Nisâyî was a poet, apparently of the sixteenth century, who wrote two elegies on the killing of Şehzade Mustafa (Prince Mustafa) in 1553. There is no information whatever about her life in the biographical anthologies of poets (tezkire) or other biographical sources. The pen name and the feeling of the elegies have led scholars to conclude that she was a woman poet; although widely accepted, this view is an inference and has not been confirmed by any document. She is one of three poets known to have written more than one elegy for Prince Mustafa; the others are Kara Fazlî, with two known elegies, and Sirâcî, with three.

Nisâyî's connection with Amasya is made through Prince Mustafa, the subject of her elegies. The prince was sanjak governor (sanjak-bey) of Amasya from 1541 to 1553, and when he was killed he had left Amasya to join the Persian campaign. There is no information that Nisâyî was ever in Amasya. The large place her elegies give to the grief of the prince's mother has suggested that she may have belonged to the circle of the prince or of his mother; this possibility is discussed below together with its sources.

Life and Identity

It was Mehmed Çavuşoğlu who introduced Nisâyî to literary history. In his 1978 article "16. Yüzyılda Yaşamış Bir Kadın Şair: Nisâyî" he proposed, on the basis of the pen name and the womanly feeling of the poems, that she was a woman poet, and he published her two elegies for Prince Mustafa in his article "Şehzade Mustafa Mersiyeleri", which appeared in 1981-1982. From the treatment of Mahidevran Sultan's feelings in the second elegy and the recollection of the sultan's younger days, Çavuşoğlu thinks that the poet may have been an elderly person from the circle of the prince or of his mother. On the basis of errors of language in the poems, the same scholar concludes that Nisâyî had not received a formal education.

According to the entry in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, Nisâyî's name also occurs in the Pervâne Bey Mecmuası, an anthology compiled in the sixteenth century. In this great anthology of response poems a ghazal beginning "Dil gamuñdan gayrı cânâ dahi mihmân istemez", written by a poet with the pen name Nisâyî as a nazire (response poem) to Şeyhî, is recorded. The author of the entry, Yunus Kaplan, infers from the ghazal's being a response to Şeyhî, from the anthology's having been compiled in the sixteenth century and from the two elegies under the same pen name having been composed for Prince Mustafa that Nisâyî was a poet of the fifteenth or sixteenth century. It is possible that the ghazal belongs to the poet of the elegies, but it is also possible that the same pen name was used by two different people. Nisâyî's dates of birth and death, home town and family are unknown.

The State of the Sources

All the information about Nisâyî rests on two elegies and one ghazal. The view that she was a woman poet is drawn from the pen name, which carries the meaning "belonging to women, womanly", and from the feeling of the poems; the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü adopts this view and counts Nisâyî among the women poets of the sixteenth century. Recep Hasar too refers to Nisâyî as a woman poet in his thesis. Nevertheless, a pen name alone is no proof of gender, and no contemporary source introducing the poet is known. Nor is the speaking voice the same everywhere in the poems: in the seventh stanza of the first elegy the words suddenly pass into the mouth of the prince. Çavuşoğlu's interpretation, which places the poet in the circle of Mahidevran Sultan, therefore stands as the most reasonable explanation, but it is not certain.

Her Poetry

Both of Nisâyî's elegies are murabbas in the metre "fâ’ilâtün fâ’ilâtün fâ’ilâtün fâ’ilün". The first has nine stanzas, each ending with the refrain "İy şeh-i bî-şefka n’itdi sana Sultân Mustafâ" (O pitiless shah, what did Sultan Mustafa do to you). The second has ten stanzas, and its refrain alternates between the phrases "Merhametsüz şâh-ı ‘âlem" and "Bî-terahhum şâh-ı ‘âlem". The last stanza of the two poems is the same: "Bu Nisâyî derdmend feryâd idüp kan ağladı". Hasar notes that among the elegies for sultans and princes, all those written in murabba form were written for Prince Mustafa.

Nisâyî's elegies are among the poems for Prince Mustafa that reproach the sultan most openly. Çavuşoğlu notes that Sâmî and Nisâyî openly condemn the sultan. In the first elegy the sultan is asked "had you no father's compassion"; in the second Hürrem Sultan is called "Urus câdûsı" (the Russian sorceress), and a curse is laid on the mufti who issued the legal opinion, whom Hasar, relying on Şerafettin Turan, identifies as Ebussuud Efendi. The last stanzas of the second elegy are devoted to the prince's mother: she burns with separation like Jacob and bears it with patience like Job. These passages carry a feeling that voices the reproach in the tone of a mother or of a woman close to the family.

The original texts of both elegies, their English prose renderings and commentaries are published as separate articles in this category. The ghazal in the Pervâne Bey Mecmuası has been left outside the scope of this work, as it has no connection with Amasya or Prince Mustafa. The other elegies are described in our article Elegies for Prince Mustafa, and the prince's life in the biography Şehzade Mustafa.

Bibliography

Academic studies

  • Mehmed Çavuşoğlu, "16. Yüzyılda Yaşamış Bir Kadın Şair: Nisâyî", İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Tarih Enstitüsü Dergisi, 9, 1978, pp. 407-408 (as quoted in Güler and the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü).
  • Mehmed Çavuşoğlu, "Şehzade Mustafa Mersiyeleri", İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Tarih Enstitüsü Dergisi, 12, 1981-1982, pp. 673-677 (as quoted in Hasar).
  • Recep Hasar, Türk Edebiyatı'nda Padişah ve Şehzade Mersiyeleri, MA thesis, Fatih Sultan Mehmet Vakıf Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, 2018, pp. 13, 93-94, 100-101, 117-118, 505-510. https://hdl.handle.net/11352/2746
  • Semra Güler, Şehzade Mustafa'nın Hayatı (1515-1553) ve Türbesi, MA thesis, Uludağ Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, 2011, pp. 59-63. https://acikerisim.uludag.edu.tr/server/api/core/bitstreams/9a869e7a-300f-4995-9140-e0fdf233f8db/content

Books

  • Yunus Kaplan, "Nisâyî", Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, 2015 (updated 2020). https://teis.yesevi.edu.tr/madde-detay/nisayi
  • Kâmil Ali Gıynaş (ed.), Pervâne Bey Mecmuası, vol. 2, Istanbul: Akademik Kitaplar, 2014, p. 180 (as quoted in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü).

Online sources