Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Seyr içün ol mihri dünya biri birine girer
Ṣaf-be-ṣaf ehl-i temāşā biri birine girer
Biri bend itmegiçün ḫaste-dili biri ḫalaṣ
Şāne vü zülf-i dil-ārā biri birine girer
Şevḳ-i āġūşuñ ile cevşenüñüñ ḥalḳaları
Mevc-i deryā gibi cānā biri birine girer
Bend içün ‘āşıḳıñı ḥalḳa-i zencīrāsā
Ḫam-be-ḫam-ı zülf-i muṭarrā biri birine girer
Māh-ı rūmī ile tedāḫülde şühūr-ı ‘Arabī
Ḥarf-i müdġam gibi gūyā biri birine girer
İtse teşbīk o meh engüşt-i dü-desti gūyā
Raḥle-i muṣḥaf-ı vālā biri birine girer
Her biri Ṣāḥib olup ma‘nīde lāzım mülzem
Āb u ṭolab ne ra‘nā biri birine girer

In English

1. To gaze at that sun (the beloved) the world crowds into one another; the spectators, row upon row, crowd into one another.

2. One to bind the sick heart, the other to free it, the comb and the heart-adorning lock enter into one another.

3. O soul, through longing for your embrace the rings of your coat of mail enter into one another like the waves of the sea.

4. To bind your lover, the curls of your scented lock enter into one another like the rings of a chain.

5. When the Rumi month and the Arabic months overlap, they enter into one another as if they were an assimilated (doubled) letter.

6. If that moon interlaces the fingers of his two hands, it is as if the stand of the lofty Qur'an enters into one another.

7. Sâhib, each of them in meaning requires the other; how finely water and the waterwheel enter into one another.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The redif (refrain word) "biri birine girer" (enter into one another) draws up a catalogue of interlocking things, and Sâhib fills this catalogue from a scholar's fields of knowledge. The fifth couplet has the calendar: the Rumi months, based on the solar year, and the Arabic (Hijri) months, based on the lunar year, slip into one another every year. The poet likens this overlapping to "idgam" in the rules of Arabic recitation, the merging of two letters so that they are read as one. In the sixth couplet the beloved interlaces the fingers of his two hands, and the fingers look like the rahle, the stand with crossed slats on which the Qur'an is placed. Calendar, recitation and Qur'an stand are things that lay every day on a scholar's desk.

The other couplets proceed through the familiar interlockings of love poetry. The spectators crowd into one another row upon row to see the beloved; comb and lock become entangled, one to bind the heart and the other to free it; the rings of a coat of mail swell like the waves of the sea with the longing for an embrace; the curls of the lock lock together like the links of a chain to bind the lover. The scene of comb and lock in the second couplet has already met us in Sâhib's earlier ghazals.

The pen-name couplet borrows "lāzım ü mülzem" from logic: two things that make each other necessary. Water and the dolap, the waterwheel, are its finest example: the wheel carries the water, and the water turns the wheel.

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. 124, ghazal 27 (Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Manzum 243, fol. 18b; Istanbul University Library T. 1710/6, fol. 6b; Istanbul University Library T. 738, fol. 11b). https://openaccess.firat.edu.tr/handle/11508/16014

Online sources