Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilün

Rah-ı aşḳa itdi dil çün iḳtidâ yâ Rabbenâ
Peyk-i tevfîḳiň ona ḳıl reh-nümâ yâ Rabbenâ

In English

1. Since the heart has begun to follow the path of love, O our Lord, make the messenger of Your grace its guide, O our Lord.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is recorded in the cönk as a "dîvân" or "dîvânî". In minstrel literature this name is given to poems composed in aruz, in couplets like the ghazal, and sung to the saz. Because Hakverdioğlu's article publishes only the first verse unit of each poem in the cönk, we know only the opening couplet of this poem. The refrain is "yâ Rabbenâ"; the rhyme is the "-â" sound in "iktidâ / reh-nümâ". The identification of the metre is ours; as is usual in the aruz poems of folk poets, some syllables may not fit the pattern exactly. To whom and on what occasion the poem was composed is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet is a prayer, and "yâ Rabbenâ" (O our Lord) in the refrain recalls the opening of Qur'anic prayers. "İktidâ" is a word also used for following the imam in ritual prayer; the heart's "iktidâ" on the path of love makes it like a congregation following an imam. So as not to be left alone on this path, the lover asks for God's "tevfîk", the help that brings affairs to rightness and success. "Peyk" means a messenger or a courier who goes ahead; God's help is imagined as a courier who shows the way. This connection between love and prayer suits the Sufi view in which love is seen as a path opening onto divine love.

Historical Context

The poem is recorded under the name of Tokatlı Nûrî in the Merzifon Cönkü introduced by Metin Hakverdioğlu in 2019; with thirty-six poems, Nûrî is the poet the cönk gives most space to. Drawing on Orhan Bilgin, Hakverdioğlu relates that Eyüb Sabrî of Merzifon often invited Nûrî to Merzifon; Nûrî's weight in the cönk can be explained by this friendship. Since other minstrels also used the pen name Nûrî, it is not certain that every Nûrî poem in the cönk belongs to Tokatlı Nûrî; the article attributes these poems to Tokatlı Nûrî. For the poet's life and his connection with Amasya, see the page on Tokatlı Nûrî. The poem is on page 22 of the cönk and page 549 of the article; its full text is in the cönk itself and has not been published to date.

Bibliography

Online sources