Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef'ûlü mefâîlü mefâîlü feûlün

Ey mâh-ı felek-câh-ı sipihriň ceberûtı
Sensiň bu hümâ-sâye-i mülküň melekûtı

In English

1. O moon of exalted rank in the majestic realm of the heavens; you are the spiritual glory (melekût) of this realm shaded by the hümâ.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a kalenderî. The kalenderî is one of the forms minstrels composed in aruz and is generally written in the pattern "mef'ûlü mefâîlü mefâîlü feûlün". 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 rhyme is the "-ûtı" sound in "ceberûtı / melekûtı". 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 141 of Ahmet Talat's (Onay) 1933 book on Tokatlı Nûrî. To whom and on what occasion the poem was composed is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet is a eulogy built with weighty compounds. "Ceberût" and "melekût" are, in Sufism, names of levels of existence: ceberût is the realm of divine might, melekût the realm of angels and spirits. The poet names the person he praises with these two words: he is the moon of the heavens' majestic realm and the spiritual glory of this land. The phrase "hümâ-sâye" refers to the hümâ, the legendary bird of fortune believed to make a ruler of whomever its shadow falls on. It is therefore possible that the couplet was composed for a ruler or a man of state; but since in divan poetry the beloved is also praised like a sultan, the opening couplet alone does not reveal to whom it was written.

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 141 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 21 of the cönk and page 549 of the article.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Books

Online sources