Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilün

El-ḥaḳ inṣâf bu kim Mihrî-i şîrîn-kelimât
Söz yerine aḳıdupdur deheni âb-ı ḥayât
Derd-i ‘aşḳ ile kimüñ kim dili ġam-nâk olsa
Bu kitâba naẓar itsün eger isterse necât
Evvel ü evsaṭ u hem âḫirini seyr itdüm
Vasaṭında diledüm k'anuñ idem tedḳîḳât
Ṣanki ‘ummânda girdâba düşürdüm özümi
Bî-kerân baḥre nihâyet bulınur mı heyhât
Beydaḳ-ı ḫâli ile naṭ‘-ı maḥabbet içre
Nicesi kiş diyeyin ki beni ḳıldı şeh-mât
Âferîn ṭab‘-ı şeker-bâruña her laḥẓada kim
Aḳıdur ḳanda ise söz yerine âb-ı ḥayât
Sözlerüñ luṭfına ġâyet bulınur mı yoḳ yoḳ
Luṭf-ı ṭab‘uña nihâyet bulınur mı heyhât
‘Aceb olmaya ki kûyuñda senüñ cân virdi
Ger Maḳâmî ḳuluñuñ yeri olursa cennât
Gerçi kim âb-ı ḥayât idi lebüñ evvelde
Virmedüñ anı o bîmâruña irişdi memât
Gerçi ser-defter-i ḫûbân idüñ evvellerde
Geçdi vaḳtüñ ṣanemâ şimdi yüri var ṣuya at
Hecr ile göçdi Maḳâmî aña bir kez dimedüñ
Gel berü itlerüm ile işigüm bekle oñat
Bâġ-ı ḥüsnüñdeki şeftâlularuñ oldı erik
Dimedüm mi anı vaḳtinde iken ṣaḳlama ṣat
Bir zamân idi ki sen cânı der-âġûş idenüñ
Gündüzi ‘îd olur idi gicesi ḳadr ü berât
Şimdi bir ḥâldesin kim ilenen düşmenine
Dir ki Mihrî gibi ḥüsnüñe irişsün âfât
Ḫân-ı ḥüsnüñle senüñ muġtenem illerle olup
Ḳurı yerlerde Maḳâlî çalar idi neġamât
Yâ gibi seni kenârına getürdükde raḳîb
Hedef itmiş idi miskînüñi yeter nekebât
Zehr-i ḳahrı içürürdi felek ol miskîne
Lebüñ aġyâra içürdükde şehâ ‘aẕb-i furât
Yüzüñ ayına naẓar eyler idi aġyâruñ
Künc-i ġam içre anı öldürür idi ḫasrât
Ḳanduġını lebüñüñ ḳandine aġyârı görüp
Döymeyüp âḫir o bî-çâreye irişdi memât
Ger mezârına güẕer eyleyesin işidesin
Mihrî Mihrî deyü çaġırduġını anda nebât
Şöyle berk itdi senüñ mihrüñi göñlinde kim ol
Ḳopısar ‘aşḳuñ ile mihrüñ ile der-‘araṣât

In English

1. In all fairness, one must admit: the mouth of sweet-spoken Mihrî has poured forth the water of life instead of words.

2. Whoever has a heart grieved by the pain of love, let him look into this book if he seeks salvation.

3. I travelled through its beginning, its middle and its end; in its middle I wished to examine it closely.

4. It was as if I had thrown myself into a whirlpool in the ocean; alas, can a shoreless sea have an end.

5. On the chessboard of love the mole on your cheek, with its pawn, cornered me so that before I could even say "check" it had checkmated me. The mole is likened to a pawn, love to a chessboard.

6. Bravo to your sugar-raining nature at every moment, which, wherever it may be, pours forth the water of life instead of words.

7. Can there be an end to the grace of your words; no, no. Can there be a limit to the grace of your nature; alas.

8. If your slave Makâmî gave up his life in your street, it would be no wonder if his place were the gardens of paradise.

9. Your lip was once the water of life; but you did not give it to that sick one of yours, and death overtook him.

10. Once you headed the register of the beauties; O idol, your time has passed, now go on, throw it into the water. "Throwing into the water" is used here in the sense of casting something aside as worthless.

11. Makâmî departed through the pain of separation; not once did you say to him, "come here, guard my threshold well together with my dogs".

12. The peaches in the garden of your beauty have turned into plums; did I not tell you, while they were in season, not to hoard them but to sell.

13. There was a time when, for the soul who embraced you, the day was a feast day, the night the Night of Power and the Night of Berat.

14. Now you are in such a state that one who curses his enemy says, "may calamity strike your beauty as it struck Mihrî's".

15. While strangers, guests at the table of your beauty, found plunder and lived in plenty, Makâlî played melodies in barren, desolate places.

16. When the rival took you into his embrace like a bow, he had made that poor wretch the target of calamities. "Yâ" can be read both as bow and as the curved Arabic letter "ye".

17. O sovereign of beauties, when you gave the sweet Euphrates water of your lip to strangers to drink, fortune made that wretch drink the poison of grief.

18. While strangers gazed at the moon of your face, longings killed him in the corner of grief.

19. Seeing the strangers sated with the sugar of your lip, unsated himself, death at last overtook that helpless one.

20. If you pass by his grave, you will hear the plants there calling "Mihrî, Mihrî".

21. He bound your love so firmly in his heart that he will rise on the plain of resurrection with your love and your affection. "Mihr" is read both as love and as Mihrî's name.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

It is not certain that this poem belongs to Makâmî. The poem is found only in manuscript Ü of Mihrî Hatun's divan, at the end of the divan; Mehmet Arslan gave it in his edition under the title "Divan Dışı Manzûme", a poem outside the divan, and stated that it is not Mihrî's but was written by a poet called Makâlî and added to the end of the divan. The poem consists of twenty-one couplets ending in the same rhyme ("-ât"); since its first two lines rhyme, it follows the form of a kaside (qasida) or ghazal (gazel), and Arslan too describes it as a poem "in the manner of a kaside". The metre, as indicated in the edition, is feilâtün feilâtün feilâtün feilün. The poem falls into two parts: the first seven couplets praise Mihrî's poetry and her "book", while from the eighth couplet onwards the story of a lover who died for his beloved is told and the beloved whose beauty has faded is mocked.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The section of praise opens with admiration likening Mihrî's words to the water of life. The poet says he read her "book", that is, her divan, from beginning to end, and that when he tried to examine its middle he felt as if he had fallen into the whirlpool of a shoreless ocean. The fifth couplet uses chess terms: "beydak" is the pawn, "kiş" the warning given to the king, "şeh-mât" checkmate; the mole on the beloved's cheek, like a pawn, checkmates the lover before "check" is even called. The exclamations "yok yok" and "heyhat" in the seventh couplet close this section with exuberant praise.

In the second section the tone changes abruptly. It is told that Makâmî gave up his life in the beloved's street, that the beloved withheld from him the water of life on her lip, and that now her beauty has passed. "Yüri var ṣuya at" in the tenth couplet and "your peaches have turned into plums, you should have sold them in season" in the twelfth are stinging images taken from everyday speech; in the fourteenth couplet Mihrî's beauty has become a formula of curse. The final couplets tell of the lover's end: unable to bear seeing the beloved shared with strangers, he died, and even the grasses on his grave cry out "Mihrî, Mihrî". The word "mihr" in the last couplet forms a pun with the name "Mihrî" at the beginning of the poem. Praise and mockery, admiration and reproach, coexist in the poem; this is in keeping with the bantering language of the ghazal Makâmî wrote to Mihrî and of Mihrî's reply to him.

Historical Context

The name "Maḳâmî" appears twice in the poem (couplets 8 and 11) and the name "Maḳâlî" once (couplet 15). Arslan assigns the poem to a poet called Makâlî and regards it as a text showing the relationship between Mihrî and Makâmî. There are poets with the pen name Makâlî in the biographical anthologies of poets (tezkire), but they are judges from Anatolia and Aydın, and there is no information that they were contemporaries of Mihrî. That the one "playing melodies" in the fifteenth couplet fits the musician Makâmî better, that in the Arabic script "Makâlî" and "Makâmî" differ by a single letter, and that divan poets speak of themselves in the third person by their pen names, suggest that the poem may have been written by Makâmî himself or by someone speaking on his behalf. This is our inference and is not certain. A further difficulty is that Makâmî is spoken of in the poem as if he were dead: according to the tezkires Makâmî died in Baghdad in 1534, while the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü places Mihrî's death in 920 (1514-15). Since the poem addresses Mihrî as if she were alive, Makâmî's death should be understood not as a real death but as the figure of the lover "dying of love" in love poetry. Whoever its author, the poem is a document showing how well known the poetic sparring between Makâmî and Mihrî in Prince Ahmed's circle in Amasya was.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Books

Online sources