Münîrî, Muamma 11: Mehemmed Once More

Muamma 11 (name riddle) — Cām-ı la‘lüñ cür‘asıçün āḫir ey cān-ı cihān

Amasya05 Editorial Board • Editor: Mevlüt Erdem Öztürk • 01 October 2026 • Updated: 07 October 2026 • 3 min reading

Münîrî's eleventh muamma tells of a lover drinking his heart's blood for one sip from the ruby cup of the lip; the edition gives its solution as "Mehemmed".

Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün

Cām-ı la‘lüñ cür‘asıçün āḫir ey cān-ı cihān
Ḫūn-ı dil nūş itmek ile virürüz beñzer ki cān

In English

1. O soul of the world (beloved), for one sip from the cup of your ruby lip, it seems that in the end we shall give up our life by drinking the blood of our heart.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The eleventh muamma (name riddle) of the edition is a single couplet in the metre "fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün"; the lines rhyme on "cihān" and "cān". The muammas are found in all three manuscripts of the divan (VT 179b-180b, VY 151a-152b, Ü 63b-65b) in the same order; only in Ü are the 10th and 11th muammas transposed, and the 12th muamma and those after it are missing from Ü. For this reason the couplet stands tenth in the Ü manuscript.

The edition's heading gives the solution as "Meḥemmed". The same solution occurs in the 2nd muamma; Ersoy counts the name Mehemmed twice in the list in his introduction.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet is built from wine imagery that likens the beloved's lip to a wine cup. The Kubbealtı Lugatı explains "la‘l" as a precious stone of bright red colour and "cür‘a" as a sip and the last sip left at the bottom of a drinking vessel. "Cām-ı la‘l" is both a ruby cup and a red lip. To take a single sip from that lip the lover drinks the blood of his own heart; in the end this price will cost him his life.

The word "cān" occurs in the two lines with two different values: in the first, in the phrase "cān-ı cihān" (soul of the world), it addresses the beloved; in the second it is the life the lover will give. The congruence of images (tenasüp) among "cām" (cup), "cür‘a" (sip) and "nūş itmek" (to drink) ties the couplet to a scene of a drinking gathering. The edition does not show the letter calculation of the riddle; we cannot show how the name Meḥemmed is drawn from the couplet.