Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Varup ol şâhun der-i ikbâl ü ‘izzet-bahşına
Cân u dilden bende olup ideyin ben de karâr
Hak virürse feth olısardur senün devrüñde hep
Şark u garb u Hind ü Sind ile Habeş hem Zengibâr
İ’tibâr iy şeh bana ‘âlî-cenâbuñda bu kim
Âsitânun kullarından olınam bende şumâr

In English

1. Let me go to that shah's door, which bestows fortune and honour, and settle there, becoming his servant with heart and soul.

2. If God grants (you the throne), in your reign East and West, India and Sind, Abyssinia and Zanzibar will all be conquered.

3. O shah, let this be my honour in your lofty presence: that I be counted among the servants of your threshold.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

These three couplets belong to the first of the two qasidas Edirneli Nazmî wrote in praise of Prince Mustafa. Recep Hasar quotes the couplets in his thesis from pages 93, 96 and 100 of the edition of the divan published by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism; here they are arranged in the order of their pages in the divan. We were not able to reach the full qasida; the position of the couplets within it has been inferred from these page numbers. The metre is the "fâ’ilâtün fâ’ilâtün fâ’ilâtün fâ’ilün" pattern, and the rhyme is built on the sound "-âr" (karâr, Zengibâr, şumâr).

Meaning and Figures of Speech

According to Hasar, in the qasida the poet first describes his own troubles and the injustice of the heavens, and then asks for the prince's patronage. The first and third couplets are the words of this request: the poet wishes to go to the prince's door, "which bestows fortune and honour", to settle there as a servant and to be counted among the servants of his threshold. The second couplet belongs to the section of prayer and praise. The poet says that if God grants the throne to the prince, all lands from East to West, from India to Zanzibar, will be conquered in his reign. The listing of countries is a tradition of hyperbole in divan poetry that expresses the ruler's dominion over the world.

Historical Context

Hasar quotes the second couplet as an example of the poet's voicing the expectation that the prince would become sultan. This expectation agrees with the idea, widespread in the army and among the people before the prince's death in 1553, that Mustafa would be Süleyman's successor. According to Ziya Avşar, Nazmî's relationship with the prince was most probably formed in the sanjak of Manisa; the prince moved from Manisa to Amasya in 1541. Since the full text and the date of the qasida are unknown, it cannot be determined whether the poem was written in the Manisa period or the Amasya period. The elegy Nazmî wrote for Prince Mustafa is a separate article in this category.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Edirneli Nazmî, Dîvân, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı (e-book), p. 93, 96, 100 (as quoted in Hasar; we could not reach the e-book).

Academic studies

  • Recep Hasar, Türk Edebiyatı'nda Padişah ve Şehzade Mersiyeleri, MA thesis, Fatih Sultan Mehmet Vakıf Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, 2018, pp. 118-119. https://hdl.handle.net/11352/2746
  • Ziya Avşar, 16. yy Divan Edebiyatında Edirneli Nazmî ve Türkî-i Basit, PhD thesis, Gazi Üniversitesi, Ankara, 1998, p. 21 (as quoted in Hasar).

Online sources