Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefā‘ilün fe‘ilātün mefā‘ilün fe‘ilātün
Görince zīr-i külehde o ḫūb ḫūb-ḥabābı
İrişdi gūşuma kim evliyā "fī-taḥti ḳıbābī"
In English
1. When I saw that beauty's lovely bubble (?) beneath his cap, these words reached my ear: "My saints are beneath My domes." What the word "habâb" in the first line refers to is not certain.
Literary and Historical Commentary
A hadith qudsi often quoted in Sufi books has made its way into the second line: "Evliyâî tahte kıbâbî, lâ ya‘rifuhum gayrî" (My friends are beneath My domes; none knows them but Me). The saying tells that God's friends are hidden from people's eyes and cannot be known by their outward appearance. The poet sets the first part of this saying in his line and compares the "dome" with the cap on the beloved's head: beneath the dome-shaped cap, too, a hidden beauty lies concealed.
The word "habâb" in the first line means a bubble of water, and it may describe curling hair spilling from under the cap or a dome-shaped ornament; in Arabic words close to the same root also mean beloved. Which sense is meant cannot be settled from the text, which survives only in T. 738. What is clear is that the poet applies a saying of the hadith to the beloved's attire, making both a piece of praise and a light jest.
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. 228, matla 18 (Istanbul University Library T. 738, fol. 4a). https://openaccess.firat.edu.tr/handle/11508/16014
Online sources
