Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Tâlibe gûşe-i vahdet gibi mekteb olmaz
Perveriş eylemeğe aşk gibi âb olmaz

In English

1. For the seeker there is no school like the corner of unity; for nurturing (him) there is no water like love.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

It is the matla (opening couplet) of a ghazal. Both lines end with the refrain "olmaz" ("there is no"); the rhyme is the sound "-b" in "mekteb / âb" ("school / water"). Çınar cites the couplet as "Divan G305/1", that is, the first couplet of the 305th ghazal in the divan; the rest of the ghazal is not given in the article. The source does not state the metre.

The text is taken from Fatih Çınar's 2019 article introducing a treatise written at Nigârî's request; Çınar quotes the poems from A. Azmi Bilgin's edition of the divan.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet expresses two basic elements of the Sufi path through two likenings. In the first line "gûşe-i vahdet", the corner of unity, is likened to a school: the seeker's true education takes place not in the madrasa where books are read but in an inward corner where the unity of God is experienced. The word "gûşe" (corner) also evokes seclusion, withdrawal from the world. In the second line love is likened to the water that makes a sapling grow: "perveriş" means raising, nurturing, and shows that the couplet rests on an image of a plant.

Çınar notes that Nigârî adopted Ibn Arabi's doctrine of the unity of being (vahdet-i vücûd) and established a link between love and the experience of unity, and illustrates this thought with this couplet. There is a congruence of images (tenasüp) between "mekteb" (school) and "tâlib" (student, seeker), and between "âb" (water) and "perveriş" (nurture). The two lines of the couplet are built on the same pattern ("there is no ... like ..."); this parallelism presents unity and love as two conditions that complete each other.

Historical Context

Çınar writes that Nigârî built his Sufi personality on the principles of faith, worship and ethics, and regarded love as the first condition for reaching perfection. The remark of his spiritual guide İsmâil Şirvânî about him, "Mîr Hamza has annihilated his being in divine love; his guide is love", is recorded in İbnülemin's Son Asır Türk Şairleri. For the poet's literary personality see Nigârî: Poet and Works.

Bibliography

  • 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; the poem on p. 130. https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/803338

Online sources