Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilün

Āteş-i ‘aşḳuñ olup başuma iklīl gibi
Dūd-ı āhum dolanur üstüne mendīl gibi
Oldı ebrūsına peyveste dil-i sūzānum
Fi’l-meṡel küşe-i miḥrābda ḳandīl gibi
Kimse ol āyīne-i ḥüsnle yek-ten olamaz
Bī-vücūd olmayıcaḳ naḳş-ı temāṡīl gibi
Mihr-i rūyı o mehüñ itdi tevārī ḫaṭda
Sünbüle burcuna şems itdigi taḥvīl gibi
Çār-ebrūsı ḫayāliyle tenüm oldı ża‘īf
Meẕheb-i çār-meyānında olan ḳıl gibi
Bir büt-i ‘işve-nümā nüsḫa-i taḥḳīḳ-i dili
Beste-i deyr-i mecāz eyledi İncīl gibi
Tūtiyā itmeyicek ḫāk-i der-i dil-dārı
Kimse almaz seni Ṣāḥib gözine mīl gibi

In English

1. The fire of your love having settled on my head like a crown, the smoke of my sighs winds about it like a turban cloth.

2. My burning heart has become joined to her brow, just like a lamp in the corner of the mihrab.

3. No one can become one body with that mirror of beauty unless he becomes bodiless, like the image of a reflection.

4. The sun-like face of that moon has hidden itself in the down, as when the sun passes into the sign of Virgo (Sünbüle).

5. Through the image of the four-browed one (a youth with a new moustache) my body has grown weak, like the hair's breadth that lies between the four schools of law.

6. An idol displaying coquetry has bound the book of truth that is my heart to the monastery of metaphor, like the Gospel.

7. Sâhib, unless you make the dust of the beloved's door your eye-salve, no one will take you into his eye like the kohl rod.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The fifth couplet sets two different "fours" side by side. "Çâr-ebrû" (four-browed) is an epithet for a youth whose moustache has just appeared: the thin moustache showing beneath the brows adds a second pair of brows to the face. The other four are the four Sunni schools of law; the differences between the schools are often said to be no more than "a hair's breadth". Through the image of the four-browed youth the lover's body has wasted to that hair's thinness. This likeness, from the pen of a mufti, brings knowledge of jurisprudence and the description of beauty together in a single line.

The fourth couplet uses the lore of calendar and zodiac. "Tahvîl" is the passage of the sun from one sign to the next; at the end of summer the sun enters the sign of Virgo (Sünbüle, "the ear of grain"). "Sünbüle" also calls up the hyacinth (sümbül), the flower to which divan poetry likens hair and down. The vanishing of the beloved's sun-like face amid the down is likened to the sun's entry into the sign of Sünbüle; one copy names the moon (kamer) rather than the sun in this line.

Couplets two and six take their images from places of worship. With its arched shape the brow resembles a mihrab, and the burning heart becomes the lamp hung in the corner of the mihrab. In couplet six "tahkîk" (truth) is set against "mecâz" (metaphor): the heart is a book of truth, but a beauty has bound it to metaphorical love, like a Gospel kept in a monastery. The mîl of the closing couplet is the thin rod used to apply kohl to the eye; no one will take into his eye a man who has not made the dust of the beloved's door his eye-salve.

Bibliography

  • Meral Topal, Pîrî-zâde Mehmed Sâhib Hayatı, Edebî Kişiliği, Eserleri ve Divanı'nın Tenkitli Metni, MA thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2004, p. 206, ghazal 104 (Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Manzum 243, fol. 33b; Istanbul University Library T. 1710/6, fol. 16b; Istanbul University Library T. 738, fol. 23b). https://openaccess.firat.edu.tr/handle/11508/16014

Online sources