Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefâîlün mefâîlün mefâîlün mefâîlün

Sana ey mehliḳâ pek nâz ile bir nâme gönderdim
Seniň billûrıňa lâyıḳ mülevven câme gönderdim

In English

1. O moon-faced one, with great tenderness I have sent you a letter; I have sent you a many-coloured robe worthy of your crystal (skin).

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is recorded in the cönk as an aruz semai. The semais minstrels composed in aruz are usually written in the pattern of four "mefâîlün" feet 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 "gönderdim"; the rhyme is "nâme / câme". 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 lists two gifts the lover has sent the beloved: a "nâme", a letter, and a "câme", a robe. The words nâme and câme are very close in sound, and the rhyme of the couplet is built on this resemblance. Sending cloth and garments to the beloved was in earlier times a sign of love and favour; "mülevven", many-coloured, variegated cloth was considered a precious gift. The word "billûr" (crystal) expresses the whiteness and translucence of the beloved's skin. The couplet rests less on the abstract conceits of divan poetry than on a scene from daily life.

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 23 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