Mu'înî was a sixteenth-century poet who wrote a terkib-i bend of seventy-seven couplets on the killing of Şehzade Mustafa (Prince Mustafa) in 1553. His elegy is one of three poems that recount the event from beginning to end, from the forged letters to the death in the imperial tent, and it is among the longest of the elegies written for Prince Mustafa. The poet's identity, however, is unknown: there are several poets with the pen name Mu'înî in the biographical anthologies of poets (tezkire), and it has not been established to which of them the elegy belongs. This page sets out separately the people who might have written the poem and what the sources say.

Mu'înî's known connection with Amasya is made through Prince Mustafa, the subject of his elegy. The prince was sanjak governor (sanjak-bey) of Amasya from 1541 to 1553. The line "Ne yirden o sefer itdiyse o diyâra dirîğ" (from whatever place he set out for that land, alas) in the fourth stanza of the elegy mentions the starting point of the prince's journey to his death; the march from Amasya to Ereğli may be meant here, and this reading is our own.

Life

The elegy was introduced by Ayhan Güldaş in his article "Bilinmeyen Şehzade Mustafa Mersiyeleri", published in 1989 in the Kubbealtı Akademi Mecmuası. Recep Hasar counts Mu'înî, together with Fünûnî and Taşlıcalı Yahya, among the poets who recount the event from beginning to end, and notes that his elegy contains heavy reproach and curses. The poem itself shows that the poet knew the details of the event at close hand: the reading of the forged letters to the sultan, the prince mounting his horse in white garments and walking to his father's tent, his going to kiss his hand and falling at his feet, and the bowstring winding round his neck are described in detail. In the last couplet of the poem the date of death is given in the line "Civâr-ı Ahmed'e irgüre Mustafâ'yı Vedûd". Apart from these details, nothing about Mu'înî's life can be drawn from the elegy.

The State of the Sources

In the anthologies of Beyânî and Kınalızâde two poets with the pen name Mu'înî are mentioned one after the other. The first is Muhyî Çelebi: he first followed the path of learning, then became a clerk of the imperial council, rose as secretary (tezkireci) to Mehmed Pasha, and attained the office of chief of the scribes (reisülküttap) and then that of drawing the sultan's monogram on decrees (tuğrai). Kınalızâde makes a play on his pen name by saying that he was a helper (mu'în) to those in distress and a support to the helpless. Beyânî and Kınalızâde quote from him the opening couplet "Devâtâsâ benüm la‘lün gamıyla bagrı hûn olmış". The second Mu'înî was from Istanbul; he passed from the path of learning to the judgeship and joined the ranks of the judges. Beyânî says of him that "the garden of his soul has plenty of flowing water (ma‘în), but he has no helper (mu'în) among the men of state".

Neither anthologist mentions that either of these Mu'înîs wrote an elegy for Prince Mustafa. Hasar too does not present either of these poets as the author of the elegy in his thesis; as noted in our article on the elegies, since there is more than one poet with the same pen name in the anthologies, the identity of the Mu'înî who wrote the elegy has not been established. It may seem unlikely that Muhyî Çelebi, who held high office in the imperial council, would write a poem speaking of the forged letters that misled the sultan and cursing the prince's killers, but this is only an assessment; nothing certain can be said.

His Poetry

The only poem that has come down to us and is certainly by Mu'înî is his elegy for Prince Mustafa. The poem is a terkib-i bend of seven stanzas in the metre "mefâ’ilün fe’ilâtün mefâ’ilün fe’ilün"; each stanza consists of a ten-couplet section and a linking couplet. The first stanza opens with the transience of the world and passes to the story of the forged letters, the second to the scene of the death, the third to the mourning of nature. The fourth stanza is a lament with the redif (refrain word) "dirîğ" (alas), the fifth praises the prince as a learned, generous and valiant leader, and the sixth is a curse upon those who caused the death. Hasar quotes the lines "Kurusun eli kemend atan ana lâl olsun" and "Celâli oldı diyen ana bî-mecâl olsun" in this stanza as examples of the heavy curses in the elegies. The last stanza returns to the transience of the world and ends with a chronogram couplet.

The original text of the poem, its couplet-by-couplet English prose rendering and a commentary are published as a separate article in this category. The couplets of the two Mu'înîs in the anthologies have not been included in this work, since they have not been shown to belong to the poet of the elegy and have no connection with Amasya. The other elegies are described in our article Elegies for Prince Mustafa, and the prince's life in the biography Şehzade Mustafa.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

  • Ayhan Güldaş, "Bilinmeyen Şehzade Mustafa Mersiyeleri", Kubbealtı Akademi Mecmuası, 18(3), 1989, pp. 40-44 (as quoted in Hasar).
  • Recep Hasar, Türk Edebiyatı'nda Padişah ve Şehzade Mersiyeleri, MA thesis, Fatih Sultan Mehmet Vakıf Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, 2018, pp. 89, 93, 95, 102, 117-118, 470-477. https://hdl.handle.net/11352/2746

Online sources