Visâlî is a poet of unknown identity whose name appears only in the Merzifon Cönkü. A poem in aruz under the pen name Visâlî is recorded in this manuscript poetry notebook introduced by Metin Hakverdioğlu in 2019; the article gives only its first couplet. Nothing is known of the poet's name, home, period or occupation.

His link with Amasya consists in his poem having entered a cönk compiled in Merzifon. This page has been opened on the principle that poets whose identity cannot be established are not to be passed over; below, what the sources say and do not say is shown separately.

Record in the Merzifon Cönkü

The Merzifon Cönkü is a manuscript poetry notebook that Metin Hakverdioğlu obtained from Merzifon for his own library and introduced in the journal idil in 2019. The cönk, in the long narrow "calf's tongue" format and written in ta'lik script, has 112 pages and contains 161 poems by 32 poets. Hakverdioğlu estimates that it is about a hundred years old and thinks that it was compiled by a Merzifon poet from the literary circle of Eyüp Sabrî, most probably Fethî. According to the article, the cönk contains, beside well-known poets, local poets whose names are entirely unknown, and the authors of its poems in aruz are mostly folk poets. This poet's poem is on page 30 of the cönk.

Poetry

In the list in which Hakverdioğlu counts the poems of the cönk, Visâlî is credited with one poem in aruz and one in syllabic metre; in the poem section of the article, however, only one poem in aruz is seen. This discrepancy must be a difference of counting or printing in the article. The poem is called a divan and opens with the line "Kande gitdi ol civânım gül-fidanım görmedim". The couplet is spoken in a voice searching for a youth who has vanished and whose face is likened to that of a radiant spiritual guide. The original text of the poem, an English rendering and a commentary are published as a separate article in this category.

State of the Sources

The best-known poet with the pen name Visâlî is, according to the article in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, Visâlî of Aydın, whose real name was İsâ. He served as a palace tutor in Edirne under Bayezid II and Selim I and died in the reign of Selim I; his poems are found in the sixteenth-century nazire anthologies, and he is counted as one of the three poets associated with plain Turkish. There is no sign that the poem in the cönk belongs to this divan poet. The fact that the poem is written in an aruz form common in folk poetry and that the cönk was compiled in nineteenth-century Merzifon suggests that the Visâlî of the cönk may have been a folk poet of a later period; this possibility is ours.

In the volumes of Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn's Amasya Tarihi that we searched, no Amasya poet with the pen name Visâlî was found. The poet's identity therefore remains open.

Bibliography

Online sources