Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilün

Rûz-ı rûşenden nola envâr olursa şâmumuz
Mihr-i ‘âlem-tâbdan yaḳar çerâġı câmumuz

In English

1. What wonder if our evening is more radiant than the bright day: the lamp of our wine cup is lit from the world-illuminating sun. (Wine drunk at night shines like the sun; since "mihr" means both "sun" and "love", the lamp can also be read as a light kindled from the fire of love.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The couplet is the opening couplet (matla) of a ghazal; its two lines rhyme with the words "şâmumuz / câmumuz". The refrain (redif) is the suffix "-umuz" (our), and the rhyme falls on "-âm". The biographical anthology (tezkire) gives no metre; the couplet scans in the remel metre of aruz (quantitative metre) as "fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilün". The opening couplet is found only in Sehî Beg's anthology Heşt Bihişt, in the entry on Tâcîzâde Sa'dî Çelebi; no witness of it has been found in another anthology or miscellany. The rest of the ghazal is unknown.

Sehî's Heşt Bihişt, completed in 945 (1538) and the first anthology of poets written in Anatolian Turkish, contains the earliest poet's biography of Sa'dî Çelebi. As the introduction to the edition notes, the entry on Sa'dî Çelebi is not found in every manuscript of the anthology; in some manuscripts it is among the additional biographies inserted later. According to the variant readings in the edition, the word "envâr" is written "enver" in one manuscript, and "câmumuz" (our cup) is written "cânımuz" (our soul) in manuscript W. Nothing is known about to whom or on what occasion it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet speaks of a drinking party, of wine drunk at night, and builds a picture in which the glow of the wine overcomes the darkness of the night. In the first line there is an antithesis between "rûz-ı rûşen" (bright day) and "şâm" (evening): it is not usual for the evening to be brighter than the day, and the poet gives the reason in the second line. The wine in the cup is likened to a lamp, and the fire that lights it to the sun. The light of the night gathering thus becomes a light borrowed from the sun in the sky. This is an instance of hüsn-i ta‘lîl, the figure that finds the poem's own beautiful cause for a fact.

The word "mihr" is the key to the couplet. In Persian it means both "sun" and "love"; at first sight the phrase "mihr-i ‘âlem-tâb" describes the world-illuminating sun, but it also evokes the light of love. The reading "cânımuz" of manuscript W brings this second meaning forward: in that case the burning lamp is the lamp not of the cup but of the soul, and what kindles it is a love that lights up the world. The congruence of images (tenasüp) is rich as well: rûz (day), şâm (evening), envâr (lights), mihr (sun) and çerâġ (lamp) all come from the field of light and time, and the rhyme between "şâm" and "câm" ties evening and cup to the same sound. The question "nola" (what wonder) in the first line is one whose answer is known, and it lends the couplet a self-assurance befitting the cheer of the gathering.

Historical Context

Sehî Beg introduces Sa'dî Çelebi as follows: he is the brother of the executed chancellor Câfer, and is known as "Tâcî Beg's son"; when Sultan Bayezid was "çelebi sultan" at Amasya, his father was the prince's treasurer. He himself became a professor at the Sahn-ı Seman colleges and was a capable man; he had poems in Arabic, Persian and Turkish, and his standing and fame were great. This introduction is the only record that says plainly that Sa'dî wrote poetry in three languages. The later anthologies put the weight on his Arabic odes and his chancery prose and add that his Turkish poems were few.

Documents on Sa'dî Çelebi's life show that he taught in colleges at Bursa, that he was there between 897 and 906 (1492-1501), and that he then moved to Istanbul and taught at the Ali Paşa college and at the Sahn colleges. The TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam, relying on the records of the İnâmât Defteri (register of gifts), reports that he presented odes to Sultan Bayezid on various occasions and was rewarded for them. To which of these periods the couplet belongs is not known; the subject of the drinking party, too, is among the common themes of divan poetry and gives no biographical information on its own.

Bibliography

  • Sehî Beg, Heşt Bihişt, ed. Halûk İpekten, Günay Kut, Mustafa İsen, Hüseyin Ayan, Turgut Karabey, Ankara: Ministry of Culture and Tourism Publications, 2017 (e-book), pp. 62-63, entry on Mevlânâ Sa‘dî Çelebi; variant readings and introduction.
  • İsmail E. Erünsal, "Tâcîzâde Sâdî Çelebi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 39, Istanbul 2010, p. 356. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr

Online sources