Münîrî, Persian Tuyugh 9: Drunk on the Cup of Love

Persian Tuyugh 9 — Her ki şod mest-i ḫarāb-ı cām-ı ‘ışḳ

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

In Münîrî's Persian tuyugh, whoever is ruined by love's cup gains a bad name, and the poet prays that no one be, like him, parted from the beloved's hair and without patience.

Original Persian Text

Metre: fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün

Her ki şod mest-i ḫarāb-ı cām-ı ‘ışḳ
Çün dil-i mā mī-şeved bed-nām-ı ‘ışḳ
Kes me-bādā hemçü men bī-zülf-i to
Bī-dil ü bī-ṣabr u bī-ārām-ı ışḳ

In English

1. Everyone who becomes drunk and ruined with the cup of love gains, like our heart, a bad name because of love. Let no one, like me, be parted from your hair, and be heartless, patience-less and restless because of love. (Ersoy understands the quatrain in the same way; he does not render the word "ḫarāb", ruined, separately.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a four-line tuyugh written in Persian; in the edition it is the ninth of the tuyughs (tyğ 9). Ersoy says that two of Münîrî's twenty-one tuyughs are in Persian; the TDV gives the same count. These two Persian quatrains are tuyughs 9 and 10. The metre is "fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün". The redif is "‘ışḳ" (love) and the rhyme is the sound "-ām": cām, bed-nām, ārām; the third line ("to") is unrhymed. The word "ışḳ" in the last line is printed in the edition without the sign for the letter ayn; the text is given as in the edition. The quatrain is found in all three manuscripts (VT 177b, VY 149a, Ü 62a). The meaning given in English rests on Ersoy's Turkish rendering in the apparatus and on the original text. It is not known for whom or when it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first two lines describe the reputation that love brings the lover. The Kubbealtı explains "mest" as drunk, beside oneself, and "bednam" as one whose name has been sullied. There is a congruence of images (tenasüp) between the cup of love, drunkenness and being "ḫarāb" (ruined, wretched). Everyone who drinks from love's cup gets a bad name, like the poet's own heart; the lover says this not as a complaint but as the inevitable result of love. Linking a bad name with love recalls the stance of the rind, the libertine who scorns reputation (our reading).

The last two lines take the form of a prayer with the word "me-bādā", may it not be: may no one be parted from the beloved's hair as the poet is. In the sequence "bī-dil ü bī-ṣabr u bī-ārām" the same negative prefix is repeated three times; this list of what the lover has lost resembles the sequence "ṣabr u ārām u ḳarār" in tuyugh 1. That the redif is "‘ışḳ" ties every judgement of the quatrain to love.