Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilün

Ey ḥekîm-i vaḳt olan gel yanıma Allah içün
Bir ‘ilaç it derd-i bî-pâyânıma Allah içün

In English

1. O you who are the physician of the age, come to my side for God's sake; for God's sake find a cure for my endless pain.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is recorded in the cönk as a ghazal (gazel). The ghazal is the aruz verse form whose opening couplet (matla) rhymes within itself and whose other couplets are tied to that rhyme; folk poets also used this form. 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 "Allah içün"; the rhyme is the "-anıma" sound in "yanıma / bî-pâyânıma". 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. For this poem the article cites page 119 of Ahmet Talat's (Onay) 1933 book. To whom and on what occasion the poem was composed is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet rests on the old conceit that sees love as an illness and the beloved as the physician. "Hekîm-i vakt", the physician of the age, says that the beloved is the only remedy for the lover's pain. The lover's pain is "bî-pâyân", without end; it can therefore be healed only by the beloved's coming. The plea "Allah içün" (for God's sake) in the refrain is close to everyday speech and turns the request into an urgent, heartfelt entreaty. The word "hekîm" also means a sage, one possessed of wisdom; the couplet is therefore open to a Sufi reading, and the person addressed may also be thought of as a spiritual guide.

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. For this poem Hakverdioğlu cites page 119 of Ahmet Talat's (Onay) book on Tokatlı Nûrî, where the full text is found. In the article's bibliography the year of this book is given as 1993, while the text itself has 1933; Akman's entry also dates the book to 1933. The poem is on page 27 of the cönk and page 549 of the article.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Books

Online sources