Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātü mefā‘īlü fā‘ilün

Ṣūretde naḳş olup ki bu vech ile ola ṣād
Çeşmüñle ḳadd ü zülfüñ olur ey perī-nijād
Bir būsesine cān virürem la‘l-i nābuñuñ
İnṣāfı varsa ẕerrece itmez baña ‘inād
İtdiyse Ka‘beteyn beñüñ fülfüli n’ola
Bir ḳılca virmedi bize Hindū ṣaçuñ küşād
Yār olmadı cihānda göñül baña bir nefes
Geldüm ḳapuña anuñ elinden dime ki dād
Bu ḳadd ü zülf ü bu fem ü çeşm ile ey Münīr
Dil levḥi ṭoldı küllī elif lām mīm ṣād

In English

1. O you of fairy lineage; when your eye, your stature and your lock are drawn side by side in writing in this form, they make the word "ṣād" (the eye resembles the letter ṣād, the stature the alif, the lock the letter dāl).

2. I would give my life for a single kiss of your pure ruby lip; if it has any fairness, it will not be the least bit stubborn with me.

3. What if the black pepper of your mole has made a "ka‘beteyn"? Your Hindu (black) hair has not granted us an opening (küşâd) even a hair's breadth. The couplet is not certain: "ka‘beteyn" in its dictionary sense means "the two Kaabas" or "two knucklebones, two dice"; on one reading the couplet is built on the terms of a dice game.

4. Not for a single breath in this world has the heart been a friend to me; complaining of it, I have come to your door. The end of the second line ("dime ki dād") can be read in two ways: "do not say of me, 'he is crying out'", or "know that I am calling out for justice".

5. O Münîr, with this stature, lock, mouth and eye, the tablet of the heart has been filled from end to end with the letters "alif, lām, mīm, ṣād".

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a five-couplet Turkish ghazal (gazel) and is the forty-second of the Turkish ghazals in the edition (tg 42). The metre is "mef‘ûlü fâ‘ilâtü mefâ‘îlü fâ‘ilün". The ghazal has no refrain (redif); the rhyme is the sound "-âd": ṣād, nijād, ‘inād, küşād, dād, ṣād. The rhyme word of the opening couplet, "ṣād", becomes the rhyme again in the pen-name couplet; thus the ghazal closes with the letter with which it began. The poem is found only in the Vienna manuscript (VY 89b); tg 43, which follows immediately in the edition and is also built on plays on letters, likewise appears only there, on the same folio of the same manuscript. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The frame of the ghazal is play with the letters of the Arabic alphabet. In divan poetry it is a known practice to liken the lines of the beauty's face and body to letters: the upright stature to alif, the curling lock to the letter dāl or lām, the small round mouth to the letter mīm, the almond eye to the letter ṣād. In the opening couplet (matla), when eye, stature and lock are written side by side, the word "ṣād" appears; in Arabic letters this word is made of the letters ṣād, alif and dāl. This solution is our own observation.

The second couplet pauses the play on letters and works the familiar bargain of a kiss for a life. The lover is ready to give his life for a kiss; the wish is that the lip should be fair. The third couplet is the most obscure of the ghazal. The likening of the mole to black pepper (fülfül), together with the hair being called "Hindu", sets up a congruence of things Indian (tenasüp): black pepper is known as a product of India, and the Hindu is the emblem of blackness. It is possible to read the words "ka‘beteyn" and "küşād" as terms of a dice or backgammon game; but we have not been able to confirm this reading. The couplet nonetheless clearly carries a complaint: the hair has not granted the lover an opening even a hair's breadth.

In the fourth couplet it is said that the heart has not been a friend to the lover. The lover has fled from his own heart to the beloved's door. The word "dād" in its dictionary sense means justice and the cry for mercy; it is hard to give a certain meaning to the phrase "dime ki dād" at the end of the line.

The pen-name couplet extends the play of the opening couplet. Stature is likened to alif, lock to lām, mouth to mīm and eye to ṣād, and the tablet of the heart is filled with the letters "alif, lām, mīm, ṣād". These four letters are the disjointed letters (hurûf-ı mukattaa) that stand at the opening of the sura A'râf in the Qur'an. The beloved's beauty is thus likened to the mysterious letters of a sacred text. Identifying this allusion is our own work.

Bibliography

Online sources