Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâʿilâtün feʿilâtün feʿilâtün feʿilün (the edition does not indicate the metre; the pattern follows our own scansion).

Ey gönül eyleme gel dünye-i gaddâra heves
Pâkler eylemedi çünki bu murdâra heves
Rîş-i handına gönül virme sakın dünyânun
İtme her-câyîdür ol şûh-ı sitemkâra heves

In English

1. O heart, come, do not desire this faithless world; for the pure did not desire this carrion.

2. Beware, do not give your heart to the world's mocking smile; do not desire that cruel coquette, she is a fickle one who goes everywhere.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The Problem of Attribution

Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi closes the "Türâbî" entry in his tezkire (biographical anthology of poets) with these two couplets, introducing them with the words "Bu eş'âr anundur", these verses are his. The same ghazal, however, also appears in Latîfî's tezkire, completed some forty years before Kınalızâde's, and there it belongs to someone else. In his own "Türâbî" entry Latîfî first quotes an opening couplet (matla) of that poet, a single couplet and the couplet "Gel ey ʿârif göñül virme fenâ dârında ġaddâra / Eger şahbâz-ı vaḥdetseñ çü kerkes ḳonma murdâra"; then he says "Münâsib-i în-maḥal şiʿr li-müʾellifihi", that is, a poem suited to this place by the author of the tezkire, and gives this ghazal in six couplets. The last couplet of the ghazal begins "Ey Laṭîfî ḳo cihân cîfesini zâġlara / Bülbül-i gülşen-i ḳuds itmeye murdâra heves"; the pen name (mahlas) is Latîfî's. The ghazal is therefore Latîfî's own poem. Latîfî placed it there because it suited Türâbî's couplet rhyming on "ġaddâra" and "murdâra"; Kınalızâde, in transferring the entry to his own tezkire, appears to have taken the poem for Türâbî's.

What confuses matters further is that Latîfî's Türâbî and Kınalızâde's Türâbî are not the same person. Latîfî's Türâbî is an ecstatic dervish (meczup) of Kastamonu who lived early in the reign of Mehmed II; he is said to have written his poems on walls with charcoal. Kınalızâde keeps the Kastamonu detail but presents the man as a scholar who preached in the mosques of Istanbul and drew a salary from the treasury; this description fits Sehî's "Mevlânâ Türâbî" and Hüsameddin's Şuayb Efendi of Amasya. These two couplets can therefore be linked to Hüsameddin's Şuayb only through the merging of two different people into a single entry and the assignment of a poem to the wrong owner. The fragment is included here so that Kınalızâde's attribution can be seen in full on this site; the real owner of the poem is Latîfî.

Text and Meaning

Kınalızâde's text differs from Latîfî's in two words. In Latîfî the third line reads "Rîş-ḫandine göñül virme ṣaḳın devrânuñ": the mocking smile is not the world's but that of the devrân, that is, of time and fortune. "Rîş-hand" means a wounding, bitter and mocking smile; "hercâyî" means one who goes everywhere and attaches to no one, faithless, and presents the world as a woman of the streets. The word "murdâr" in the first couplet rests on an old ascetic image likening the world to carrion; Latîfî's calling the world "cîfe", carrion, in the last couplet and leaving it to the crows continues the same image. The rhyme words "ġaddâr" and "murdâr" and the refrain (redif) "heves" sustain a warning, admonishing voice throughout the ghazal. This voice fits Kınalızâde's remark about Türâbî that "he has sheikhly poems"; perhaps this is also what made it easier for him to ascribe the poem to Türâbî.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Official sources

Online sources