Rızâ is the poet represented by a single ghazal in a manuscript verse notebook compiled in Merzifon, the Merzifon Cönkü introduced by Metin Hakverdioğlu in 2019. The ghazal calls the Sufi to the devran, the standing circle of dhikr, and to the meydan, saying "Allâh hû yâ hû"; its diction belongs to the world of dervish-lodge poetry and hymns. Hakverdioğlu makes no comment on the poet. Who Rızâ was, and where and when he lived, are unknown; the pen name, too, is a common one used by many poets in Turkish literature. This page brings together the record in the cönk, the possibilities of confusion in the pen name and the surviving couplet of the poem.

Life

There is no information about the life of the Rızâ of the cönk. The pen name is the Arabic word "rızâ" (contentment, acceptance). In Sufism, rızâ, the servant's wholehearted acceptance of God's decree, is counted among the spiritual stations; the pen name is therefore well suited to poets from dervish-lodge circles. The subject of the ghazal, an invitation to the dhikr gathering, suggests that the poet may have been raised in a Sufi order's milieu, or may have been a folk poet who sang lodge hymns. This is a guess drawn from the content of the poem; it rests on no document.

The Merzifon Cönkü and the Connection with Amasya

The Merzifon Cönkü is a 112-page notebook in ta'lik script, which Hakverdioğlu acquired from a second-hand bookseller with the information that it came from Merzifon. It contains 161 poems by thirty-two poets; 98 of them are written in aruz, and according to Hakverdioğlu the poets of the aruz poems are mostly folk poets. Hakverdioğlu thinks the notebook is about a hundred years old and was compiled within the literary circle of Eyüb Sabrî of Merzifon, probably by a poet named Fethî. Rızâ's ghazal is on page 64 of the cönk. This is the poet's only known connection with Amasya: his ghazal calling to dhikr entered a collection kept in Merzifon. There is no record that Rızâ was from Merzifon or Amasya.

The State of the Sources

The Records in the Article

In Hakverdioğlu's article Rızâ appears as "Rızâ 1 aruz" in the list giving the poets of the cönk and the number of their poems. In the poems section the first couplet of the ghazal is given in two separate places, with the same text and the same cönk page (p. 64): once immediately after Zahmî's müseddes (p. 554), and once at the end of the article, after Cezbî's koşma (p. 556). This repetition does not show that the cönk contains a second poem by Rızâ; it is a duplication in the typesetting of the article, and it agrees with the "1 aruz" in the list. On this page the poem is counted once.

Poets of the Same Pen Name

Many poets used the pen names Rızâ and Rızâî, and there is no clue that would allow the Rızâ of the cönk to be matched with any of them. The Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü (Dictionary of Names in Turkish Literature) includes a twentieth-century minstrel named Rıza from the village of Çaltepe in the Kangal district of Sivas; but his only surviving poem is one he wrote in hospital in 1968, which does not fit the estimated age of the cönk. Among Amasya's own minstrels there is also Âşık Rıza Çulha of the village of Sarıyar. Born in 1939, this destan-singing minstrel also lived after the estimated period in which the cönk was compiled; there is no ground for attributing a dhikr ghazal written in aruz to him. These names are mentioned only to prevent confusion; the identity of the Rızâ of the cönk cannot be determined with present knowledge.

Poetry

The only poem recorded under Rızâ's name in the cönk is a ghazal. The first couplet given in the article is written in a metre close to the pattern "fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilün", and both its lines end with the dhikr formula "Allâh hû yâ hû". The couplet calls the Sufi to the devran and the meydan, to join the dhikr with fervour. The rest of the poem exists only in the cönk itself and has not been published. The surviving couplet is given with its original text, an English rendering and a commentary on the separate page "Ghazal 1: Ṣofiyâ devrâna gel Allâh hû yâ hû diyü" in this category.

Bibliography

Online sources