Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilün
Meyl-i dil rūyına itdi ḫaṭ ‘iẕāra düşdi
Yolum aḳ şehre iken Ḳaraḥiṣāra düşdi
In English
1. My heart inclined towards his face, but the down fell upon his cheek; my road was bound for the white city (Akşehir), yet it fell to Karahisar (the black castle).
Literary and Historical Commentary
This matla is a travel joke built on the names of two Anatolian towns. The lover's heart has set out towards the beloved's white face; that face is the "white city", Akşehir. But just then dark down has sprung up on the beloved's cheek, and the road has "fallen" to Karahisar, the black castle. Akşehir and Karahisar (today's Afyonkarahisar) are two towns close to each other on the old main roads of Anatolia, and it would be natural for a traveller bound for one to pass the other. The poet turns this nearness on the map into the nearness of white cheek and black down.
Colour games built on town names are seen elsewhere in Sâhib's divan: in ghazal 83 the heart moves from Aleppo to Damascus, from whiteness to the dark of evening. This matla carries the same find into the geography of Anatolia. "İzâr" is the side of the face where beard and down grow; the down's "falling" there and the road's "falling" to Karahisar are told with the same verb. Only T. 738 records this journey between Akşehir and Karahisar.
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. 225, matla 9 (Istanbul University Library T. 738, fol. 3b). https://openaccess.firat.edu.tr/handle/11508/16014
Online sources
