Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

‘Ālemde beni şīfte-ḥāl eyleme yā-rab
Levḥ-i dilümi meşḳ-i melāl eyleme yā-rab
Ḳurtar girih-i kākül ü ebrū hevesinden
Üftāde-i ḳayd-ı ḫaṭ u ḫāl eyleme yā-rab
Vāreste it ālāyiş-i esbāb-ı hevādan
Dil-dāde-i sevdā-yı muhāl eyleme yā-rab
Ḳıl çeşm-i dil ü dīde-i ümmīdümi bīdār
Maḥmūr-ı mey-i ḫᵛāb u ḫayāl eyleme yā-rab
Ẕeyl-i ‘amelüm dāmen-i kūtāh ḥayātum
Ālūde-i çirk-āb-ı ḍalāl eyleme yā-rab
Endīşemi murġ-ı çemen-i āl-i ‘abā it
Bī-gāne hezār-ı gül-i āl eyleme yā-rab
Na‘t-ı şeh-i kevneyne zebānum ḳalem eyle
Ālūde-i bī-hūde-maḳāl eyleme yā-rab
Ferdā varıcaḳ ‘arṣageh-i rūz-ı su’āle
Ṣāḥib ḳuluñ ol ḥīnde lāl eyleme yā-rab

In English

1. O Lord, do not make me one of distracted state in this world; do not make the tablet of my heart a practice sheet for sorrow.

2. Save me from the knot of the lovelock and the longing for the eyebrow; do not make me one fallen into the bond of the down on the cheek and the beauty mark, O Lord.

3. Free me from the filth of the means that desire seeks; do not make me one who has given his heart to an impossible passion, O Lord.

4. Keep the eye of my heart and the eye of my hope awake; do not make them drunk with the wine of sleep and fancy, O Lord.

5. Do not let the hem of my deeds, the short skirt of my life, be soiled with the foul water of error, O Lord.

6. Make my thought a bird in the garden of the Āl-i ‘Abā (the Prophet and the people of his house); do not make it a stranger to the nightingale of the red rose, O Lord.

7. Make my tongue a pen for the praise of the king of the two worlds (the Prophet); do not let it be soiled with idle talk, O Lord.

8. Tomorrow, when we reach the field of the day of questioning, do not make your servant Sâhib mute at that hour, O Lord.

Literary and Historical Commentary

This münâcât (prayer poem) of eight couplets turns the favourite beauty images of the ghazal (gazel) into a list of dangers. The knot of the lovelock, the arch of the eyebrow, the down on the cheek and the beauty mark are, in other poems, the chains that bind the lover; here the poet asks God to free him from exactly these bonds. Every couplet closes with the redif (refrain word) "eyleme yā-rab" (do not make, O Lord), that is, with a negative wish; the first lines, by contrast, often open with a positive request: "ḳurtar" (save), "vāreste it" (set free), "bīdār ḳıl" (keep awake), "ḳalem eyle" (make a pen). Each couplet thus sets a request and a fear side by side.

In the first couplet the heart is likened to a writing tablet, and the poet does not want it to become the "meşk" of sorrow, the sheet a calligrapher scribbles on for practice. The word "ḫaṭ" in the second couplet describes the fine down on the beloved's face, but the same word means script; coming after the tablet and the practice sheet, the association with writing comes alive of its own accord. In the fifth couplet "ẕeyl" and "dāmen" both mean hem or skirt: the hem of deeds merges with the short skirt of life, and the prayer is that neither be soiled with the mud of error.

The sixth couplet is where the wordplay is densest. "Āl-i ‘abā" names the people of the Prophet's house, Ali, Fatima, Hasan and Husayn, whom the Prophet took under his cloak; "gül-i āl" at the end of the line is the red rose. The same sound carries two different meanings and forms a cinas (pun on identical words), and the poet wishes to make his thought a bird of the first garden while keeping it apart from the nightingale of the second. The seventh couplet prepares the passage to the na‘t (poem in praise of the Prophet) that follows the münâcât in the divan: let the tongue be a pen to praise the king of the two worlds. In the last couplet the pen name (mahlas) is named with the wish not to be struck dumb on the day of questioning. The rhyme word "lāl" means mute here; since the word also means red and a precious stone, it may echo the red of "āl" in the couplet before, but the edition does not point to this as a figure of speech.

The poem is written in the "mef‘ūlü mefā‘īlü mefā‘īlü fe‘ūlün" pattern of aruz (quantitative metre) and stands at the head of the divan in all three manuscripts of the Sâhib Divanı. Topal records only one small difference between the manuscripts, in the fourth couplet: the Istanbul University T. 1710/6 copy writes "çeşm dil" instead of "çeşm-i dil".

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, pp. 43-44, kaside 1 "Münâcât" (Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Manzum 243, fol. 1b; Istanbul University Library T. 1710/6, fol. 1b; Istanbul University Library T. 738, fol. 5b); also p. 9 (manuscripts). https://openaccess.firat.edu.tr/handle/11508/16014

Online sources