Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilün

Bezm-i rindâne yetür behr-i Hudâ ey sâkî
Çekelim bâdeyi bâ–sît u sadâ ey sâkî
İdelim rûhına mahbûb-ı Hudânın salavât
Âl-i emcâdına hem hayr du‘â ey sâkî

In English

1. O cupbearer, for God's sake bring (the wine) to the gathering of the rinds; let us drink the wine openly, with name and fame, with sound and voice.

2. Let us send blessings (salavât) to the soul of God's beloved (the Prophet Muhammad); O cupbearer, let us also offer good prayers for his glorious family.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The second cupbearer rubai continues where the first left off. In the first quatrain the wine was drunk in the name of God and the soul was sacrificed to that name; here the same gathering is completed with blessings on the Prophet and a prayer for his family. Classical divans usually open with a tevhid (praise of God's unity), a münacat (prayer) and a naat (praise of the Prophet). Nigârî does not build this sequence out of separate kasides but fits it into two short quatrains: first the name of God, then the "mahbûb-ı Hudâ", the Beloved of God, that is, the Prophet, and last the "âl-i emcâd", his glorious family. It is possible to see this order as a deliberate opening scheme, but the poet nowhere says so explicitly.

The mention of the Ehl-i Beyt, the Prophet's family, in the fourth line is familiar to readers of Nigârî. The poet expresses his love for the Prophet's household in many places in his divan, sometimes in harsh language, and this stance was decisive in his dispute with the ulema of Amasya. Here, however, that love appears in its simplest form, as a line of prayer.

The phrases "bezm-i rindâne" (the gathering of the rinds) and "bâ-sît u sadâ" (with fame and voice) carry on the idea of calling the name aloud from the first rubai. "Sît" means fame, renown in Persian and "sadâ" means sound; together they describe wine drunk not in secret but in a way everyone can hear. In divan poetry the rind is the lover with a clean heart who cares nothing for outward appearances or blame; to be a rind in the gathering means to risk the reproach of the zealot (zâhid).

The rhyme "Hudâ, sadâ, du‘â" and the refrain "ey sâkî" (O cupbearer) bind the two quatrains together, and the ramal pattern is the same as in the first. The third line, as in a rubai, goes unrhymed and ends on the word "salavât".

Bibliography

Online sources