Murad II is the first Ottoman sultan whom the old sources clearly record as reciting poetry. He was born in Amasya in 1404, was sent back to Amasya at the age of twelve as sanjak governor (sanjak-bey) of the province of Rûm, and set out from this city when he was called to the throne in 1421. The sixteenth-century anthologists Sehî Beg, Latîfî and Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi begin with him when they list the poet sultans, and quote a few couplets of his. In modern sources, three ghazals bearing the pen name (mahlas) "Murâdî" have also been published under his name.

The two groups of poems are not equally reliable. The couplets without a pen name in the biographical anthologies of poets (tezkire) have been given to Murad II since the middle of the sixteenth century; the ghazals with the pen name rest on a late transmission and run the risk of confusion with Murad III, his descendant, who used the same pen name. The weight of this page is given to this distinction, to the six poems at hand and to the poetry gatherings Murad II held at his court. Each of the poems appears in this section on a separate page, with its original text, a modern Turkish rendering and commentary.

Life

Murad II was the son of Mehmed I (Çelebi Mehmed) and was born in Amasya in Zilhicce 806 (June 1404). According to the record of Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar, he was born and grew up in Amasya, went to Edirne after his father's accession, and in Rebîülevvel 818 (1415) returned as governor of Amasya together with his Amasyan teacher Şücâeddin İlyas Çelebi. In the years he spent in Amasya with his lalas (tutor-guardians), Sunkuroğlu Melik İsmail Bey and then Hamza Bey, the Samsun region was added to the Ottoman lands. When his father died in 824 (1421) he passed from Amasya to Bursa and took the throne; in 1444 he left the throne to his son Mehmed II, returned in the face of the danger that led to Varna, and reigned again from 1446 until his death. He died in Edirne on 1 Muharrem 855 (3 February 1451) and, in accordance with his will, was buried in his open-roofed tomb (türbe) in Bursa. The details of his life are told in Murad II: The Sultan Born in Amasya Who Took the Throne Twice, and Hüsameddin's record of his governorship of Amasya in the research article Sultân Murâd Hân.

Murad II in the Tezkires

Sehî Beg's Heşt Bihişt (945/1538), the first anthology of poets written in Anatolian Turkish, begins its second section (tabaka), devoted to sultans and princes, with Murad II. Sehî describes his character without reserve, with outspoken admiration:

Gâyet mertebede ayyâş ve nihâyet derecede evbâş, hoş-tab' nâzük-nihâd ve eş'âr dimege mu'tâd, eş'ârı vâfir ve nazma kâdir pâdişâh idi.

In English: He was a sultan exceedingly fond of pleasure and free in his manners, of pleasant nature and refined disposition, accustomed to reciting poetry, rich in verse and able in composition. Sehî then quotes one of the opening couplets (matla) that the sultan improvised in conversation, and two further couplets; of the matla he says "sehl-i mümteni", a saying that seems easy to make but whose like cannot be made.

Latîfî's anthology, dated 953 (1546), shows the same man in a somewhat different light. According to him Murad II was the first of the Ottoman sultans to recite poetry and to value the verse of poets, but "egerçi makûle-i şi'r kendülerinden nâdir sâdır oldı": poetry came from him only rarely. What mattered more was that in his time poetry and the art of prose found the esteem they deserved. Latîfî relates that the sultan uttered fitting lines of verse during conversation and drinking, and gives two couplets with the words "these two matlas". That Sehî says "eş'ârı vâfir" (his poems were plentiful) while Latîfî says "nâdir" (rarely) is an open contradiction between the two anthologists.

The anthology of Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi, dated 994 (1585-86), also names Murad II among the sultans; it writes of his attachment to scholars and men of merit, and of how he spent two days of each week with scholars and poets, sometimes having learned questions debated and sometimes holding poetic exchanges and conversation. It relates that about a month before his death a dervish told him of his approaching end, and that the sultan arranged a banquet and renewed his repentance in the presence of scholars and sheikhs. The two couplets Kınalızâde quotes are the same as Latîfî's, differing only in a few words.

The State of the Sources

None of the tezkires gives Murad II a pen name, and no pen name appears in any of the couplets they quote. Âşık Çelebi's Meşâirü'ş-Şuarâ, dated 976 (1568), gives a clear verdict on this point:

Selâtîn-i Âl-i Osmân'dan egerçi cümlesinden şi'r dimek menkûldur, ammâ Sultân Murâd'a gelince olanlarun eş'ârı şâyi' olduğından eksere mahmûldur. Ammâ ittifâk üzre evvel sâhib-i mahlas merhûmdur.

In English: It is reported that all the Ottoman sultans recited poetry; but since the poems of those up to Sultan Murad circulated widely, most of them are considered to have been ascribed (to them). By common consent, however, the first to have a pen name was the late Conqueror. The meaning of the words "şâyi'" and "mahmûl" in the middle of the sentence is open to debate in this context; the reading we give should not be considered certain. The last part of the verdict, however, is plain: in the mid-sixteenth century Mehmed II was known as the first Ottoman sultan to use a pen name.

Yet most of the texts mentioned today as Murad II's poems bear the pen name "Murâdî". Mustafa İsen, who wrote his entry in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü (Dictionary of Names in Turkish Literature), quotes three ghazals with the pen name Murâdî, a kıt'a and a matla from Sultanların Şiirleri, Şiirlerin Sultanları, which he published with A. F. Bilkan and T. I. Durmuş in 2012. The same entry states plainly that the old sources wished to see the Ottoman sultans as poets from the very beginning, and that for this reason 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; nor does the citation say from which manuscript anthologies (mecmua) the ghazals come.

The shared pen name makes matters harder still. Murad III (1546-1595) also wrote poems in Turkish and Persian under the pen name Murâdî, and Hüsameddin records that he too served as governor of Amasya as a prince, though this record conflicts with other sources. Gencay Zavotçu and Melike Aslıhan Ekşi state that a divan said to belong to Murad II turned out, after research, to be Murad III's; whether Murad II had a divan at all is still uncertain today. Kınalızâde's anthology shows the source of this confusion as well: since the work was written in the reign of Murad III, it opens with his entry, where ghazals with the pen name "Murâdî" abound, while Murad II's entry contains only two couplets without a pen name.

The poems at hand should therefore be divided into two grades. The three pieces in the tezkires are the soundest records, given to Murad II since the sixteenth century. The three ghazals with the pen name Murâdî, although published under Murad II's name, should be read as an attribution, because no manuscript source is shown, the pen name conflicts with Âşık Çelebi's verdict, and there is a possibility of confusion with Murad III. We present these ghazals with the question of attribution set out again on each poem's page.

Works

No divan, mesnevi or other literary work certainly belonging to Murad II is known. Zavotçu and Ekşi say that his poems are found in poetry anthologies of his own and later periods; but a list of these anthologies and a collected edition of the poems are not available to us. The texts recorded in his name in the sources amount to the six pieces mentioned below: from the tezkires a ghazal fragment and two matlas, and from the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü three ghazals. The "Kıt'a" and "Matla'" in İsen's entry are slightly differently read forms of the two pieces in the tezkires and have not been counted as separate poems.

His Gatherings and Literary Circle

Murad II's real place in literary history lies less in his own couplets than in the circle he built. According to Latîfî and Kınalızâde, the sultan gathered scholars and poets two days a week, appointed persons to lead the debate in each science, chose impartial judges among them and rewarded those who excelled. Latîfî recalls this order with longing, comparing it with the favouritism of his own time. According to Zavotçu and Ekşi these gatherings turned the palace at Edirne into a centre of literature and culture.

His article in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi names one by one the poets who presented their works to him or wrote in his name: Şeyhî, who presented to him the Hüsrev ü Şîrîn and the Harnâme; his teacher Ahmed-i Dâî; Ârif Ali, who presented the Dânişmendnâme; Cemâlî, who wrote Hümâ ve Hümâyûn in his name; Elvân-ı Şîrâzî, who translated the Gülşen-i Râz into Turkish; Devletoğlu Yûsuf, who presented the Vikāyenâme; and Kaygusuz Abdal, who often mentions his name in his poems. Sehî Beg also records that the sultan, to test Şeyhî, gave him Nizâmî's Penc Genc, that Şeyhî began his translation of Hüsrev ü Şîrîn and presented the first thousand or so couplets to him, and that Mevlânâ Şemsî and Mevlânâ Hassân were "among Sultan Murad's poets". According to the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, Mercimek Ahmed's translation of the Kâbusnâme was also made at his wish and contributed to the development of Turkish.

His Poems

The best-known piece preserved in the tezkires is the couplets "Sâkî getür getür yine dünki şarâbumı", which we publish as Ghazal Fragment 1. Asking the cupbearer for yesterday's wine and the instruments for music, the poet says that pleasure and delight have meaning only in life, and that one day no one will see even his grave. Sehî gives the two couplets together; Latîfî and Kınalızâde give only the first.

Couplet 1, quoted only by Sehî, begins with the line "Çalınur çengler ayalar karsılur" and tells a moment of a gathering in five verbs; Sehî counts it an example of "sehl-i mümteni". Couplet 2, found in Latîfî and Kınalızâde, "Gerçi kim haddüm degüldür bûseni kılmak dilek", is a matla in which the lover holds it beyond his place to ask the beloved for a kiss, yet leaves his wish to the insight of the one who understands.

Of the three ghazals with the pen name Murâdî, Ghazal 1, with the refrain "üstine", says that everyone is busy with some task while the lover is busy only with the beloved, and closes with the image of the point and the compass. Ghazal 2, with the refrain "şerh eylemez", treats the impossibility of telling the heart's state in any language; Zavotçu and Ekşi wrote a couplet-by-couplet commentary on it in 2023. Ghazal 3 opens with a dream, names Edirne, Bursa and Kaplıca, and ends with the sultan of the age falling captive to the sultan of the beauties. The poems of Murad III, who used the same pen name, appear separately on our site in the section Murâdî (Sultan Murad III).

Chronology

Zilhicce 806 (June 1404): Born in Amasya.

Rebîülevvel 818 (1415): Arrives as governor of Amasya with his teacher Şücâeddin İlyas Çelebi (according to Hüsameddin).

23 Cemâziyelâhir 824 (25 June 1421): Accession to the throne in Bursa.

August 1444: Leaves the throne to his son Mehmed II; the victory at Varna in the same year.

1446: Takes the throne again.

1 Muharrem 855 (3 February 1451): Dies in Edirne; buried in Bursa.

945 (1538): Sehî Beg's Heşt Bihişt; a matla and two couplets of Murad II.

953 (1546): Latîfî's anthology; two matlas of Murad II.

976 (1568): Âşık Çelebi's Meşâirü'ş-Şuarâ; the verdict that Mehmed II was the first sultan with a pen name.

994 (1585-86): The anthology of Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi; two couplets of Murad II.

2012: Publication of the ghazals with the pen name Murâdî in İsen, Bilkan and Durmuş's Sultanların Şiirleri, Şiirlerin Sultanları.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Official sources

  • Sehî Beg, Heşt Bihişt, ed. Halûk İpekten, Günay Kut, Mustafa İsen, Hüseyin Ayan, Turgut Karabey, Ankara: Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Türkiye, 2017 (e-book), p. 14, entry Sultân Murâd Hân-ı Gâzî. https://ekitap.ktb.gov.tr/Eklenti/56165,hest-bihistpdf.pdf

Books

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

Online sources