Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefâîlün Mefâîlün Mefâîlün Mefâîlün

Cihânda yâd-kâr u ber-güzârım olsun iḫvâna
‘İnâyetler edip ẕât-ı Ḫudâ pek ḫoş tamâm oldu
Bi-‘avn-i ḥaḳḳ-ilen itmâm edip mir’ât dedim târîḫ
Bu Âdâbü’l-müeddeb eñ güzel zîbâ ḫitâm oldu

In English

1. Let it be a keepsake and memento of mine to the brothers in the world; God showed favour and it was completed very finely.

2. Completing it with God's help, I, “Mir'ât”, spoke the chronogram: “This Âdâbü'l-müeddeb has come to the finest, most graceful end.”

Literary and Historical Commentary

The Date of Completion

The book “tamâm oldu / ḫitâm oldu”, was completed, came to an end: printed in the edition under the title “Târîḫ”, chronogram, these two couplets mark the completion of the work and carry that rhyme in the four-foot hezec pattern “Mefâîlün”. The note “Sene 1296” at the end of the second couplet points to a hijri year that runs from December 1878 to December 1879. Şensöz gives the date as “1296 (1877)”, but the Gregorian equivalent of the hijri 1296 is 1878-79.

The first couplet says once more for whom the book was written: to be a “yâd-kâr”, a keepsake, for the brothers, that is, the brethren of the order. The expression “mir'ât dedim târîḫ” in the first line of the second couplet can be read in two ways: “I, Mir'ât (the one of that pen name), spoke the chronogram”, or that the chronogram was made through a calculation tied to the word “mir'ât”. The chronogram line is evidently the second line: “Bu Âdâbü'l-müeddeb eñ güzel zîbâ ḫitâm oldu”, this Âdâbü'l-müeddeb has come to the finest, most graceful end. The abjad calculation is absent from the edition, so we cannot check here how the line yields 1296.

This small poem is the place where the book is fixed to a date and an author; the library record attributing the work to Mustafa İsmet Efendi cannot stand against his death in 1289 and the book's completion in 1296.

Bibliography

Online sources