Original Ottoman Turkish Text

The question couplet is attributed to Süleyman the Magnificent, the answer couplet to Zenbilli Ali Efendi.

Dırahtı sarmış olsa eğer karınca
Zarar var mı karıncayı kırınca
Yarın divanına hakkın varınca
Süleyman'dan hakkın alır karınca

In English

1. If ants have overrun the tree, is there any harm (any sin) in killing the ants?

2. Tomorrow, when one comes before the court of God, that is, on the Day of Judgement, the ant will take its due from Süleyman.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This is a fatwa in verse of two couplets: the first couplet is the question, the second the answer. In the fatwa tradition the question is usually written in the form "If Zeyd were to do such and such, what follows", and the mufti answers with a brief "it is permitted" or "it is not". Here both question and answer are framed in the language of poetry. The two couplets share the same rhyme: the sound "-rınca" recurs in the words "karınca, kırınca, varınca, karınca", and all four lines rhyme with one another. The mufti thus answers the question from within the same mould, without breaking its metre or rhyme. Each line has eleven syllables; the source does not state the metre.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The force of the answer comes from the double meaning of the name "Süleyman". In the sura of the Ant (al-Naml) in the Qur'an, when the army of Solomon (Süleyman) comes to the valley of the ants, an ant tells the others to go into their dwellings lest Solomon and his soldiers crush them unawares. In divan and folk literature "Solomon and the ant" is therefore a common motif for contrasting the strong with the weak, the ruler with the least of his subjects. The "Süleyman" of the couplet recalls both the sultan who asked the question and the prophet who understood the speech of ants; this is a subtlety of double entendre (tevriye). In the second couplet the word "hakkın" occurs twice with two different meanings: the first means "Hakk'ın", of God (God's court), the second "your due", the right of which the ant is the claimant; this is an example of paronomasia (cinas). Instead of telling the sultan directly "there is harm", the answer reminds him that the reckoning will be made at the court of God. Because the word "dîvân" evokes both the sultan's imperial council and the divine tribunal of the Last Day, a comparison arises between the two courts: the ruler who judges in this world will stand in the next before a court where the smallest of creatures is the plaintiff.

Historical Context

Ramazan Ata quotes these couplets as an example of Zenbilli Ali Efendi's independent stance before the sultans and of his talent for poetry. According to the report, Süleyman asked this question about ants that were damaging the trees in the palace garden. Ata gives no source for the story, and we have been unable to find an early record of the anecdote; the attribution of the couplets to Zenbilli therefore rests on report alone. Since Süleyman came to the throne in 1520, and Zenbilli from 1523 onwards left his duties to a deputy because of illness and died in 1526, the event, if true, must belong to the first years of Süleyman's reign. The anecdote is of the same kind as the reports of Zenbilli's resistance to Selim I: the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi states that such stories were very probably meant to emphasise the weight of the office of shaykh al-Islam, then taking institutional shape, in relation to the sultan. For the shaykh al-Islam's works see Zenbilli Ali Efendi: Writer and Works.

Bibliography

Online sources