Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefâîlün mefâîlün mefâîlün mefâîlün

Olupdur ẕât-ı pâkiň Ḥaḳ ḥabîb-i Muṣṭafâ cânâ
Ẓuhûruň raḥmetullah-ı sebil ḳıldı Ḫüdâ cânâ
Cemâl-i Pertev-i nûruňla doldı mâ-sivâ cânâ
Münevverdir yüzüňden ser-be-ser ‘arż u semâ cânâ
İki ‘âlem bulupdur âb-ı rûyuňdan nümâ cânâ
Ki seniň cümleniň sulṭânı faḫr-i enbiyâ cânâ

In English

1. O beloved (Prophet), your pure being has become Mustafa, the beloved of God; God made your appearance (your coming into the world) a fountain of mercy. With the beauty of the radiance of your light, everything other than God has been filled; earth and heaven are illuminated from end to end by your face. The two worlds have found their growth from the water of your face (your honour); for you are the sultan of them all, the pride of the prophets.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

Hakverdioğlu records this poem as "Semâ‘î-yi Müseddes": an aruz semai built of six-line stanzas. Because Hakverdioğlu's article publishes only the first verse unit of each poem in the cönk, we know only the first stanza of this poem. All six lines rhyme on the "-â" sound in "Mustafâ / Hudâ / mâ-sivâ / semâ / nümâ / enbiyâ"; "cânâ" is the refrain. 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. On what occasion the poem was composed is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

This six-line stanza is a na't, the first stanza of a poem in praise of the Prophet Muhammad. Every line ends in the refrain "cânâ", which addresses the Prophet as one would address a beloved. In Sufism the light of the Prophet Muhammad is thought of as the "nûr-ı Muhammedî", the Muhammadan light created before the universe; the stanza expresses this idea with the words "cemâl-i pertev-i nûr" (the beauty of the radiance of light), "mâ-sivâ" (everything other than God) and "iki âlem" (the two worlds). "Âb-ı rû", the water of the face, means honour and standing in Turkish; the two worlds' flourishing from the Prophet's "water of the face" points to the belief that existence was created for his sake. "Fahr-i enbiyâ", the pride of the prophets, in the last line is one of his common epithets. In the article's reading the word "sebil" can mean "path" or "charitable fountain"; with "mercy" the second sense seems more fitting.

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 95 of the cönk and page 550 of the article; its full text is in the cönk itself and has not been published to date.

Bibliography

Online sources