Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün fe‘ūlün

Te‘ālallāh zihī dānā vü ḳādir
Ki naḳş-ı her dü ‘ālem kerd ẓāhir
Ez-ū şod cümle-i ‘ālem hüveydā
V’ez-ū hem şekl-i ādem geşt peydā
Zi-feyżeş muşt-ı ḫākī geşt muḥarrem
Zi-fażleş nām-ı ādem şod mükerrem
Hezārān mihr ender-ẕerre’ī kerd
Hezārān baḥr ender-ḳaṭre’ī kerd
‘Alīm ü Ālim ü Ḥayy ü Tevānā
Ḳadīm ü Ḳādir ü Ḳayyūm u Dānā
Dü ‘ālem ḥikmeti ḥayrānı anuñ
Ḳamu dil şöyle ser-gerdānı anuñ
Ser-ā-ser luṭfı baḥrine cihān ġarḳ
Anuñ künhinde ḥayrān ġarb tā-şarḳ
Zi-cūd-ı bī-girānet her dilī-rā
Naẓar-gāhet konī ey Ḥayy ü Dānā
Dinilmez feyżüñe hergiz bahā ne
Kim olur aña kem nesne bahāne
Yitişse luṭfuñ idüp nārı gül-şen
Ḳılur bir ẕerreyi gün gibi rūşen
Heme der-güft ü gūyet cümle ‘ālem
Velī der-ḥikmetet geştend ebkem
Münezzeh kāret ez-çūn ü çirā şod
Müberrā fi‘let ez-ḫabṭ u ḫatā şod
Be-dergāhet yekī-rā mī-dehī rāh
Yekī-rā mī-konī peyveste güm-rāh
Zi-şevḳat her dilī-rā mī-resed fer
Eger şeh-bāz-ı ḳuds ü v’er kebūter
Toyī āḫir murād-ı cümle mevcūd
Velī ma‘lūm ne maḳbūl ü ne merdūd
Yiler yil degzinüp gird-i cihānı
Velī bulmadı vaṣluñdan nişānı
Yüzi üzre yürür feryād idüp ṣu
İdinüp cüst ü cūyuñ kendüye ḫū
Görinürse ne var ẓāhirde ser-keş
Yanar sūzuñla her dem şöyle āteş
Anuñçün ḫāk ider kendüyi pā-māl
Kim ola ‘āḳıbet vaṣluñla ḫoş-ḥāl
Heme kes mī-deved der-cüst ü cūyet
Ne-mī-dānem ki yābed reh be-sūyet
Eger luṭfet ne-bāşed rehber-i men
Hezārān dest-i ḥasret ber-ser-i men
Be-ḥaḳḳ-ı kibriyā-yı bī-mis̱ālet
Be-vaḥdāniyyet ü ‘izz ü celālet
Be-ḥaḳḳ-ı ḥürmet-i ān gevher-i pāk
Ki be’nhādī sereş-rā tāc-ı lev-lāk
Be-ḥaḳḳ-ı ḥażret-i ṣıddīḳ-i ekber
Ki şod şer‘-i Resūl ez-vey münevver
Be-ḥaḳḳ-ı ḥażret-i Fārūḳ-ı a‘ẓam
Kim olmışdur cihān ‘adli-yle ḫurrem
Ḥudāyā ḥażret-i Os̱mān ḥaḳı-çün
Resūl ile geçen devrān ḥaḳı-çün
Anuñ ḥaḳḳı kim oldur şāh-ı merdān
Didürdi luṭfuñ aña şīr-i Yezdān
Ḥasan ḥaḳḳı ki nūr-ı çeşm-i cāndur
Dü ‘ālem mülkine ḥükmi revāndur
Be-ḥaḳḳ-ı ān Ḥüseyn-i şāh-ı ‘ālem
Ki ez-ḥālāt-ı vey būdīm der-hem
‘Aliyy-i Zeyn-i Ḥaḳ kim ol şehen-şāh
Olupdur cümleden Ḥaydar-veş āgāh
Be-ḥaḳḳ-ı ān Muḥammed k’ūst Bāḳır
Keremhā-yı ‘amīmeş būd vāfir
İmām-ı Ca‘ferüñ ṣādıḳlıġı-çün
‘Ulūm-ı sırdaki ḥāẕıḳlıġı-çün
Be-ḥaḳḳ-ı Mūsī-i Kāẓım ki der-kār
Be-Ṭūr-ı ḳurb reh dādī be-her bār
‘Aliyy’ibnü Rıżānuñ ḥürmeti-çün
Cemālüñ şevḳıl’olan ḥāleti-çün
Taḳiyy-i Ḥaḳ ki oldur pīş-vāmuz
Ṭarīḳ-i ‘ışḳuñ içre reh-nümāmuz
Be-ḥaḳḳ-ı ān Naḳiyy-i pāk-gevher
Ki ḫāk-i der-geheş şod efser-i ser
Ḥasan ḥaḳḳı kim oldur ‘Askerī hem
Çerāġ-ı nūr-ı çeşm-i cān-ı ‘ālem
Be-ḥaḳḳ-ı ḥażret-i ṣāḥib-ḳırānet
Ki ya‘nī Mehdī-i āḫir-zamānet
Ḥalāṣem deh zi-dest-i nefs-i bed-kīş
Ki ez-dest-i veyem maḥzūn ü dil-rīş
Dilem-rā bā-ġamet mesrūr gerdān
Zi-cām-ı bī-ḫodī ma‘mūr gerdān
Mey-i ‘ışḳuñla ser-mest-i ḫarāb it
Ciger biryān u göz yaşın şarāb it
Şarāb-ı cām-ı ‘ışḳet ārzūyem
Zi-baḥr-i bī-girān yek ḳaṭre cūyem
Merā der-āteş-i sevdā fiken nīz
Ki nālem hemçü murġān-ı seḥer-ḫīz
Maḳāmī deh merā ender-ḫarābāt
Ne-şāyed çün menī-rā zühd ü tā‘āt
Şu dem kim ḫuşk olup leb ṭutıla dil
Şerīf aduñ dilümde virdüñ itgil
İrür cān murġını seyrān-gehine
Ezelden çün kemīnüñdür kemīne
Münīrüñ cānı şem‘ini ser-ā-ser
Cemālüñ mihri birle ḳıl münevver
Siyeh-rūdur egerçi ol be-ġāyet
Ḫudāyā luṭfuña yoḳdur nihāyet
Murād-ı men toyī ez-cümle ‘ālem
Ne-mī-dānem diger vallāhü a‘lem

In English

1. How wise and how mighty is God the Exalted, who made manifest the design of both worlds. (The couplet is in Persian.)

2. Through Him the whole world became visible, and through Him the form of Adam came into being. (Persian.)

3. By His bounty a handful of earth became worthy of reverence; by His grace the name of man came to be called "honoured". (Persian. The VT and Ü manuscripts read "kerd" instead of "geşt"; with that reading the sense is "He made a handful of earth revered".)

4. Into a single mote He placed thousands of suns, into a single drop thousands of seas. (Persian. Ersoy understands the couplet as "from one mote He created thousands of suns, from one drop thousands of seas"; the Persian phrase allows both "within a mote" and "from a mote".)

5. He is the All-Knowing, the Knower, the Ever-Living and the Mighty; the Eternal without beginning, the Powerful, the Self-Subsisting who sustains all things, and the All-Knowing. (The lines are built from the Arabic names of God.)

6. Both worlds stand in wonder at His wisdom; all hearts are likewise dizzy and bewildered because of Him.

7. The world from end to end is drowned in the sea of His grace; from west to east all are lost in wonder as they try to grasp His essence.

8. O Ever-Living, O All-Knowing, out of Your boundless generosity You make every heart the place on which Your gaze falls. (Persian. It rests on the idea that the heart is the place God looks upon.)

9. No price can ever be set on Your bounty; even the smallest thing becomes a pretext, that is, an occasion for it. (The words "bahā" (price) and "bahāne" (pretext) contain one another in sound. The couplet is missing in the VT manuscript.)

10. If Your grace arrives, it turns fire into a rose garden and makes a mote shine like the sun. (It recalls the story of the fire into which Abraham was thrown turning into a rose garden. The couplet is missing in the VT manuscript.)

11. The whole world is speaking of You and mentioning You; yet before Your wisdom they have all fallen dumb. (Persian.)

12. Your work is beyond the questions "how" and "why"; there is no confusion and no error in Your acts. (Persian.)

13. To one You open the road to Your court, another You lead wholly astray. (Persian.)

14. From the longing felt for You a radiance reaches every heart, whether it be the falcon of the holy realm or a dove. (Persian. Ersoy takes "the falcon of the holy realm" to mean Gabriel; the great and the small, falcon and dove, are set side by side.)

15. In the end You are the desire of all that exists; yet it is not known who will be accepted and who rejected. (Persian.)

16. The wind runs and circles the world, yet it has found no trace of union with You. ("Yiler", in its dictionary sense, means "runs, goes swiftly"; the phrase "yiler yil" plays on the repeated sound.)

17. Water, having made the ceaseless search for You its habit, walks on its face crying out. (The way water flows pressed against the ground, murmuring, is interpreted as searching and lament.)

18. However rebellious fire may look outwardly, it burns at every moment with the burning You give. ("Ser-keş", in its dictionary sense, means both "rebellious, headstrong" and "raising its head"; it also suits the rising of a flame.)

19. That is why earth spreads itself beneath the feet, so that in the end it may be happy in union with You.

20. Everyone is running about in search of You; I do not know whether they will find the road that leads to You. (Persian.)

21. If Your grace does not become my guide, woe to my head; a thousand hands of longing are upon my head. (Persian. The hand struck against the head in longing describes lamentation; Ersoy too glosses the phrase as "woe is me".)

22. For the sake of Your peerless greatness, Your oneness, Your might and Your majesty, (Persian.)

23. For the honour of that pure jewel, the Prophet, on whose head You placed the crown of "levlâk", (Persian. "Levlâk" is the first word of the saying, much cited in divan poetry, "Were it not for you, I would not have created the heavens".)

24. For the sake of the greatest Sıddîk, Abu Bakr, through whom the law of the Messenger was illumined, (Persian.)

25. For the sake of the greatest Fârûk, Umar, whose justice made the world rejoice, (The first line is Persian, the second Turkish.)

26. O God, for the sake of Uthman, for the sake of the age that passed with the Messenger,

27. For the sake of Ali, king of the brave, whom Your grace caused to be called "the lion of God",

28. For the sake of Hasan, light of the eye of the soul, whose command runs in the realm of both worlds,

29. For the sake of Husayn, king of the world, over whose sufferings we have all been stricken, (The couplet appears to be Persian; the edition gives no meaning for it, and the rendering is ours. It alludes to his martyrdom at Karbala.)

30. Ali, the ornament of God, that is Zayn al-Abidin, the king of kings who more than anyone came to know the mysteries like Haydar, that is Ali, (for his sake,)

31. For the sake of that Muhammad surnamed Bâkır, whose far-reaching generosities were abundant, (Persian.)

32. For the truthfulness of Imam Jafar, for his mastery in the sciences of mysteries, ("Sâdık" is both the quality of truthfulness and the surname of Imam Jafar.)

33. For the sake of Musa al-Kazim, to whom You granted every time the road to the Sinai of nearness, (Persian. Because the imam's name is Musa (Moses), Mount Sinai, where Moses spoke with God, is mentioned.)

34. For the honour of Ali son of Rıza, for the state in which he was through longing for Your beauty, (The text reads "‘Aliyy'ibnü Rıżā"; Ali al-Rida, the eighth of the twelve imams, must be meant.)

35. Takî of God, who is our leader and our guide on the path of love, (for his sake,)

36. For the sake of that pure-natured Nakî, the dust of whose threshold became a crown for heads, (Persian.)

37. For the sake of Hasan, also called Askerî, who is the lamp that lights the eye of the soul of the world, (The Ü manuscript reads "anuñ" instead of "Ḥasan".)

38. For the sake of Your sahibkıran, that is, the Mahdi of the end of time, (Persian. "Sahibkıran", in its dictionary sense, means "a great ruler favoured by fortune"; Ersoy understands the couplet as "the blessed king who guides to the right path at the end of time".)

39. Deliver me from the hand of the evil-natured self; because of it my heart is grieved and wounded. (Persian.)

40. Make my heart glad with Your sorrow, and make it flourish with the cup of selflessness. (Persian.)

41. With the wine of Your love make me drunk and ruined; make my liver roast meat and my tears wine.

42. My desire is the wine of the cup of Your love; from that shoreless sea I seek a single drop. (Persian.)

43. Cast me too into the fire of passion, so that I may lament like the birds that wake at dawn. (Persian.)

44. Give me a place in the tavern of ruin; ascetic piety and the show of worship do not suit one like me. (Persian. The harabat, the "tavern of ruin", is in divan poetry the place of the wine-house and of the rinds who have turned away from the world.)

45. At that last moment when the lip dries and the tongue is tied, make Your noble name my litany on my tongue. (The VT manuscript reads "ez-ber" for "virdüñ": "make Your name known by heart on my tongue".)

46. (Your grace) brings the bird of the soul to its pleasure ground, for since eternity it has been the lowliest servant lying in wait for You. ("Kemīn", in its dictionary sense, means "ambush", and "kemīne" "the lowliest, most worthless servant"; there is a pun between the two words. The subject of the line is not stated outright.)

47. Illumine from end to end the candle of Münîr's soul with the sun of Your beauty. (The pen name "Münîr" means "illuminating" and shares its root with "münevver" (illumined). "Mihr" means both sun and love.)

48. Though he is utterly black of face, that is, a sinner, O God, there is no end to Your grace.

49. In all the world my desire is You; I know of nothing else, and God knows best. (Persian; the closing "vallāhü a‘lem" is Arabic.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

Münîrî's divan opens with this forty-nine-couplet mesnevi. The mesnevi is the verse form in which each couplet rhymes within itself; because it lends itself to long narratives it is used for works that tell a story, but at the head of divans it is also chosen for the tevhid (praise of God's oneness) and the münacat (supplication). The poem is written in the "mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün fe‘ūlün" pattern of the hezec family of aruz (quantitative metre). Ersoy notes that Münîrî wrote both of his mesnevis in this pattern and that he shows little interest in the redif (refrain word) in his mesnevis. In its rhyme the poem is a rich field of examples: in his account of rhyme types Ersoy cites the sixth and forty-third couplets as examples of the kafiye-i müreddefe, the fourteenth and twenty-fifth as examples of rhyme with a vowelless final letter (mukayyed), the forty-sixth as rhyme with a voweled final letter (mutlak), and the first and thirty-first as examples of the kafiye-i müessese.

The poem is written in a mixture of Turkish and Persian. The twenty-seven couplets whose meaning Ersoy gives in his apparatus are Persian; there are also couplets, like the twenty-fifth, in which one line is Persian and the other Turkish. According to Ersoy this mesnevi is the first poem in all three manuscripts, the Vatican (VT), the Vienna (VY) and the Istanbul University copy made by Murad III (Ü). The ninth and tenth couplets are missing in VT, and from the eleventh couplet on the poem continues on another leaf because of a binding error. There is no record of to whom or when it was written.

The course of the mesnevi falls clearly into parts. The first fifteen couplets form the tevhid section, describing God's attributes, power and wisdom. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth couplet wind, water, fire and earth are named in turn. In the twentieth and twenty-first couplets the poet turns to his own helplessness. From the twenty-second to the thirty-eighth couplet comes a series of oaths and intercessions beginning with "for the sake of": God's attributes, the Prophet, the four caliphs and the twelve imams. The last eleven couplets are the petition proper; the poet asks to be delivered from his self, for the wine of love and for the remembrance of God's name at his last breath, and in the forty-seventh couplet he names himself with the pen name (mahlas) "Münīr".

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The leading idea of the tevhid section is that however much created beings speak of God, they cannot grasp His wisdom. In the eleventh couplet the whole world speaks of Him but falls dumb before His wisdom; in the seventh, from east to west all are lost in wonder as they try to grasp His essence. The contrast in the fourth couplet between mote and sun, drop and sea, is an example of antithesis (tezat) and hyperbole (mübalağa) used together. In the fourteenth couplet the falcon of the holy realm and the dove are placed side by side; in this way the poet says that longing for God reaches all, from the highest being to the smallest.

The four couplets beginning with the sixteenth are the most striking passage of the poem. The four elements of the old natural philosophy, wind, water, fire and earth, are shown one after another as lovers. Wind circles the world but finds no trace of union; water flows on its face crying out; fire, though it looks rebellious, burns with love of God; and earth spreads itself beneath the feet in order to attain union. The natural state of each element is interpreted as the state of a lover seeking God. This is the figure of fanciful aetiology (hüsn-i ta‘lil); naming the four elements together also creates a congruence of images (tenasüp). Because the word "ser-keş" in the eighteenth couplet describes both rebellion and the upward rise of a flame, it also comes close to double entendre (tevriye).

In the series of intercessions Münîrî combines the names and surnames of the imams with meaningful words. In the thirty-second couplet Imam Jafar's surname "Sâdık" is used together with the dictionary meaning of the word, "for his truthfulness". In the thirty-third couplet the name of Musa al-Kazim is joined to the phrase "the Sinai of nearness" by recalling Moses and Mount Sinai; this is an allusion (telmih). In the twenty-seventh couplet Ali, as both the fourth caliph and the first imam, links the two parts of the series. Thus the twelve imams, from Ali to the Mahdi, are named without omission between the twenty-seventh and thirty-eighth couplets.

The petition section uses familiar images of Sufi poetry. The phrase "ciğer biryān u göz yaşın şarāb" (make my liver roast meat and my tears wine) in the forty-first couplet brings roast meat and wine together as images of the drinking gathering; in the forty-third the poet wishes to lament like the birds of dawn. In the forty-fourth couplet his rejection of asceticism and the show of worship, and his request for a place in the tavern of ruin, carry the rind attitude of divan poetry into a supplication. The pairs "bahā / bahāne" in the ninth couplet and "kemīn / kemīne" in the forty-sixth show that the fondness for puns (cinas) emphasised by the TDV entry and by Ersoy is already present in this first poem. In the forty-seventh couplet the pen name "Münīr" and the word "münevver" come from the same root; bearing a pen name that means "illuminating", the poet asks that the candle of his own soul be lit by the light of God. The words "siyeh-rū" (black of face) that follow immediately set up an antithesis between light and darkness.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Other sources

  • Ersen Ersoy, same work, introduction, p. 6 (description of the mesnevis), pp. 9-10 (redif and rhyme).

Online sources