Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Câm-ı Cem la’l-i lebin mir’ât-ı İskender ruhun
Anı bakıp görmesin yâ Rab rakîb-i bed-likâ.

In English

1. Your ruby lip is the cup of Jamshid, your cheek the mirror of Alexander; O Lord, let not the ill-favoured rival look into it and see it.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The first line sets two legendary objects in the beloved's face. The cup of Jamshid (Cem) is the cup in Iranian legend in which the whole world could be seen; the mirror of Alexander (İskender) is the mirror believed to show an enemy approaching from afar. The lip is likened to the cup by its redness and by the wine it calls to mind, the bright cheek to the mirror. What the two objects share is that they show something to whoever looks into them, and the second line turns this quality around: the poet prays that the rival may not look into this cup and mirror and see. The pronoun "anı" (it) can point both to the cup and mirror and to the beloved herself; the text does not choose between them.

Calling the rival "bed-likâ", ugly-faced, makes a subtle link with the image of looking into a mirror: one does not wish an ugly face to look into the mirror that shows beauty. Hüsameddin gives the couplet on its own with the note "Ve lehû", after the kaside fragments; it may be thought to come from a ghazal, but its lines do not rhyme, so it is not an opening couplet; the ghazal it belonged to has not come down to us. Sıdkı's life, with all the turns of his official career, is the subject of Sıdkı Mustafa Pasha.

Bibliography

Online sources