Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ûlü Mefâ‘îlü Mefâ‘îlü Fe‘ûlün

Mest eyleyen ‘âşıkları sahbâ-yı ezeldir
Zînet viren ‘işretine dildâr-ı güzeldir
Ferhâd sözin söyleme sûzişle ki ey dil
Dâğlar çekilür sîneme yaramı tezeldir
Her yerde makãmâtı beyân eylemek olmaz
Sığmaz bu makãma bu makãm özge mahaldir
Dil-teşne[y]em ol bâde-i âlâm-ı nigâra
Âlâm ne her cür‘ası bin câna bedeldir
Kim gördi elim bâdesiz âyâ bu ne bâde
Âyâ ne dükenmez ne usanmaz bu ne eldir
Vâ‘iz sözni fehm itmedügin sen de bilürsin
Nâdân ile ey dil bu ne bahs ü ne cedeldir
Agyâr sözin söylemen Allâh'ı seversez
Baş ağrısıdır meclis-i rindâna haleldir
Dîvânelerin mecma‘ı sahrâ-yı tevellâ
Hem-demleri nây ile gazâlâne gazeldir
Bir lahza ırağ olmadın ey Mîr Nigârî
Sahrâ-yı talebden bu ne himmet ne ‘ameldir

In English

1. What makes lovers drunk is the wine of pre-eternity; what adorns their feast is the lovely beloved.

2. O heart, do not tell Farhad's tale with burning; brands like mountains are drawn upon my breast, my wound is fresh. ("Tezel" has been taken to mean fresh; that is a guess.)

3. The stations (of the mystic path) cannot be expounded in every place; this station does not fit into this place, its place is elsewhere.

4. I thirst for that wine of the beloved's pains; pains, what of them, each draught of it is worth a thousand souls.

5. Who has seen my hand without wine? What wine is this that never runs out, what hand is this that never tires?

6. You too know that the preacher has not understood the word; O heart, what argument, what dispute is this with the ignorant?

7. If you love God, do not repeat the rivals' words; they are a headache and a blight on the gathering of the rinds.

8. The meeting place of madmen is the desert of tevellâ (love of the Prophet's family); their companion is the ghazal sung gazelle-like to the reed flute.

9. O Mîr Nigârî, not for a moment have you strayed from the desert of seeking; what resolve, what devotion this is.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Of all the ghazal's expressions the most particular is "sahrâ-yı tevellâ", in the eighth couplet. Tevellâ means taking the Prophet's family, the Ahl al-Bayt, as one's friends, and it is usually named together with its counterpart teberrâ, keeping apart from those hostile to them. Nigârî's attachment to this love is known from elsewhere: an Arabic treatise defending the Ahl al-Bayt was written at his request, and in the opening couplet of one of his poems in praise of the Prophet he says "Gönlümdedir ol nâr-ı tevellâ-yı Muhammed", in my heart is that fire of devotion to Muhammad. "Deşt-i tevellâ" is also a recurring image in his syllabic poems. In this ghazal tevellâ becomes a desert: the madmen of love gather not in Majnun's wilderness but in the wilderness of love for the Prophet's house. In the same couplet "gazâlâne gazel" sets "gazâl", gazelle, beside "gazel", the poetic form; the ghazal sung to the reed flute is shy and graceful as a gazelle.

The third couplet counsels the keeping of secrets and plays on three senses of the word "makam". In Sufism it is a station the seeker passes through, in music a melodic mode, and in everyday speech a place. Saying that the stations reached cannot be recounted in every company, the poet adds that this station belongs to "another place". The sixth and seventh couplets carry the same attitude into dealings with the preacher and the rivals: there is no use arguing with the ignorant about something the preacher has failed to understand, and the rival's words only give the rinds a headache.

The ghazal opens with the wine of pre-eternity, understood as the first drink of love taken at the primordial covenant, when souls answered "Yes" to God's question "Am I not your Lord?"; the lover's drunkenness comes from there, and every wine drunk in this world is a memory of that first cup. By the fourth couplet this drink has become a wine of pain, yet each draught is worth a thousand lives. The reference to Farhad in the second couplet rests on two senses of "dağ": Farhad cut through mountains, while upon the lover's breast "dağlar", burn scars, are being drawn. The rhyme word "tezel" remains obscure; it may be connected with Azerbaijani "teze", fresh.

Bibliography

  • Nigârî, Nigârî Dîvânı, ed. A. Azmi Bilgin, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Kütüphaneler ve Yayımlar Genel Müdürlüğü, 2017 (e-book, Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 482), poem 162, pp. 103-104. https://ekitap.ktb.gov.tr/TR-194361/nigari-divani.html
  • Fatih Çınar, "Nakşî-Hâlidî Şeyhi Hamza Nigarî'nin İsteğiyle Yazılan Bir Ehl-i Beyti Müdafaa Risalesi: Risâle fî Ta'n li-men Hâlefe Ali Radıyallahu Teâlâ Anh", Tokat Gaziosmanpaşa Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, VII/1, 2019, pp. 125-150. https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/803338

Online sources