Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâʿilâtün feʿilâtün feʿilün (fa'lün); the source does not indicate the metre, the identification is ours.

Sanma boş mîr-livâ Heftâdî
Maşrık u mağribe yetmiş adı
Ana Yüzoğlu deyüb geçme sakın
Işret ü şöhrete vermiş dâdı
Öyle bir dîv-i mânend ki ol
Bir sinekten koparır feryâdı

In English

1. Do not think the sanjak-bey Heftâdî an empty, ordinary man; his name has reached both east and west. (Heftâdî means "of seventy" in Persian; the line can also be read "in east and west his name is seventy".)

2. Do not pass him by calling him "Yüzoğlu" (Son of a Hundred, or Son of the Wild); he has given revelry and fame their due.

3. He is such a giant that he raises an outcry over a fly. (Two readings are possible: he raises a storm over a fly, or with that huge body of his he cries out at a fly.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Praise Built on Numbers

The first two couplets of the kıta work like a riddle of numbers. The bey's name is written "Hüftâdî" in Hüsameddin and "Heftâdî" in the poem; the root of the word is the Persian "heftâd", seventy. The Turkish "yetmiş", for its part, carries both this number and the sense of "has reached, has arrived". So the second line of the first couplet, while saying that his name has reached east and west, at the same time translates the bey's name into Turkish as "his name is seventy". The second couplet raises the number to a hundred: the people call the bey "Yüzoğlu", Son of a Hundred, and the poet advises against taking lightly this nickname in which seventy is set against a hundred. In a footnote Hüsameddin writes that the word "yüz" in old Turkish meant a creature grown up in the forest, wild, attacking everyone and fleeing from everyone; he looks for the origin of the nickname in a family name current among the Georgians. For the poet the nickname is a second game, touching the bey's wildness as well as the number.

The first couplet rhymes within itself (Heftâdî / adı), and the following even lines end on the same "-âdı" sound. Hüsameddin calls the piece "couplets" and gives it no generic name. A first couplet rhyming like a matla (opening couplet) recalls the ghazal (gazel) more than the kıta; it is therefore also possible that these three couplets open a longer poem. As for the metre, if the conjunctions in "Maşrık u" and "Işret ü" are read long and "adı" is taken in its old pronunciation "âdı", as the rhyme requires, all the lines fit this pattern of the remel metre.

From Praise to Mockery

The last couplet turns the kıta upside down. "Dîv-i mânend" means like a giant, and agrees with the words Hüsameddin uses in describing the bey: "like his father, a giant in appearance, a wrestler in character". The real sting of the couplet is in the second line: this giant of a man raises an outcry over a fly. The idiom is used to this day in the sense of "making a great fuss over a tiny matter"; in that case the couplet mocks the bey's anger and bullying in petty affairs. The line can also be read as a huge giant shrieking in fear of a fly; in that case the mockery is aimed at the bey's courage. The source does not show which is meant, and both readings suit the general tone of the kıta. The phrase "ışret ü şöhret" in the second couplet is also double-faced: to give the drinking gatherings their due is on the one hand praise of generosity, on the other a hint at the man of whom Hüsameddin says "he knew nothing but wine and lust".

Hüftâdî Bey and Amasya

Hüftâdî Ahmed Bey was the son of Mağra ve Mehmed Paşa, son of Yuset Han, ruler of Kartli in Georgia, and had become a Muslim together with his father. He arrived as sanjak-bey of Amasya in Rebiülahir 1038 (November-December 1628). Hüsameddin says he knew neither the language nor the faith; the Georgians in his retinue, while collecting taxes, extorted money from the people under the name of "Hüftâdî's gift" and committed every outrage in the houses they entered. That same year the people rose and killed him. In Turâbî's entry Hüsameddin sums up the poet's dealings with this bey in a single phrase: "hicv ü senâ ederek", by satire and praise, he won even this man's favour. The kıta is the best example of this remark: to the ear of a bey who did not understand, it came as praise; to the ear of a gathering that knew Turkish, as mockery. This reading is drawn from Hüsameddin's information; whether the poem was recited in the bey's presence is unknown. Hüsameddin writes that he saw the kıta in the now lost tezkire of Abdî Efendi. For the poet's life see the page Turâbî Mustafa Efendi, and for the bey's days in Amasya the page Hüftâdî Ahmed Bey.

Bibliography

Online sources