Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefâʿîlün mefâʿîlün mefâʿîlün mefâʿîlün (metre identified by us)

ʿAceb mi dünyede bî-nûr olursa çeşm-i giryânum
Ki bensüz Kaʿbeye gitdi benüm ol şâh-ı ḫûbanum
Sefer ḳılduḳça ol mâhum ceresvâr iñledüm ġamdan
Çekildi ḳâfile gibi benüm ol mâh-ı tâbânum

In English

1. Is it any wonder if my weeping eye is left without light in this world, since that king of beauties of mine has gone to the Kaaba without me?

2. Whenever that moon of mine set out on a journey I moaned from grief like a caravan bell; that shining moon of mine moved off like a caravan.

Literary and Historical Commentary

A Beloved Bound for Mecca

Sehî writes that Rûhî had a faithful friend, that this friend resolved to go to the Kaaba and set out on the Hejaz road, and that the poet composed these two couplets on that occasion. In divan poetry the pilgrimage often appears as a metaphor; here the couplets are tied to a real journey, and the feeling of separation is told through the details of that journey. Who this friend was, unnamed in the source, is not known.

The second couplet is woven of images from the world of the caravan. The "ceres" is the bell hung on a camel's neck; it rings without pause along the road. The lover has moaned like it whenever the beloved set out. "To move off like a caravan" describes the caravan slowly drawing away and vanishing from sight. There is a link between moon and caravan as well: caravans often travelled by night, by moonlight, and the moon too moves slowly across the sky. In the opening couplet the eye "bî-nûr", without light, means both going blind from weeping and the departure of the light, the "king of beauties". Both couplets end in "-ânum", which shows that they are the opening couplet and one further couplet of a ghazal; the rest of the ghazal is not in Sehî. Sehî's entry on Rûhî is given in detail in Rûhî Fâzıl Çelebi (Zenbillizâde).

Bibliography

Online sources