Zahmî is the poet represented by a müseddes on the mourning of Muharram in a manuscript verse notebook compiled in Merzifon, the Merzifon Cönkü introduced by Metin Hakverdioğlu in 2019. The poem is a Karbala elegy: it commemorates the martyrdom of Husayn and of the Family of the Prophet (Ehl-i Beyt), and curses Shimr and Ibn Muljam. Hakverdioğlu gives this poem in two separate places in his article, with the same text, and indicates that it is also found in Mehmet Arslan and Mehtap Doğan's anthology Kerbelâ Mersiyeleri. Who Zahmî was, and where and when he lived, are, however, unknown. This page sets out separately what is known about the poem and the gap in the poet's identity.

Life

There is no information about the life of the Zahmî of the cönk. The pen name derives from the Persian word "zahm" (wound) and means "wounded, one who bears a wound". Such pen names, which bring the lover's pain and the wound of the heart to the fore, are frequent in the circles of folk and dervish-lodge poetry. That Zahmî's only poem to enter the cönk is a Muharram elegy suggests that the poet may have come from a milieu in which love for the Family of the Prophet was strong. Karbala elegies were written for centuries both in divan poetry and among Alevi and Bektashi minstrels; therefore no firm conclusion about the poet's spiritual leaning or milieu can be drawn from a single elegy. This is an inference.

The Merzifon Cönkü and the Connection with Amasya

The Merzifon Cönkü is a 112-page notebook in ta'lik script, which Hakverdioğlu acquired from a second-hand bookseller with the information that it came from Merzifon. It contains 161 poems by thirty-two poets; Hakverdioğlu thinks the notebook is about a hundred years old and was compiled within the literary circle of Eyüb Sabrî of Merzifon, probably by a poet named Fethî. Zahmî's müseddes is on page 58 of the cönk. This is the poet's only known connection with Amasya: his Karbala elegy entered a collection kept in Merzifon and was recited there. The presence of a Muharram elegy in this cönk shows that the mourning of Muharram and the commemoration of Karbala also had a place in the poetry gatherings of Merzifon. There is no record that Zahmî himself was from Merzifon.

The State of the Sources

The Records in the Article

The name Zahmî occurs three times in Hakverdioğlu's article. In the list giving the poets of the cönk and the number of their poems, "Zahmî 1 aruz" appears first; at the end of the list the name is repeated once more, without a number, as "Zahmî.". In the poems section the first stanza of the same müseddes is given in two separate places: once immediately before Rızâ's ghazal (p. 554), and once at the end of the article after Rızâ's ghazal (p. 556). The only difference between the two texts is the spelling "Şimr-i Zülcevşen" versus "Şimr-i zü'l-cevşen", and in both the cönk page is given as 58. This repetition does not show that the cönk contains a second poem by Zahmî; it is a duplication in the typesetting of the article. On this page the poem is counted once.

Poets of the Same Pen Name

Hakverdioğlu places page 772 of Arslan and Doğan's 2009 anthology Kerbelâ Mersiyeleri at the head of the poem as its source. This shows that the elegy was also published in that anthology; but since the book could not be obtained, what the anthology says about Zahmî and the full text of the poem could not be seen. The Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü (Dictionary of Names in Turkish Literature), for its part, includes a divan poet with the pen name Zahmî who is thought to have lived in Tekirdağ in the nineteenth century and wrote a fountain inscription there. Nothing but the name is known about this poet either, and no link with the elegy in the cönk has been established. It is natural that a meaningful and common pen name such as Zahmî should have been used by many poets in different places; the identity of the Zahmî of the cönk therefore remains open.

Poetry

The only poem recorded under Zahmî's name in the cönk is a Muharram elegy built of six-line stanzas, which Hakverdioğlu calls a "gazel-i müseddes". The first stanza given in the article is written in the pattern "mefâîlün mefâîlün mefâîlün mefâîlün", and all its lines rhyme in "-emdir / -âdemdir". The stanza opens by telling the heart to renew its mourning, describes angels, humans and jinn putting on mourning in Muharram, and closes by cursing Shimr, held to be the killer at Karbala, and Ibn Muljam, the killer of Ali. The remaining stanzas of the poem are in the cönk and in Arslan and Doğan's anthology. The surviving first stanza is given with its original text, an English rendering and a commentary on the separate page "Müseddes 1: Dilâ tecdîd-i matem ḳıl bugün mah-ı Muḥarremdir" in this category.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Books

  • Mehmet Arslan, Mehtap Doğan, Kerbelâ Mersiyeleri, Ankara: Grafiker Yayınları, 2009, p. 772 (as cited by Hakverdioğlu 2019).
  • Emine Çakır, "Zahmî", Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, 2015. https://teis.yesevi.edu.tr/madde-detay/zahmi

Online sources