Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Ger ḥalḳa-i çeşmüm olmasa zihgīrüñ
Olmazdı nişānda dilde böyle tīrüñ
Ḫoş geldi dile ḳıdem getürdi ġamzeñ
Olsa n’ola ḫoş-ḳadem şehā şemşīrüñ
In English
1. Were the ring of my eye not your archer's thumb-ring, your arrow would not strike its mark in the heart so truly.
2. Your glance said "welcome" to the heart and brought it luck; O king, what wonder if your sword too is lucky (hoş kadem)? (The word "kıdem" in the first line has been read, for the sense, as "kadem".)
Literary and Historical Commentary
The second rubai joins two images, one from archery and one from the everyday language of greeting. The zihgîr is the ring-shaped thumb ring archers wore when drawing the bowstring. The round ring of the lover's eye is likened to this ring: the eye has become the ring that looses the arrow of the beloved's glance, and so the arrow never misses its mark in the heart. Here the lover becomes the instrument of his own wounding; the eye that looks at the beloved opens the arrow's path.
The second couplet plays on two familiar Turkish expressions. "Hoş geldi" (welcome) is a word of greeting; "kadem getirmek" (to bring a good step) and "hoş kadem" mean that a person or thing brings luck to the place it comes to. When the beloved's glance enters the heart, the place is gladdened; so it is no surprise that her sword too should be "hoş kadem", lucky. Counting the killing sword as lucky sums up the lover's way of greeting death in love as a blessing.
Like the first rubai, this one has come down only in T. 738, on the same leaf; here as well the thesis leaves the metre unnamed.
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. 222, rubai 2 (Istanbul University Library T. 738, fol. 23a). https://openaccess.firat.edu.tr/handle/11508/16014
Online sources
