Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Chronogram on the death of Nigârî's son Sirâceddin. The text is given in the transcription of Metin Hakverdioğlu, who quotes it from Nagehan Koç's thesis; the edition gives no metre.

Âh kim söndi sirâc-ı bezm-i irfân ey dirîġ
Ḳaldılar ehl-i muḥabbet sîne sûzân ey dirîġ
Geldi emr-i irca‘ çün gitdi ol peyk-i vefâ
Tâbi‘-i hikmet-i meşiyyet emr ü fermân ey dirîġ
Ḫâne-i ‘işret ẖarâb oldı ḳırıldı şîşeler
Sâḳi-i gül-çehre ḳaldı mest ü ḥayrân ey dirîġ
Düşdi muṭribler elinden târ ü çeng ü ûd ü nây
Mecmâ‘ı yârâna düşdi âh-ı efgân ey dirîġ
Ol żiyâ-ı çeşm kim cân u dil-i ‘uşşâḳ idi
Gitdi ḥayfâ ḳaldı bunlar bî-dil ü cân ey dirîġ
Görmemişken kimseler rûyında âŝâr-ı melâl
Ḥażret-i Seyyid Nigârî ḳıldı efgân ey dirîġ
Ey dil-i mâtem-serâ bir âh çek kim derd-nâk
Düşsüñ iḳlim-i vücûda nâr-ı ḥarmân ey dirîġ
Arzû-yı mevt ider göñlüm ḳanı câm-ı ecel
Kim bu derde yoḳdur andan ġayri dermân ey dirîġ
Râhat-ı cân ü dilüñ gitdi Ŝebâtî ba‘de-zin
Cây-ı âsâyiş saña olmaz mı nîrân ey dirîġ
İstedim ṭab‘ı Ŝebâtî’den ânuñ târiẖini
Âh-ı ḥasret çekdi ol ân didi bî-cân ey dirîġ

In English

1. Ah, the lamp of the gathering of spiritual knowledge has gone out, alas; the people of love are left with burning breasts, alas.

2. When the command "Return" came, that messenger of faithfulness departed; command and decree alike follow the wisdom of God's will, alas.

3. The house of conviviality lies in ruins, the bottles are broken; the rose-faced cupbearer is left drunk and bewildered, alas.

4. The tar, the harp, the lute and the reed flute have fallen from the musicians' hands; sighs and laments have fallen upon the gathering of friends, alas.

5. That light of the eye, who was the soul and heart of the lovers, is gone, what a pity; they are left without heart and soul, alas.

6. Though no one had ever seen a trace of sorrow on his face, His Excellency Seyyid Nigârî cried out in lament, alas.

7. O heart, house of mourning, heave so grievous a sigh that a fire that burns the harvest may fall upon the land of existence, alas.

8. My heart longs for death; where is the cup of fate? For there is no cure for this pain but that, alas.

9. O Sebâtî, from now on the ease of your soul and heart is gone; will not fires now be your place of rest, alas. (The couplet says that after this death only the fire of grief remains to the poet as a resting place; the word "nîrân" also calls to mind the fires of hell.)

10. I asked Sebâtî's poetic gift for the date of his death; at that moment it heaved a sigh of longing and said "bî-cân ey dirîġ" (lifeless now, alas).

Literary and Historical Commentary

The Lamp and Sirâceddin

"Sirâc", the first noun of the first line, means lamp in Arabic, and the young man who died was named Sirâceddin. In saying that "sirâc-ı bezm-i irfân", the lamp of the gathering of spiritual knowledge, has gone out, Sebâtî speaks at once of a light going out and of the dead man's name; this double meaning, which the figures of speech call tevriye (double entendre), gives a key to the poem as a whole. Sirâceddin's own pen name, "Sirâcî", came from the same root. The chain of gathering, lamp, bottle, cupbearer and instruments runs from the second couplet to the fourth: the house of conviviality is ruined, the bottles break, the cupbearer's head spins, the instruments fall from the musicians' hands. Which gathering the scene depicts is not said outright. Hüsameddin's entry on Sirâceddin records that the young man was famous for his "Sâkî-nâme" (book of the cupbearer) and that "his wine was tea"; this gathering drawn in the vocabulary of wine may be an allusion to the world of Sirâcî's own sâkînâme and to the tea-drinking conversations of Nigârî's circle. This reading must remain a possibility.

The sixth couplet carries a historical testimony within the poem: the sheikh, on whose face no one had seen sorrow, cried out at his son's death. Here the elegy turns to the mourning of the father left behind rather than to the dead man. In the seventh and eighth couplets the poet addresses his own heart and voices a longing for death through well-known images of mourning in divan poetry, the fire that burns the harvest and the cup of fate.

The ten couplets are rhymed in the pattern of a ghazal (gazel): the second lines of all the couplets end with the redif (refrain word) "ey dirîġ" and the rhyme sound "-ân"; in the first couplet both lines rhyme together. The word "efgân" is used twice as a rhyme, in the fourth and sixth couplets. Unusually, the pen name (mahlas) appears in two couplets, the ninth and the tenth: in one the poet seeks consolation for himself, in the other he asks his own poetic gift for the date.

The Abjad Calculation

The phrase "bî-cân ey dirîġ", which follows the word "didi" (said) in the last line, is the chronogram. Written in Arabic script as "بی جان ای دریغ", the abjad values of its letters add up as follows: be 2, ye 10; cim 3, elif 1, nun 50; elif 1, ye 10; dal 4, ra 200, ye 10, gayın 1000. The total is 1291, matching the year given by Hakverdioğlu. The calculation rests on the assumption that the words were written in this common spelling; Koç's thesis and the printed divan have not been seen. By placing the date in the word "lifeless", the poet turned the news of death into a number and the number into a word of mourning.

Historical Context

According to Hüsameddin, Sirâceddin İsmâil Efendi was born in 1271 (1854-55) in the town of Berküşâd in Karabakh, came to Amasya with his father Mîr Hamza Nigârî in 1281 (1864-65), and after studying at the rüşdiye school continued his education with his father. He fell in love with Fahrî Bey, son of the finance officer of Amasya, tried to calm his love with poetry, fell gravely ill and died at the beginning of Safer 1291 (March 1874) crying "Fahrî, Fahrî". Hüsameddin describes him as a clever, dark-eyed youth with a strong memory who knew Fuzûlî's divan by heart and was much loved among the disciples, and writes that the day of his death was a day of mourning for the Şirvânîs, which brought everyone to tears. He was first buried in the Şamlılar Cemetery, and in 1314 (1896-97) his bones were moved to his father's tomb. The mourning of the sixth couplet tells of the same day as the general grief Hüsameddin describes.

Hakverdioğlu writes that Sebâtî turned to chronograms rather than to ghazals and kasides; in this ten-couplet elegy, poetry of mourning and the composing of a chronogram meet in a single poem, and the date comes as the poem's last word. In 1291 Sebâtî was about twenty-seven years old.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

  • Metin Hakverdioğlu, "Mir Hamza Nigârî ve Süfyânîler", Alevilik Araştırmaları Dergisi, year 6, no. 12, 2016, pp. 115-137 (poem: pp. 130-131; quoted from Nagehan Koç, Hâfız Mehmed Sebâtî Dîvânı'nın Transkripsiyonlu Metni ve İncelenmesi, MA thesis, Sakarya Üniversitesi, 2006, p. 231).

Online sources