Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: 11-syllable syllabic metre

Göňül bir yâr sevdi ‘âlem içinde
Görenler o yâre disün mâşallah
Oḳunsun o yârin mâh-ı cemâli
Aḥsenü’l-Ḫâlıḳın tebârekallah

In English

1. The heart has loved a beloved in this world; let those who see that beloved say "mâşallah". Let it be recited over that beloved's moon-like face: "Blessed is God, the best of creators."

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a koşma. The koşma is the most common verse form of minstrel poetry; it is built of quatrains and usually sung in an eleven-syllable metre. The lines have a caesura after 6+5 or 4+4+3 syllables; the syllable count is ours. Because Hakverdioğlu's article publishes only the first verse unit of each poem in the cönk, we know only the first quatrain of this poem. The first and third lines come close to half-rhyme in "içinde / cemâli"; the second and fourth rhyme in "mâşallah / tebârekallah". To whom and on what occasion the poem was composed is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The quatrain brings into poetry the folk custom connected with the belief in the evil eye. Saying "mâşallah" and "tebârekallah" on seeing something beautiful is a prayer to protect it from the evil eye. The lover asks that those who see the beloved recite this prayer. The phrase "Ahsenü'l-Hâlıkîn tebârekallah" in the last line is taken from the Qur'anic verse "fe-tebârekallâhü ahsenü'l-hâlıkîn" (so blessed is God, the best of creators), which comes in the surah al-Mu'minun after the account of the creation of man. Reciting the verse over the beloved's face presents beauty as a work of God's art of creation. "Mâh-ı cemâl", moon-like beauty, is the common conceit equating the beloved with the moon.

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 33 of the cönk and page 548 of the article; its full text is in the cönk itself and has not been published to date.

Bibliography

Online sources