Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâ’ilâtün Fâ’ilâtün Fâ’ilâtün Fâ’ilün

Bü’l-’aceb bir hâdise kim unudulmayup ebed
Söylene efvâhda yıllarla tâ yevmü’l-va’îd

In English

1. Such a strange and astonishing event that, never forgotten, it will be spoken of on every tongue for years until the Day of Judgement.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This single couplet belongs to one of the chronogram verses (tarih kıt'ası) Edirneli Nazmî composed on the deaths of Prince Mustafa and of the son who was killed after him. Recep Hasar states that Nazmî composed several chronograms for the prince and his son, and quotes only this couplet from this kıt'a, from page 3960 of the edition of the divan. We were not able to reach the full kıt'a or its chronogram line; it could therefore not be determined to which event, the death of the prince or of his son, the chronogram refers. The metre fits the "fâ’ilâtün fâ’ilâtün fâ’ilâtün fâ’ilün" pattern; this identification is our own.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet conveys the magnitude of the event through a memory reaching to the end of time: the strangling of the prince is so astonishing an event that it will be spoken of until the Day of Judgement ("yevmü'l-va‘îd", the day that was threatened). "Bü'l-‘aceb" (father of wonders, most strange) is an exclamation of astonishment cast in an Arabic pattern. The words "ebed" (eternity) and "yevmü'l-va‘îd" form a contrast by saying that an event in the transient world will be remembered until eternity. Unlike the measured language of Nazmî's elegy, this couplet openly acknowledges the public echo of the event.

Historical Context

According to Hasar, after the prince was strangled in Karaman and his son was also killed, Nazmî composed chronograms for both the prince and his son, and in this kıt'a he says that the strangling would not be forgotten for years. That the poet recalls the prince's death in these words in spite of his close relationship with Rüstem Pasha is a circumstance to which Hasar and Fuad Köprülü draw attention. The couplet's prediction seems to have been borne out from the time of its writing to the present: the death of Prince Mustafa is remembered as the event after which the most elegies were written. Nazmî's elegy is a separate article in this category; the other elegies are described in our article Elegies for Prince Mustafa.

Bibliography

  • Edirneli Nazmî, Dîvân, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı (e-book), p. 3960 (as quoted in Hasar; we could not reach the e-book).
  • Recep Hasar, Türk Edebiyatı'nda Padişah ve Şehzade Mersiyeleri, MA thesis, Fatih Sultan Mehmet Vakıf Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, 2018, pp. 119-120. https://hdl.handle.net/11352/2746

Online sources