Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef'ûlü fâilâtü mefâîlü fâilün. Fatîn's tezkire records no metre; the pattern was found by scanning the lines.

Cûlarla kûhsârda çağlardı kuhken
Zannetme kendi kendine ağlardı kûhken
Şîrînin acı sözlerini eyledikçe yâd
Zencîr-i eşke dağları bağlardı kûhken
Bâzâr-ı derd-i aşkda her bâr-ı kârını
Nakdîne-i sirişkle sağlardı kûhken
Dağlarca yâr içün elemi var iken yine
Nâr-ı elemle gönlünü dağlardı kûhken
Kûh-i belâda ben dahi giryân idim Nihâd
Zan itme kendi kendine ağlardı kûhken

In English

1. Ferhad the mountain-digger roared with the streams in the mountains; do not think he wept on his own.

2. Whenever he recalled Şîrîn's bitter words, he would bind the mountains with a chain of tears.

3. In the market of love's pain he paid for each of his loads in the coin of tears and made his business secure.

4. Though he had a mountain of grief for his beloved, he still seared his heart with the fire of sorrow.

5. Nihâd, on the mountain of affliction I too was weeping; do not think the mountain-digger wept on his own.

Literary and Historical Commentary

A Voice Beside Ferhad

The hero of the ghazal is Ferhad, called "kûhken" without his name ever being mentioned. The Persian "kûh-ken" means mountain-digger and is the established epithet in divan poetry of Ferhad, who cut through Mount Bîsütûn to win Şîrîn. The whole idea of the poem is built between the opening couplet (matla) and the closing couplet (makta). In the matla the poet takes the roar of the streams coming down the mountains for Ferhad's weeping and tells the reader "do not think he wept on his own". What this sentence means becomes clear only in the last couplet: Ferhad was not weeping alone, because the poet too was weeping with him "on the mountain of affliction". The second line of the matla is repeated in the last line with a small difference in spelling ("Zan itme" for "Zannetme") and closes the ghazal like a ring. For his specimen of Nihâd, whom he introduces as a "poet who makes people laugh", Fatîn picked a serious love poem; there is no trace of satire in it.

Mountain and Searing

The fourth couplet draws a pun (cinas) out of the ghazal's sound material: the lover who has sorrow "dağlarca", by the mountainful, "dağlar", sears his heart with fire. The noun dağ (mountain) and the verb dağlamak (to sear) tell, in a single line, of Ferhad's place and of his pain. The sound runs through the whole poem; the redif (refrain) is "-lardı kûhken", the rhyme is the "-ağ" in "çağ, ağ, bağ, sağ, dağ", and the rhyme words carry the material of Ferhad's story: mountains, streams, chains. In the second couplet the binding of the mountains with a "chain of tears" is a picture of the streams winding round the mountain slopes like chains; Ferhad's tears turn into the waters that bind the mountain.

The third couplet thinks of love as a marketplace. "Bâr-ı kâr" is both a load of work and a load of goods for sale; "nakdîne" is cash, payment in ready money. In this market Ferhad pays the price of each load in tears, in cash. Since the verb "sağlamak" is open to the senses both of securing a business and of balancing an account, the couplet can be read in two ways: tears are either a means of payment or a guarantee that makes the lover's load bearable.

Source

This is the only poem of Nihâd's to survive, and Fatîn Dâvud's Hâtimetü'l-Eş'âr alone preserves it; in the tezkire the ghazal comes before the record of the poet's life. In the edition the refrain at the end of the first line is spelled "kuhken", in the others "kûhken"; the edition's spelling has been kept in the original text. Nothing else has turned up from the small divan Fatîn mentions. The anthologist's warning about Nihâd and the years he spent between Cairo and Mecca are on the Nihâd Bey page.

Bibliography

Online sources