Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: mefâ‘îlün mefâ‘îlün mefâ‘îlün mefâ‘îlün

Şehā bu ṣūret-i zībā saña Ḥaḳdan hidāyetdür
Sañasın sūre-i Yūsuf cemālüñden bir āyetdür
Senüñ ḥüsnüñ benüm ‘ışḳum senüñ cevrüñ benüm ṣabrum
Bular her dem-be-dem artar dükenmez bī-nihāyetdür

In English

1. O king, this lovely face is a guidance granted to you by God; one would think the Sura of Joseph a verse sent down from your beauty. (The Sura of Joseph in the Qur'an tells the story of the prophet Joseph, famed for his beauty. The word âyet means both a verse of the Qur'an and "a sign, a token": the beloved's beauty is a sign of Joseph's beauty. Another edition reads "inâyet" instead of "hidâyet"; with that reading the line means "this lovely face is a favour from God to you".)

2. Your beauty and my love, your cruelty and my patience: these grow a little more at every moment, never run out, and have no end. (The couplet sets four things against each other in pairs: as your beauty grows, so does my love; as your cruelty grows, so does my patience.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

These two couplets are the second Turkish poem that survives from Zeyneb Hatun, and their only known source today is Sehî Bey's biographical anthology of poets (tezkire), the Heşt-Bihişt. Sehî presents the poem as "ebyât", that is, couplets; the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü (TEİS) calls it a kıt‘a (fragment). The kıt‘a is a verse form of divan poetry, usually of two couplets, that expresses a single thought or feeling briefly. The poem is written in the "mefâ‘îlün mefâ‘îlün mefâ‘îlün mefâ‘îlün" pattern of the hezec metre. The redif (refrain word) is the suffix "-dür"; the rhyme is the sound "-âyet": hidâyet, âyet, bî-nihâyet.

The rhyme scheme is noteworthy. In a kıt‘a the two lines of the first couplet do not usually rhyme with each other; here, however, the first couplet rhymes in both lines like the opening couplet (matla) of a ghazal (hidâyetdür / âyetdür), and the fourth line returns to the same rhyme. This structure recalls the first two couplets of a ghazal. It is therefore possible that the two couplets were taken from a longer ghazal by a poet whose divan is lost; but the sources record nothing of the kind, and the poem is given here as a kıt‘a, following TEİS. The third line also has an internal rhyme of its own: ‘ışḳum and ṣabrum.

The text follows the edition of Sehî published by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in 2017. The text that TEİS quotes from Mustafa İsen's 1998 edition differs in two places: in the first line it reads "Hak'dan inâyetdür" instead of "Ḥaḳdan hidāyetdür", and in the last line "Demâdem artar eksilmez tükenmez" instead of "Bular her dem-be-dem artar dükenmez". In the second difference the meaning stays the same; only the ideas of growing and of never running out are stacked to add emphasis. In the first, the beauty of the face counts either as a hidâyet, the right path shown by God, or as an inâyet, God's favour.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first couplet describes the beloved's beauty in the language of the Qur'an. The words Hak (God), hidâyet, sûre and âyet form a congruence of images (tenasüp) and give the couplet a religious air. The Sura of Joseph tells the story of the prophet Joseph, regarded in divan poetry as the highest example of beauty; by counting the beloved's face as a verse of this sura, the poet links it to Joseph's beauty. The word âyet carries a double entendre (tevriye): in its near sense a verse within a sura, in its far sense a sign and token. The beloved's face becomes a token of God's beauty and guidance. This view also accords with the Sufi understanding that sees divine beauty reflected in human beauty.

The second couplet puts all its weight on a series of pairings. Your beauty and my love, your cruelty and my patience are matched two by two, and a balance is set up between what belongs to the beloved and what belongs to the lover. As beauty grows, love grows; as cruelty grows, patience grows. The internal rhyme in the middle of the line and the repetitions of "senüñ / benüm" (your / my) sharpen the rhythm. TEİS, drawing on Nihad Sami Banarlı, writes that the poet composed this kıt‘a with "a dancing expression" (raksân bir ifade), building it with a Qur'anic and Sufi culture and a musical language and command of aruz (quantitative metre) that move as if in a dance. The sound pattern of the poem supports this judgement.

The poem opens with the address "Şehâ", "O king", which follows the convention of divan poetry of calling the beloved a sultan. The widespread interpretation that the poem was written to a sovereign, for instance Mehmed the Conqueror, and that it expresses the poet's love for him, does not appear in the anthologies. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Historical Context

In his anthology Sehî mentions Zeyneb Hatun together with Mihrî Hatun under the heading "Fî-zikri'n-nisâ" (on the women). He says that in this period two ladies emerged from among women whose poems were beautiful and whose couplets were peerless, that their ghazals passed from hand to hand among the people and won great fame, and that they therefore had to be recorded. He introduces Zeyneb as a lady who had studied the sciences in due order, excelled in the science of edvâr, that is, music theory, was unrivalled in the art of poetry and possessed much learning. In the main text of the edition, these two couplets are the only piece Sehî gives as a specimen of her poetry.

One manuscript of Sehî (Ü1) adds a note immediately after these couplets and also gives a famous closing couplet of the poet: "Zeyneb çü yâr zülfi gibi târe olmagıl / Dîvâna olma şi‘rüñi dîvân (u) defter it". This couplet is almost identical to the closing couplet found in Câmi‘ü'n-nezâ'ir for the poet's best-known poem, the ghazal "Keşf it nikâbunı", and it is discussed in the article on that ghazal.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan, "ZEYNEB, Zeyneb Hatun, Zeynünnisâ", Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü (TEİS), Ahmet Yesevi University, 2014 (updated 2020), "Eserlerinden Örnekler": Kıt‘a (from Mustafa İsen, Sehî Bey Tezkiresi, Heşt-Behişt, Ankara: Akçağ, 1998, p. 218). teis.yesevi.edu.tr

Official sources

  • Sehî Beg, Heşt-Bihişt, ed. Halûk İpekten, Günay Kut, Mustafa İsen, Ankara: Ministry of Culture and Tourism (e-book), 2017, p. 159 ("Fî-zikri'n-nisâ", Zeyneb Hatun entry and note 12).

Books

Online sources