Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâilâtün Fâilâtün Fâilâtün Fâilün

Lâ-mekân şehrinde kim ‘aḳl-ı me‘âd ṣâhipleri
Dâ’imâ Allâh’ı dilde vird-i eẕkâr etdiler
İştiġāl-i dehrden el çekdiler Allâh için
Gizlenüp ḫalḳdan hemîşe terk-i aġyâr etdiler
Kim bu ẕâtlar dâmenin ṭuttuysa pür-nûr eyleyip
‘Âlemi irşâd edip kim ṣâf-ı envâr etdiler
‘İlm ü ‘irfânı ḥaḳīḳatde olup baḥr-i muḥîṭ
‘İlm-i esrâr-ı nihânı keşf-i esrâr etdiler
“Nahnu aḳrab” sırrını fehm eyleyip ‘ayne’l-yaḳīn
Milk-i ‘aşḳ içre demâ-dem ẕevḳ-i dîdâr etdiler
Kim bu ṣıddîḳlar kemâlâtıña taṣdîḳ eyledi
Gösterip râh-ı Ḫudâ’yı ḳurb-ı settâr etdiler
Kimisi Manṣûr olup söyler Ene’l-ḥâḳ ‘âleme
Ġâfilân fehm etmeyip bu sırrı ber-dâr etdiler
Nice ehlu’llâh’ı ‘âlem eyleyip nâ-ḥaḳ şehîd
Bilmeyip bu ‘ilm-i râzı ‘âlemi inkâr etdiler
Kim olur Mir’at-nümâsın tek muḥibbi evliyâ
Baş koyup dergâhına anlar kim iḳrâr etdiler

In English

1. In the city of placelessness, those of reason who look to the hereafter made God their litany and remembrance in the heart always.

2. For God's sake they withdrew their hands from the business of the world; hiding from the people, they always forsook all that is other than God.

3. Whoever held the hem of these men they filled with light, and guiding the world they made it pure and luminous.

4. Their knowledge and gnosis being in reality an encompassing sea, they opened the knowledge of hidden secrets by unveiling those secrets.

5. Grasping with the certainty of sight the secret of “We are nearer to him”, in the realm of love they enjoyed at every moment the delight of beholding the face.

6. Whoever confirmed the perfections of these truthful ones, they showed him the road of God and brought him near to the Concealer of faults.

7. One of them becomes Mansur and says to the world “Ene'l-Hak” (I am the Truth); the heedless, not understanding this secret, hanged him on the gallows.

8. The world has wrongly martyred so many of the people of God; not knowing this knowledge of the secret, they denied their world.

9. Who could love the saints as Mir'ât-nümâ does? They are the ones who laid their heads at His threshold and affirmed Him.

Literary and Historical Commentary

A Kaside to the Saints

Kaside though it is called, these nine couplets contain no prelude, transition or self-praise; the poem headed “Ḳaṣîde-i Evliyâu’llâh”, the kaside of the saints, is closer in form to a ghazal. The refrain “etdiler”, they did, turns in long lines of remel, four feet each, and each couplet describes a state of the saints as something “they did”: they made remembrance their litany, hid from the people, guided the world, unveiled secrets. The rhymes are built on the words “eẕkâr, aġyâr, envâr, esrâr, dîdâr, settâr, ber-dâr, inkâr, iḳrâr”.

The phrase “Naḥnu aḳrab” in the fifth couplet refers to the verse of the chapter Kaf, “We are nearer to him than his jugular vein”, and the couplet appears in the thesis's list of Qur'anic quotations. The seventh couplet recalls one of the most frequently cited events in Sufi history, the execution of Hallâc-ı Mansûr for his saying “Ene'l-Ḥaḳ”, I am the Truth, and says that the saying was a secret the heedless did not understand. The poet neither defends nor interprets it; he simply counts it among the examples of saints who suffered injustice.

The last couplet is a pen-name couplet in the form of a question: who could love the saints as much as Mir'ât-nümâ? The book's second kaside, later on, is also devoted to the saints; the two poems show the weight that love of sainthood carries in the work.

Bibliography

Online sources