Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Ḥasret ü derd ile öldi çün Münīrī ḫaste-dil
Bārī bir kerre mezārına gel ey şem‘-i Çigil

In English

1. Since Münîrî of the sick heart has died of longing and grief, O candle of Çigil (beauty bright as a candle), at least come once to his grave.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The twelfth 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 "dil" and "Çigil". The muammas stand in the same order in VT and VY (VT 179b-180b, VY 151a-152b); since Ü breaks off after the 11th muamma, this couplet is absent from that manuscript.

The edition's heading gives the solution as "Murād"; Ersoy cites the name in his introduction as "Murad". Whose name it is is not stated.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet builds a scene common in divan poetry, the wish that the beloved should come to the lover's grave after his death. The poet speaks of himself in the third person: the one who has died is "Münīrī ḫaste-dil" (Münîrî of the sick heart). The Kubbealtı Lugatı explains "şem‘" as candle and notes that in Sufism the candle stands for the divine light and the moth for the lover's heart that longs to reach this light. The beloved is the candle; the dead lover takes the place of the moth.

The same scene occurs elsewhere in Münîrî's divan. The pen-name couplet of Turkish Ghazal 314 begins "Āḫir ol şem‘-i Çigil gelse mezāruma Münīr" (if at last that candle of Çigil should come to my grave, Münîr); the phrase "şem‘-i Çigil" also appears in the pen-name couplets of Turkish Ghazals 189 and 328 and in two Persian ghazals (fg 25, fg 103). The muamma carries this familiar image into a name riddle. The edition does not show the letter calculation; we cannot show how the name Murād is drawn from the couplet.

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