Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Her kim kabrümden du‘a ide geçe
Cennete iman ü Kur’an ile göçe

In English

1. May whoever passes by my grave saying a prayer pass on to Paradise with faith and with the Qur'an.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Historical Context

This is the only couplet among Sürûrî's poems whose place is known: it was inscribed on his gravestone. In his article on Sürûrî, İsmail Güleç relies on Emin Efendi's Menâkıb-ı Kethüdâzâde, printed in the late nineteenth century, and states that "on the late scholar's gravestone this couplet of his own composition is written", quoting the couplet from that record. The information that the couplet is Sürûrî's own also rests on the same source.

Sürûrî died in Istanbul on 7 Cemâziyelevvel 969 (13 January 1562), during a cholera epidemic. His pupil Âşık Çelebi, however, places his death at the end of Cemâziyelâhir of the same year; it is he who describes the poverty of his teacher's last years and his death after an illness of three or four days. In his account the shroud had been bought beforehand, the grave dug in the burial ground of the mosque, and the two thousand silver akçe he had put by for the funeral were found ready. Sürûrî had sold his house to build this small mosque in Kasımpaşa. The records Güleç cites also fix the place of the grave: in the courtyard of the mosque, at the spot in front of the mihrab, above the Mevlevî lodge, beside the road that climbs to Aynalı Çeşme. Neither mosque nor grave stands today, and with the stone lost as well, the couplet lives on only in this record.

Structure of the Poem

The text is given as Güleç quotes it, in a plain spelling that marks some long vowels but does not distinguish the letters of the Arabic script. As the detailed transcription used in critical editions of divans is not available, the original form of some sounds is unknown. The two lines do not have the same number of syllables, and the couplet does not clearly fit a known aruz pattern. This may be due to changes the text underwent when it was copied from the stone; nothing can be said on this point without seeing the stone itself.

The rhyme pairs "geçe" (may pass by) with "göçe" (may pass on, depart), and only one vowel separates them. That small shift of sound puts walking past a grave beside departing from the world. Look for any other figure of speech in the couplet and there is none; all its finesse lies in this likeness of sound.

Meaning

The couplet is a versified form of a request often seen on gravestones: let the passer-by pray for the one who lies in the grave. Sürûrî does not leave the request unanswered, and wishes the traveller who prays a passage to Paradise with faith and with the Qur'an. The dead man asking the passer-by for a prayer and blessing him in return turns the couplet into an exchange of prayers. For the gravestone of a teacher who in his last years had given up office and poured everything he owned into a mosque, such plain language is not surprising. According to the records Güleç cites, the grave was once a place of visitation; the couplet on its stone was written to make the passer-by stop and pray.

Bibliography

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