Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Chronogram on the death of Mîr Hamza Nigârî; the text ends with the note "Sene 1303" (year 1303). The transcription is that of Metin Hakverdioğlu, who quotes it from Nagehan Koç's thesis. The edition gives no metre.

İrtiḥâl itdi diriġâ ‘ârif-i bi-llahımız
Ey göñül min ba‘d çıksun göklere dek âhımız
Ey diriġâ ḥasretâ vü ifriḳat kim nâgehân
Gitdi emr-i irci‘ ile mürşid-i âgâhımız
Şems-i burc-ı evliyâ vü şem‘-i bezm-i ‘âşıḳân
Vaḳıf-ı esrâr-ı Ḥaḳḳ ol pîr Ḥamza şâhımız
Aẖter-i baẖtım n’ola düşse zemîne ba‘de-zîn
Âsümân-ı ‘aşḳdan çün kim ṭoldı mâhımız
Ser-nigûn ẖalḳ olmuşuñ ey sırça-saḳf-ı vâzgün
Kim yazılsun cevfüñe her dem bizim eyvâhımız
Ba‘de haẕâ ey Ŝebâti âyet-i ṣabrı oḳu
Tâ hidâyetler ḳılub tevfîḳ vire Allahımız
Hâtif-i ġaybî götürdi söyledim târiẖini
Gitdi ẖayfâ dil cihândan mürşîd-i âgâhımız

In English

1. Alas, our gnostic who knew God has departed this world; O heart, from now on let our sighs rise to the very skies.

2. Alas, what longing, what separation: our all-knowing spiritual guide has suddenly gone at the command "Return". ("İrci‘" recalls the Qur'anic address "Return to your Lord" spoken to the soul at peace in the sura al-Fajr.)

3. He was the sun of the constellation of saints, the candle of the lovers' gathering, our master who knew the secrets of God, our king Hamza.

4. Is it any wonder if the star of my fortune falls to the ground from now on? For our moon in the sky of love has "ṭoldı". (If the word is read as "doldu", "became full", it means that the moon has reached its fullness and completed its course, that is, that the sheikh's life has ended; it is also possible that the form in the edition is a misreading or misprint.)

5. O overturned ceiling of glass, O sky, you were created upside down, so that our cries of "alas" might be written within you at every moment.

6. From now on, O Sebâtî, recite the verse of patience, so that our God may guide us and grant us success.

7. The voice calling from the unseen brought the news, and I spoke its date: "What a pity, our wakeful-hearted guide has gone from the world." ("Götürdi" has been read in the sense of "getürdi", brought; "dil cihândan" may also be understood as "from the world of the heart".)

Literary and Historical Commentary

A Chronogram for a Spiritual Guide

The poem is written for Mîr Hamza Nigârî, the great sheikh of the Şirvânî circle within which Sebâtî spent thirty years of his life, and it speaks in the voice of a disciple: the dead man is called "ârif-i bi-llâh" (gnostic who knows God), "mürşid-i âgâh" (all-knowing guide), "pîr" (master) and "şâh" (king), and in the third couplet his name appears openly as "Ḥamza". The third couplet is a string of praises; the images of the sun of the constellation of saints and the candle of the lovers' gathering show the sheikh both as the brightest light in the sky and as the centre of the gathering for conversation. The fourth and fifth couplets carry this vocabulary of light into the heavens: the star of fortune falls to earth, the moon of the sky of love completes its course, and the sky is likened to an overturned ceiling of glass. In divan poetry the sky is often pictured as an overturned bowl or dome; Sebâtî turns this dome into a surface on which the disciples' cries of "alas" are written.

The sound "-âh" always stands before the redif (refrain word) "-ımız" (âhımız, âgâhımız, şâhımız, mâhımız, eyvâhımız, Allahımız); the pattern is that of a ghazal, and in the first couplet both lines rhyme with each other. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the sixth couplet, where the poet counsels himself to patience; the last couplet, as is common in chronograms, announces that the date was spoken by a voice from the unseen.

The Chronogram Line

According to Hakverdioğlu, when all the letters of the second line of the last couplet, "Gitdi ẖayfâ dil cihândan mürşîd-i âgâhımız", are added up by the abjad reckoning, they make 1303, the year of Nigârî's death. When we tried transliterating the line into Arabic script in common spellings and adding it up, we obtained totals close to 1303 but differing from it by a few units, depending on how "gitdi" and "âgâhımız" are spelled. Whether the calculation comes out exactly depends on the spelling the poet used for these words; no firm conclusion can be drawn without seeing the printed divan.

Hakverdioğlu thinks that Sebâtî's turn to chronograms may have been influenced by a couplet of his sheikh believed to have foretold the sheikh's own date of death. In Nigârî's divan, in the couplet "Ey büt yüzüňe baḳdım ġamzeň gözüme degdi / Bildim ki şehîd olam ẖoş geldi baňa fâlum", the abjad total of the words "şehîd olam ẖoş" is reported, as the estimate of Köprülü Yahya Efendi, to be 1303. Sebâtî's elegy gives the same year; the year in which the sheikh wrote "I shall be a martyr" meets the year in which the disciple wrote "our guide is gone".

Historical Context

Mîr Hamza Nigârî was a Naqshbandi sheikh and poet from Karabakh; he became a disciple of İsmail Sirâceddin Şirvânî, went with his sheikh to Amasya in 1839, and in later years lived between Erzurum, Istanbul and Merzifon. According to his entry in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, a complaint was lodged against him with the Sublime Porte claiming that he might rebel with his many disciples; on 28 February 1885 he had to leave Merzifon with his family, and on 30 May 1885 he reached Harput, his place of exile. After a year and a half there he died in September 1886, and in accordance with his will his body was brought to Amasya and buried. The Hijri year 1303 runs from October 1885 to September 1886; Sebâtî's note "Sene 1303" fits this date of death.

The poem says nothing of the exile or of the death taking place in Harput; the word "nâgehân", suddenly, suggests that the news reached the disciples in Amasya without warning. Twelve years earlier Sebâtî had also written an elegy and chronogram on the death of Nigârî's son Sirâceddin.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

  • Metin Hakverdioğlu, "Mir Hamza Nigârî ve Süfyânîler", Alevilik Araştırmaları Dergisi, year 6, no. 12, 2016, pp. 115-137 (poem: p. 130; quoted from Nagehan Koç, Hâfız Mehmed Sebâtî Dîvânı'nın Transkripsiyonlu Metni ve İncelenmesi, MA thesis, Sakarya Üniversitesi, 2006, p. 229; Nigârî's chronogram couplet: p. 131).
  • A. Azmi Bilgin, "Nigârî", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 33, Istanbul 2007, pp. 85-87. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/nigari

Online sources