Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün

Beñlerüñdür noḳṭa-i cīm-i cemāl
K’itdi ḫᵛānā ḫaṭtuñı bī-ḳīl ü ḳāl
Ḫālüñ ile ḫaṭṭuñı gören didi
Bī-nuḳaṭ ḫaṭ lā-büd olmaz ber-kemāl

In English

1. Your moles are the dot of the letter cîm in the word "cemâl" (beauty); it is they that have made your down (your script) legible, leaving no room for talk or dispute. Whoever saw your mole and your down said: Script without dots can surely not be perfect.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a four-line tuyugh; in the edition it is the fifteenth of the tuyughs (tyğ 15). The metre is "fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün". The rhyme is the sound "-āl": cemāl, ḳāl, kemāl; the third line ("didi") is unrhymed. The quatrain has no redif. It is found in all three manuscripts (VT 178b, VY 150a, Ü 62b). It is not known for whom or when it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The tuyugh is built from beginning to end in the language of the art of writing. The Kubbealtı explains "cim" as the fifth letter of the Arabic alphabet; the word "cemāl" (beauty) begins with this letter, and the letter cîm has one dot. The poet likens the beloved's moles to this dot: if beauty is a word, the mole is the dot of its first letter. The Kubbealtı explains "hâl" as a small dark speck on the body, a mole.

The word "ḫaṭ" is again double in sense: the Kubbealtı gives it both the sense script and the sense of the beard and moustache newly appearing on the young. The moles turn the down into a legible script; and in the last line a verdict is spoken from the mouth of one who has seen this: script without dots cannot be perfect. This congruence of images, with its double entendre between mole and dot, down and script, carries the verdict of the tuyugh. The TDV's record that Münîrî himself states that he wrote in all kinds of calligraphy allows the writing terms in this quatrain to be set beside the poet's own craft (our reading).

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