Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ūlü mefā‘īlü mefā‘īlü fe‘ūlün

Şehd-i lebüñüñ reşḥa-nümāsı reşeḥātlar
Būy-ı ḫaṭuñuñ feyż-rübāsı nefeḥātlar
Ebrū ile zülfle olalı naḳşı nümū-dār
Ṭuġrā-yı ser üzre getürür saṭr-ı berātlar
Yārüñ femine eyledigin piste teşebbüh
Kestāne görür āteş-i endūh ile patlar
Şekker-i leb-i dil-dāra ezildikce bezmde
Hażm eyleyemez piste ġam-ı reşk ile çatlar
Ṣāḥib yorılup ḳoydı piyāde nice şāhı
Saṭranc-ı reh-i ‘aşḳda āḫir nice atlar

In English

1. The honey of your lip, falling drop by drop, is the Reşehât; the scent of your down, a bounty-seizing breath, is the Nefehât.

2. Since the design of eyebrow and curl has appeared, the lines of patents carry the tughra on their heads.

3. Seeing that you have likened the beloved's mouth to a pistachio, the chestnut bursts with the fire of grief.

4. As the sugar of the beloved's lip is crushed in the gathering, the pistachio cannot digest it and cracks with the grief of envy. (The metre of the first line is faulty.)

5. Sâhib, (love) has worn out many a king and left him on foot; in the chess of love's road, in the end, many horses (are left on foot as well).

Literary and Historical Commentary

The opening couplet turns the titles of two famous mystical books into praise of the beloved. "Reşehât" and "Nefehât" recall the titles of two works widely read in Naqshbandi circles: Jâmî's Nafahât al-uns, a collection of saints' lives, and Fakhr al-Dîn Ali Safî's Rashahât-i Ayn al-Hayât. The dictionary senses of the words are also in place: reşehât means "drops, seepings" and nefehât "breezes, sweet scents". So the honey seeping from the beloved's lip becomes the drops, and the scent spreading from the down the breezes, and these two book titles settle quietly into the couplet.

The second couplet is written with an eye that knows the chancery pen. At the very top of the sultan's patents (berât) stands the tughra, the imperial monogram, and the lines of the text begin beneath it. The curve of eyebrow and curl is likened to the tughra; the rest of the face becomes the lines of the patent beneath it. The third and fourth couplets continue, with nuts, the splitting images seen in the previous ghazal: the bursting of a chestnut thrown into the fire and the cracking of the pistachio are tied to envy.

Chess terms gather in the pen-name couplet. "Piyâde" means both on foot and the pawn in chess; "şah" and "at" are both chess pieces and a ruler and a horse. In the chess of love's road many a king is worn out and left on foot, and many a horse too falls on this road. In the rhyme words Arabic plurals (reşehât, nefehât, berât) are set beside Turkish verbs (patlar, çatlar) and the word "atlar" (horses); this mixture gives the ghazal a light and playful sound.

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. 141, ghazal 43 (Istanbul University Library T. 738, fol. 10a). https://openaccess.firat.edu.tr/handle/11508/16014

Online sources