Original Persian Text

Metre: mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün

Leb-i la‘l-i şeker-ḫāyet ki cān baḫşed Mesīḥā-rā
Resed her dem zi-enfāseş hezārān mürde iḥyā-rā
Ḫayāl-i çeşm-i ḫūn-rīzet be-şehr-i dil ki mī-āyed
Çonīn verzed ki der-‘ālem hemān Türkān-ı Yaġmā-rā
Maḳām-ı bendegī-i ū çi cāy-ı serv-i āzādest
Ki şāḫ-ı sidre mī-bāşed ġulām īn ḳadd-i bālā-rā
Be-meydān-ı Amāsiyye bi-yā Ḥāfız to ger ḫᵛāhī
Kenār-ı āb-ı Rükn-ābād u gül-geşt-i muṣallā-rā
Zi-gül-rūyān-ı sünbül-zülf heme eṭrāf-ı vey pür şod
Nesīm-i ṣubḥ ez-ān āyed be-her sūyeş temāşā-rā
Selām ez-gül-şen-i cennet ṣabā her dem ki mī-āred
Bered ṭavr-ı dil-ārāyī ez-īn Firdevs-i a‘lā-rā
Ez-ān ber-evc-i īn çarḫ-ı muḳarnes ṣaf zenend her dem
Teferrüc-gāh u manẓar şod çonīn ḥūrī-i ḥūrā-rā
Ṣafā-yı Cennetü’l-me‘vā der-īncā şod Münīr āḫir
Ki ez-rūy-ı feraḥ-baḫşeş tecellīhā resed mā-rā

In English

1. Your sugar-chewing ruby lip grants life to the Messiah, that is, to Jesus; from its breaths, at every moment, resurrection reaches thousands of the dead. (There is an allusion to Jesus raising the dead with his breath; the beloved's lip is held to be the source even of that breath.)

2. When the image of your bloodthirsty eye comes into the city of the heart, it does in the world what the Turks of Yaġmā do, that is, it plunders the heart. ("Yaġmā", in its dictionary sense, is the name of a Turkic tribe and in Persian also means plunder, pillage; Ersoy understands the couplet as the image of the eye behaving like the Yaġmā Turks.)

3. How could the free cypress attain the rank of being his servant? Only the bough of the Sidre tree can be a slave to this lofty stature. (In poetry the cypress is called "āzād", that is, free; an antithesis is drawn between being a servant and being free. The Sidre, in its dictionary sense, is the Sidretü'l-müntehâ, the lote tree in the highest heaven.)

4. O Hâfız, if you want the banks of the Rüknâbâd stream and the rose-strolls of the Musallâ, come to the square of Amasya. (The Rüknâbâd and the Musallâ are famous pleasure grounds of Shiraz, the city of Hâfız. The second line of the couplet is Hâfız's own.)

5. Every side of it, that is, of Amasya, is filled with rose-faced beauties whose hair is like hyacinth; that is why the morning breeze comes to gaze on all its sides. (Ersoy too understands "it" as Amasya.)

6. Whenever the morning breeze (saba) brings greetings from the rose garden of Paradise, it takes from here to Firdevs, the highest Paradise, a heart-adorning grace. (That is, in beauty Amasya serves as a model for Paradise. Ersoy too understands the couplet along these lines.)

7. Because this place is such a promenade and spectacle for the dark-eyed houris, the houris line up at every moment on the summit of this tiered heaven. ("Çarḫ-ı muḳarnes", in its dictionary sense, means the sky like a dome worked in tiers; "ḥūrā" means dark-eyed.)

8. O Münîr, at last the delight of the Paradise of Me'vâ has come true here, for from its joy-giving face manifestations of light reach us. ("Its" may refer to Amasya or to the beloved. "Cennetü'l-me'vā", in its dictionary sense, means "the garden of refuge" and is one of the names of Paradise; "tecellī", in its dictionary sense, means appearing, shining forth.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is an eight-couplet ghazal (gazel) written in Persian; in the edition it is the second of the Persian ghazals (fg 2). The metre is "mefâ‘îlün mefâ‘îlün mefâ‘îlün mefâ‘îlün". The refrain (redif) is the suffix "-rā", and the rhyme is the sound "-ā": Mesīḥā, iḥyā, Yaġmā, bālā, muṣallā, temāşā, a‘lā, ḥūrā, mā. In his list of refrains Ersoy shows this ghazal, together with the first, as having the redif "-ra". The poem is found in the Vatican (VT 61b) and Vienna (VY 46a) manuscripts. Ersoy identifies this ghazal as one of the seventeen Persian ghazals that are nazires (response poems) to Hâfız of Shiraz; the TDV article likewise records that seventeen Persian ghazals are nazires to Hâfız.

Hâfız's ghazal in the same metre and with the same rhyme and refrain "-ā-rā" is the famous ghazal that opens with the line "Eger ān Türk-i Şīrāzī be-dest āred dil-i mā-rā". The second line of Münîrî's fourth couplet, "Kenār-ı āb-ı Rükn-ābād u gül-geşt-i muṣallā-rā", occurs word for word in the second couplet of that ghazal. Ersoy too notes that this line belongs to Hâfız.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal has a two-part structure. The first three couplets are a conventional praise of beauty: the beloved's lip is the source of the breath that gives life to the Messiah, the image of the bloodthirsty eye plunders the city of the heart, and before the beloved's stature not the cypress but only the bough of the Sidre tree can be a servant. After the fourth couplet the object of praise shifts to a city, Amasya. The fourth couplet, addressed to Hâfız, is the point of this transition; the couplets that follow say that Amasya is full of beauties, that the morning breeze comes to gaze on it, that Paradise takes its heart-adorning grace from here, and that the houris line up on the summit of heaven to look at it. The pen-name couplet closes this praise by saying that the delight of the Paradise of Me'vâ has come true "here". The site's article on the poet also refers to this ghazal as the Persian ghazal that prefers Amasya to the famous pleasure grounds of Shiraz.

The most striking aspect of the ghazal is the relationship it builds with Hâfız. In his own ghazal Hâfız praises Shiraz by asking the cupbearer for wine and naming the banks of the Rüknâbâd and the strolls of the Musallâ, "which you will not find in Paradise". Münîrî takes the same line and turns it on Hâfız himself: Hâfız, if he wants these two pleasure grounds of Shiraz, should come to the square of Amasya. The comparison of Amasya with the Paradises of Firdevs and Me'vâ in the following couplets can also be read as an answer to the comparison Hâfız draws between Paradise and Shiraz. The expression "Türkān-ı Yaġmā" in the second couplet likewise recalls the words "Türkān ḫᵛān-ı yaġmā-rā" in the same ghazal of Hâfız; Münîrî adapts these two words to the image of the bloodthirsty eye plundering the city of the heart.

As for figures of speech, in the first couplet the allusion to Jesus raising the dead creates a congruence of images (tenasüp) with the words "cān", "iḥyā" and "mürde". In the third couplet the antithesis between the cypress's epithet "āzād" and the words "bendegī" and "ġulām" lifts the beloved's stature to a height even the cypress cannot reach. In the sixth and seventh couplets the words Paradise, Firdevs, houri and heaven form a field of congruent images, and the beauty of the city is raised by hyperbole up to the sky.

Historical Context

To whom and on what occasion the ghazal was written is not known. In Münîrî's divan the name of Amasya appears explicitly in this Persian ghazal. Ersoy cites Münîrî's scattering of some of Hâfız's lines among his own poems as a feature that shows how deeply he was influenced by him, and he gives this couplet as an example of couplets whose second lines belong to Hâfız. It is known that Münîrî spent almost his whole life in Amasya and took part in the gatherings of Bayezid II and Şehzade Ahmed (Prince Ahmed) in Amasya; but the sources do not show any link between this ghazal and one of those gatherings.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Other sources

Online sources