Şem‘î is a poet of unknown identity whose name appears only in the Merzifon Cönkü. A single poem in aruz under the pen name Şem‘î is recorded in this manuscript poetry notebook introduced by Metin Hakverdioğlu in 2019; the article gives only its first couplet. Nothing is known of the poet's name, home, period or occupation.

His link with Amasya consists in his poem having entered a cönk compiled in Merzifon. This page has been opened on the principle that poets whose identity cannot be established are not to be passed over; below, what the sources say and do not say is shown separately.

Record in the Merzifon Cönkü

The Merzifon Cönkü is a manuscript poetry notebook that Metin Hakverdioğlu obtained from Merzifon for his own library and introduced in the journal idil in 2019. The cönk, in the long narrow "calf's tongue" format and written in ta'lik script, has 112 pages and contains 161 poems by 32 poets. Hakverdioğlu estimates that it is about a hundred years old and thinks that it was compiled by a Merzifon poet from the literary circle of Eyüp Sabrî, most probably Fethî. According to the article, the cönk contains, beside well-known poets, local poets whose names are entirely unknown, and the authors of its poems in aruz are mostly folk poets. This poet's poem is on page 24 of the cönk.

Poetry

According to Hakverdioğlu's count, Şem‘î has one poem in aruz in the cönk. The article calls the poem a divan and gives its first couplet: "Esme ey bâd-ı sabâ zülf-i dilârâ sarsılur / Deprenirse bir teli rûyunda dünyâ sarsılur." The couplet addresses the morning breeze, asking it not to stir the beloved's locks, and rests on the hyperbole that the world would be shaken if a single strand of those locks stirred. The original text of the poem, an English rendering and a commentary are published as a separate article in this category.

State of the Sources

The pen name Şem‘î was used by many poets in Turkish literature. The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi article on Şem‘î of Prizren, drawing on a study by Murat Ali Karavelioğlu, states that there were ten poets using this pen name. Of these, Şem‘î of Prizren was a divan poet who died in 936 (1529-30); there is no sign that the poem in the cönk belongs to him.

Âşık Şem‘î of Konya, who lived in the nineteenth century, was a minstrel whose real name was Ahmet, born in 1772-1773, who is known to have played his saz before Selim III. According to Recep Tek's study, the minstrels of that century composed poems not only in syllabic metre but also in aruz forms such as the divan, the semâî and the kalenderî. Considering the period in which the cönk was compiled and the form of the poem, this minstrel is one of the names that come to mind, but we found no source showing that the poem in the cönk belongs to him. This identification is only a possibility and is ours. In the volumes of Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn's Amasya Tarihi that we searched, no Amasya poet with the pen name Şem‘î was found.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Online sources