Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Her kişi dünyâda meşgûl oldı bir kâr üstine
Sana meşgûl olmışuz biz kâr-ber-kâr üstine
Lâlezârun seyrin eyler bâğ-ı dehre aldanan
Bize seyretdür cemâlün çeşm-i hûn-bâr üstine
Âşık olan kimsede nâmûs u âr itmez karâr
Dökseler bir katre âbı mahv olur nâr üstine
Taşra çıkma noktayı devr eyle ey sâhib-kemâl
Dest-i kudretdür havâle çünki pergâr üstine
Ey Murâdî oldı her bir ilmün üstine alîm
Anun içündür mukarrib geçdi ebrâr üstine

In English

1. In this world everyone has become busy with some task; we, leaving task upon task, have become busy with you alone.

2. The one deceived by the garden of the world gazes at the tulip bed; our gazing is at the beauty of your face, with eyes that shed tears of blood.

3. In one who is a lover, honour and shame do not stay; if a drop of water is poured on fire, the drop vanishes.

4. O possessor of perfection, do not go outside the point, turn around it; for it is the hand of power that is entrusted with the compass (that turns the compass).

5. O Murâdî, he became learned above every science; that is why, as one brought near (to God), he passed above the righteous (ebrâr). Who is meant by "he" in the couplet is not clear; it may be the beloved or the poet himself.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The Question of Attribution

This ghazal with the refrain "üstine", in which everyone is busy with some task and the lover only with the beloved, reaches us in Murad II's name through the entry Mustafa İsen wrote in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü (Dictionary of Names in Turkish Literature); it was taken there from the book Sultanların Şiirleri, Şiirlerin Sultanları published by İsen, Bilkan and Durmuş in 2012. The citation does not say from which manuscript anthology (mecmua) the ghazal was taken. The sixteenth-century anthologists Sehî, Latîfî and Kınalızâde record two or three couplets without a pen name for Murad II; they do not know this ghazal or the pen name "Murâdî". The same entry states that the old sources wished to see the Ottoman sultans as poets from the very beginning, and that some of the examples given for Murad II do not, philologically, carry the features of fifteenth-century language; which examples are meant is not stated.

A second difficulty is the shared pen name. Murad III (1546-1595) was also a sultan who wrote poems in Turkish and Persian under the pen name "Murâdî". Gencay Zavotçu and Melike Aslıhan Ekşi point out that a divan said to belong to Murad II turned out, after research, to be Murad III's. Âşık Çelebi too, in his anthology dated 976 (1568), writes that by common consent the first Ottoman sultan to have a pen name was Mehmed II (the Conqueror). When these records are set side by side, the attribution to Murad II of the ghazals ending in "Murâdî" remains a tradition. We present the text with this reservation.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The redif (refrain word) of the ghazal is "üstine" (upon, above), and the rhyme is the sound "-âr" in "kâr, hûn-bâr, nâr, pergâr, ebrâr". The redif carries a different burden of meaning in each couplet: task upon task, gazing upon the eye, water upon fire, the compass entrusted, passing above the righteous. This variety is the real craft of the ghazal. In the matla (opening couplet) the word "kâr" (task) occurs twice; in the first it is an ordinary occupation, in the second, with "kâr-ber-kâr", it is the abandoning of all tasks for a single one.

In the second couplet a congruence of images (tenasüp) is built through colour between the tulip garden and the eye shedding tears of blood. Those deceived by the world gaze at red tulips; the lover too sees red, but it is the bloody tears flowing from his own eye, and what he gazes at is the beloved's face. The third couplet rests on an implied simile (teşbih-i zımnî): love is a fire, and honour and shame evaporate like a drop of water falling on it. In this way the lover's not fearing reproach is presented like a law of nature.

The fourth couplet is the most obscure place in the ghazal. There is a congruence of images between the words point, compass and devir (turning): one leg of the compass stands fixed at the point while the other turns around it. The address "ey sâhib-kemâl" (o possessor of perfection) is directed at a perfected person or at a traveller on the spiritual path. The lines can be read as saying that one should turn without leaving the centre, and that what governs the turning is not man but the "dest-i kudret" (the hand of God's power); this Sufi reading arises from the words of the text, and no commentary on this couplet is found in the sources. If one considers that in divan poetry the point is also used for the beloved's small mouth, the couplet can be understood in the direction of love as well.

The words "mukarrib" and "ebrâr" in the final couplet recall the Qur'anic terms "ebrâr" (the righteous) and "mukarrebûn" (those brought near to God). The spelling in the source is "mukarrib", and we have not altered the word. The couplet says that one who knows every science has thereby risen even above the righteous, but it does not say who the subject is. The pen name stays in the couplet as a form of address.

Form

The ghazal has five couplets and is in the remel metre of aruz (quantitative metre): "fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilün". The citation names no metre; the pattern was arrived at by our own syllable-by-syllable scansion. Neither the addressee nor the occasion of the ghazal is known. Murad II's couplets preserved in the tezkires and the general state of the sources are set out on the page Murâdî (Sultan Murad II): Poet and Works, while Murad III, who used the same pen name, is treated in the section Murâdî (Sultan Murad III).

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Books

  • Mustafa İsen, "Murâdî, II. Murâd, Sultân Murâd-ı Sânî bin Çelebi Sultân Mehmed-i Evvel", Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, 2014 (updated 2020), "Eserlerinden Örnekler" (quoted from Mustafa İsen, A. F. Bilkan, T. I. Durmuş, Sultanların Şiirleri, Şiirlerin Sultanları, Istanbul: Kapı Yayınları, 2012, pp. 23-26). https://teis.yesevi.edu.tr/madde-detay/muradi-ii-murad-sultan-muradi-sani

Online sources