed: “Bahâeddîn went from summer and autumn to the station of paradise.”

Literary and Historical Commentary

A Chronogram on a Young Man's Death

In this elegiac chronogram the young man who died speaks in his own voice. The edition gives it under the heading “Târiḫ-i Vefât-ı Şeyḫzâde ‘Abdullâh Bahâeddîn”, the chronogram on the death of the sheikh's son Abdullah Bahâeddîn; its seven couplets run in four-foot remel lines, and the rhymes meet in the sound “-ete”: devlete, ḫalvete, riḥlete, hicrete, raḥmete, ‘izzete, ‘İṣmet'e, cennete. The note “Sene 1292” beneath the last couplet marks the year in which, according to Hüsameddin, Süleyman Efendi came to Amasya.

The voice changes hands in the second couplet: in the first couplet the poet counsels the reader, but from the second couplet the speaker is the dead man himself. The voice that says “bizden ‘ibret al”, take a lesson from us, says that he completed sixteen years and departed; in the fifth couplet he addresses “ey beni ‘arż eyleyen iḫvân”, brothers who present me before God; in the sixth he addresses his father, “ey atâ”, O father, and gives thanks that he was accepted into the “dergâh-ı ḫâk-i ‘İṣmet”, the soil of İsmet's threshold. On this reading the young man who died was buried in his father's lodge.

Şensöz takes Abdullah Bahâeddîn to be Süleyman Efendi's son. Yet the title “Şeyhzâde”, son of the sheikh, the expression “bâ-ḫuṣūṣ evlâdı ‘Abdullâh Bahâ” in the section on the reason for writing, the couplet “evlâdı Bahâ'eddîn” in the supplication to God who fulfils needs, and İsmet's lodge in the sixth couplet suggest that he was the son of Mustafa İsmet Efendi; nor is it likely that the poet, born in 1263, had a son of sixteen in 1292. The phrase “mir'ât etdi âh”, the mirror sighed, in the last line alludes to the poet's pen name; the edition does not give the line's abjad value.

Bibliography

Online sources