Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Müstef‘ilün fa‘ūlün müstef‘ilün fa‘ūlün
Manẓūruñ olsun ey dil ḫaṭṭ ol o ḫāl-i şeb-gūn
Meşhūduñ olmadı ise Ḳaraḥiṣār Afyon
In English
1. O heart, if you have never seen Karahisar of Afyon, let that down and that night-coloured mole be the sight you behold.
Literary and Historical Commentary
Karahisar is now named in full: Karahisar-ı Afyon, today's Afyonkarahisar, the town set against Akşehir in matla 9. Both parts of the town's name serve the poet's purpose. "Kara hisar" means black castle and answers to the dark down on the beloved's face; "afyon" is opium, the substance drawn from the poppies grown around the town, known as a small black pill. In Sâhib's ghazal 83, too, the mole was likened to an opium pill. So the down becomes the black castle and the night-coloured mole the opium; the heart that has never seen that town may count itself as having seen it by looking at the beloved's face.
Following matla 9 directly in the thesis, the couplet, like that matla, appears only in Istanbul University's T. 738; that both couplets are built on the same town name suggests they were written at the same time or as a continuation of the same game, though the copy gives no explanation. In the edition the word "ol" in the first line is misprinted as "o" followed by an exclamation mark.
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. 226, matla 10 (Istanbul University Library T. 738, fol. 3b). https://openaccess.firat.edu.tr/handle/11508/16014
Online sources
