Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Şehirlidür müzevvirdür bu Ṭursun
Şehirde biz ṭuralum ya bu ṭursun

In English

1. This Tursun is a townsman and a forger; either we stay in the town or this Tursun stays. That is, one of the two of us must leave the town.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The couplet is a single couplet (müfred) composed on its own. Both lines end in the rhyme "-ur" and the word "Ṭursun"; in the first line "Ṭursun" is a personal name, in the second "ṭursun" is the verb "let him stay". This rhyme, built by using the same sounds in two different meanings, is a cinas-ı tâm, a perfect pun, in which two words identical in spelling and pronunciation but different in meaning are made to rhyme. The edition of the tezkire does not indicate the metre; the lines fit the pattern mefâîlün mefâîlün feûlün, an observation that is ours. The text is given from Âşık Çelebi. In Gelibolulu Âlî the couplet reads "Şehirlü bir müzevvirdür bu Ṭursun / Şehirde biz ṭuralum yā bu ṭursun".

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The whole effect of the couplet rests on a play on a name. In the old script the name Tursun is written and read in the same way as the verb "dursun", let him stay; Seyfî sets this name against the phrase "let him stay in the town" and strikes the man with his own name. "Müzevvir" means a forger who draws up false documents and sows discord among people. The first line introduces the man: he is a townsman, one from within the town, and a forger. The second line sets out a firm choice: either we stay or he stays. The "we" in the judge's mouth stands both for his own person and for the office that represents justice in the town; the couplet is therefore as much a legal demand as a threat. The figure of speech is limited to a single pun, but read at the end of a petition it makes an emphasis that both amuses and keeps the request in mind.

Historical Context

According to Âşık Çelebi, because Seyfî had known Bayezid II since his princely years in Amasya, he would add a single couplet to the end of every petition he wrote to the sultan; when his petitions were read, Bayezid would ask, "Does Seyfî have a couplet again?" The biographer gives this couplet as an example of the custom: Seyfî wrote it at the end of a petition asking for a forger known as Tursun to be banished from the town. Gelibolulu Âlî tells the same story, saying that a petition was written for the removal of the forger named Tursun from the town and that this couplet was placed in the letter. In which town and when it was written is not known; it probably belongs to one of Seyfî's judgeships in Rumelia, but this is a conjecture. According to the edition's note, the phrase "āḫirinde bu beyti yazmışdur ki" in Âşık Çelebi is missing from manuscripts B, A, P and S; no such manuscript note is given for the couplet itself. The couplet is a rare and lively example of poetry entering a judge's official correspondence.

Bibliography

Online sources