Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilün

Bozdı bāzārını ‘anber ṣaçı müşk-i Ḫutenüñ
Ḳıymetin dişleri naẓmı ṣıdı dürr-i ‘Adenüñ
Serv-ḳaddüñle temāşā ideli gül yüzüñi
Bāġ-bān yüzine baḳmaz semen ü nārvenüñ
İrdi pā-būsuña diyü senüñ ey lāle-‘iẕār
Berg-i gül yüz sürer ayaġına düşüp çemenüñ
Ey şeker-leb lebüñüñ vaṣfını tekrār iderem
Nuṭḳı ṭutulsa ne var ṭūṭī-i şīrīn-süḫanuñ
Yanma pervāne gibi dirse Münīrīye ḥabīb
Olmasun şem‘-i şebistān ḳamu encümenüñ

In English

1. Your ambergris-scented hair has ruined the market of the musk of Khotan (lowered its price); the row of your teeth has broken the value of the pearl of Aden. ("Naẓm" means both a string of pearls and verse.)

2. Since the gardener beheld your rose face together with your cypress stature, he no longer looks at the face of the jasmine or the elm.

3. O tulip-cheeked one, the rose petal of the meadow falls at your feet and rubs its face there, saying, "I have attained the kissing of your foot." (The manuscripts differ slightly in word order; MN reads "düşse" for "düşüp".)

4. O sugar-lipped one, I keep repeating the praise of your lip; is it any wonder if the sweet-spoken parrot is struck dumb? (Before a lip of sugar even the parrot falls silent.)

5. If the beloved tells Münîrî, "Do not burn like the moth," then let the beloved not be the night candle of every gathering (if the candle did not shine for all, the moth would not burn).

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a Turkish ghazal of five couplets; in the edition it is the hundred and fifty-seventh of the Turkish ghazals (tg 157). The metre is "fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilün". The redif (refrain) is the suffix "-üñ / -uñ", and Ersoy's list in the introduction (p. 9) counts it among the ghazals with the redif "-üñ"; the rhyme is the sound "-en": Ḫuten, ‘Aden, nārven, çemen, süḫan and encümen.

The ghazal is preserved in five witnesses. Besides appearing in the three divan manuscripts (VT 135a, VY 113b, Ü 42a), it is recorded in two nazire anthologies, the Pervâne Bey Mecmuası (PB 358a) and Edirneli Nazmî's Mecmau'n-nezâ'ir (MN 223a). The variant readings are limited to the order and form of a few words in the third and fourth couplets. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The theme of the ghazal is that the beloved's beauty lowers the value of everything else. The opening couplet is built in the language of trade: "bāzār" (market), "ḳıymet" (value), and musk, ambergris and pearl as precious goods. The beloved's ambergris-scented hair ruins the market for the musk of Khotan, and her teeth break the value of the pearl of Aden. The verb "ṣıdı" is the old Turkish verb "sımak"; the Kubbealtı dictionary records it with the senses "to break, to spoil" as belonging to old Turkish and popular speech. The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi notes that many archaic words are found in Münîrî's poems; this couplet is an example. The word "naẓm", while describing the teeth set in a row like a string of pearls, also recalls poetry.

The second couplet brings in the garden and the gardener. The Kubbealtı dictionary gives the Persian word "semen" as jasmine and "nârven" as elm. The gardener who has seen the beloved's rose face and cypress stature no longer looks at the other flowers and trees of the garden; the use of the word "yüz" (face) both for the beloved's face and for the faces of the flowers builds the couplet on repetition. In the third couplet the falling of a rose petal to the ground is interpreted as rubbing its face at the beloved's feet; this is an example of hüsn-i talil (poetic aetiology).

The fourth couplet uses the familiar congruence (tenasüp) between sugar and the parrot. The lover never tires of praising the beloved's sugar lip; the sweet-spoken parrot being struck dumb says that even the most talkative creature falls silent before such praise. In the pen-name couplet the motif of candle and moth is turned around: to tell the moth not to burn makes no sense while the candle itself sheds its light on every gathering. In this way the beloved's beauty, open to all, is shown to be the real cause of the lover's burning.

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