Original Persian Text

Metre: Fāʿilātün fāʿilātün fāʿilātün fāʿilün

Leşker ez-taḫt-ı Sitānbūl sūy-ı Îrān tāḫtem
Sürḫ-i ser-rā ġarḳa-i ḫūn-ı melāmet sāḫtem
Şüd ġulām-ı himmetem ez-cān u dil vālî-i Mıṣr
Tā livā-yı ḫusrevî ez-nüh felek efrāḫtem
Kerdem ez-ehl-i ʿIrāḳ în müjde āheng-i Ḥicāz
Çeng-i nuṣret-rā çü der-bezm-i ṭarab binvāḫtem
Māverāʾü’n-nehr ez-tîġem şüde ġarḳ-āb-ı ḫūn
Çeşm-i düşman-rā çü küḥl-i Iṣfahānî sāḫtem
Āb-ı Āmu ez-ser-i her mū revān şüd ḫaṣm-rā
Şüd ʿaraḳ-rîz ez-teb-i ġam çün naẓar endāḫtem
Şāh-ı Hind ez-leşker-i ferzāneem şüd pîl māt
Ber-besāṭ-ı mülk çün şaṭranc-ı devlet bāḫtem
Ey Selîmî şüd be-nāmem sikke-i mülk-i cihān
Tā çü zer der-pūte-i mihr ü vefā bigdāḫtem

In English

1. From the throne of Istanbul I drove my army towards Iran, and drowned the red heads (the Safavid soldiers) in the blood of disgrace.

2. Because I raised the banner of sovereignty above the nine heavens, the governor of Egypt became, with heart and soul, the slave of my resolve.

3. I set this good news from the people of Iraq in the mode of Hijaz, and played the harp of victory in the feast of joy. (Iraq and Hijaz are the names of countries and also of two musical modes.)

4. Transoxiana drowned in blood from my sword; I made the enemy's eye like the kohl of Isfahan (pitch black).

5. When I cast my glance (like an arrow) at the foe, he broke into a sweat from the fever of grief, and the waters of the Amu Darya flowed from the tip of every hair on him.

6. Because I played the chess of state on the board of the realm, the shah of India was defeated by my wise army and checkmated with the elephant.

7. O Selîmî, when I melted like gold in the crucible of love and faithfulness, the coin of the world's realm was struck in my name.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of seven couplets. It has no redif (refrain word); the rhyme is formed by the sound "-āḫtem" in "tāḫtem, sāḫtem, efrāḫtem, binvāḫtem, endāḫtem, bāḫtem, bigdāḫtem", all first-person past-tense verbs, so that every couplet reports a deed in the sultan's own voice. By our scansion it is in the remel family of aruz (quantitative metre). The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. Seda Aydın gives the ghazal in full as the 82nd ghazal of the Istanbul 1306 printing of the Dīvān and counts it among the single-themed ghazals in which Selîmî stresses that he is a "world leader". Selîmî's life, his Persian divan and the debate over his Turkish poems are discussed in detail in Yavuz Sultan Selim (Selîmî) and his poems.

The ghazal also appears in full, in Arabic script, in Sehî Bey's Heşt Bihişt. Having said that Selim's poems are "'âşıkâne vü merdâne", lover-like and manly, Sehî quotes this ghazal as a poem "suited to his valour and heroism". Sehî's text differs from Aydın's in a few places: the second couplet reads "ber-nüh felek", the third "Kerd ez-milk-i Irâk" and "der-bezm-i zafer", and the fourth "zi-kuhl-ı Isfahân perdâhtem". Mustafa İsen translated this last line as "I deprived the enemy's eye of the kohl of Isfahan"; in Aydın's text, by contrast, the enemy's eye turns black like kohl.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

Geography unfolds in the ghazal like a map of victories: Istanbul, Iran, Egypt, Iraq, Hijaz, Transoxiana, Isfahan, the Amu Darya and India. In the third couplet the words Iraq and Hijaz are a double entendre (tevriye); as names of both countries and musical modes they form a congruence of images (tenasüp) with "good news, tune, harp, feast". The fifth couplet rests on hyperbole: the sweat of the enemy who fears the sultan's glance flows like the Amu Darya. In the sixth couplet the terms of chess are brought together: shah, elephant (pîl), mate, board (besāṭ), and "ferzāne" (wise), which recalls "ferz", the name of the vizier piece in chess; this last association is our own observation. In the last couplet there is a congruence of images between gold, crucible and coin. Just as gold is melted in the crucible and struck into coin, the poet's name passes onto the coinage of the world. As Aydın notes, the coin is one of the material emblems of sovereignty.

Historical Context

"Sürḫ-ser" (red head) refers to the Safavid soldiers, and the first couplet recalls the Çaldıran campaign of 1514. The submission of the governor of Egypt and the mention of Hijaz suggest that the ghazal may have been written after the Mamluk campaign (1516–1517); this inference is ours, as the sources give no date for the poem. The couplets on Transoxiana and India, on the other hand, are a claim to world dominion reaching beyond the actual campaigns. Benedek Péri used an English translation of the first couplet of this ghazal as the title of his 2017 article, which treats Selim's Persian poetry as part of the propaganda war between the Ottomans and the Safavids.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

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Online sources