Münîrî, Muamma 3: The Name Hüseyin

Muamma 3 (name riddle) — Dür-i dendān şevḳına her dem

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

Münîrî's third muamma is a single couplet on the eye that turns into a sea from longing for pearl-like teeth; the edition gives its solution as "Hüseyin".

Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fe‘ilātün mefā‘ilün fe‘ilün

Dür-i dendān şevḳına her dem
Baḥr olursa ‘aceb mi dīde-i nem

In English

1. If, out of longing for your pearl-like teeth, my moist eye becomes a sea at every moment, is that any wonder? (Pearls come from the sea; the eye that longs for these pearls fills with tears and turns into a sea.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The third muamma (name riddle) of the edition is a single couplet in the metre "fe‘ilātün mefā‘ilün fe‘ilün"; the lines rhyme on "dem" and "nem". Among the muammas this metre is used only here. 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.

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

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet rests on the familiar link between pearl and sea. The Kubbealtı Lugatı explains "dendan" as tooth; "dür-i dendān" means pearl-like teeth. Since pearls come from the sea, it is no wonder that the eye longing for these pearls should weep until it becomes a sea. There is a clear congruence of images (tenasüp) among "dür" (pearl), "baḥr" (sea) and "nem" (moisture), and the second line, framed as a question, presents the result as self-evident.

The edition does not show how the riddle is solved. The Kubbealtı entry "dendan" also gives a second meaning: the tooth-like points of letters such as sin, be, te, se and nun in the Arabic alphabet. Since the name Ḥüseyn in the solution contains the letters sin and nun, the word "dendān" may point to these letters. As we cannot reliably derive the other letters of the name from the couplet, we record this only as a clue (our reading).