Original Persian Text

Metre: not stated in the editions

زلف اکر نیست هوادار قد بالایت
همچون من سر بچه رومی نهد اندر پایت

Zulf eger nīst hevādār-i ḳadd-i bālāyet
Hem-çün men ser be-çe rū mī-nihed ender pāyet

In English

1. If your hair is not in love with your lofty stature, with what face could it, like me, lay its head at your feet? (The beloved's hair is so long that its tips reach down to the feet; the poet interprets this as the hair, like herself, being in love with the beloved's stature and laying its head at the beloved's feet. The couplet has been read in two further ways. Rıdvan Canım reads the word in the second line as "child" and translates the couplet: "If your lock is not a suitor of your tall stature, the head of a child like me turns towards your feet." Mustafa İsen's translation, based on the text in Gelibolulu Âlî, runs: "Your lock has covered your long neck and does not show it; how could those in my state lay their heads at your feet?")

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This couplet is the only surviving example of Zeyneb Hatun's Persian poetry. Latîfî and Gelibolulu Âlî both give it as a matla (opening couplet). The matla is the first couplet of a ghazal or a kaside (qasida), whose two lines rhyme with each other; the biographical anthologies of poets (tezkire) often quote only this couplet instead of a whole poem. The redif (refrain word) of the couplet is the pronoun suffix "-et" (your); the rhyme is the sound "-ây": bâlâyet, pâyet. It is not known which ghazal or kaside it opened; the rest of the poem was lost with the poet's divan. The editions do not state the metre of the couplet and give no reading of it in Latin letters. The reading beneath the original text is our own.

The couplet appears in slightly different forms in the two anthologies. In Latîfî's text the first line begins "zulf eger nīst" (if the hair is not), in Âlî's Künhü'l-ahbâr "zulf-i tu ki nīst" (your hair, which is not). In the second line Latîfî reads "hem-çün men ser be-çe", Âlî "hem çü men ser-pençe". In the copy of the Latîfî edition available to us, "zū mī" appears instead of "rū mī"; here the reading in Âlî has been followed. The meaning of the couplet depends most on this last difference: Latîfî's reading "be-çe rū" (with what face) turns the couplet into a question; Canım read the same spelling as "child", while İsen, relying on the form in Âlî, understood the couplet in another way.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet rests on a familiar portrait of the beloved in divan poetry: the stature is likened to the cypress for its height and straightness, and the hair, for its length, falls down to the feet. Here the poet finds an unreal but graceful cause for that length. The hair has laid its head at the beloved's feet because it is in love with the beloved's stature; were it not in love, with what face could it do so. This is hüsn-i ta‘lil, the figure that sets aside the real cause and puts a poetic one in its place. Since "ser" means both head and the tip of a thing, the tip of the hair and the lover's head meet in a single word. The words zülf (hair), kadd (stature), ser (head) and pâ (foot) also form a congruence of images (tenasüp), building a portrait from head to foot.

The words "like me" stand at the centre of the couplet. The lover is one who lays her head at the beloved's feet; the hair does what she does and so becomes her companion. Laying one's head at someone's feet is, in divan poetry, the expression of complete surrender and servitude. That Latîfî and Âlî chose this couplet shows they admired the fine conceit compressed into two lines: Latîfî presents it as the poet's "bikr-i fikr", a thought no one had expressed before, and Âlî calls it "this graceful matla".

Historical Context

Latîfî relates that Zeyneb's father noticed the talent and intelligence of his daughter, taught her every kind of learning, and had her read Persian divans and Arabic kasides. He then cites a Persian line meaning "when meanings come together, poetry becomes easy" and says that in this way the poet acquired a gift for verse and compiled a divan of Persian and Turkish kasides and poems in the name of Sultan Mehmed. Âlî likewise writes that she was a lady of many accomplishments who wrote poetry in Persian and Turkish, that she compiled her divan and presented it to Sultan Mehmed, and that she was rewarded with valuable gifts (caize) in return. The TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam also notes that the sources record that the poet learned Arabic and Persian and knew Persian well enough to write poetry in it.

Both Latîfî and Âlî give the couplet immediately after the sentences in which they mention the divan compiled in the name of Sultan Mehmed. Whether the couplet was part of that divan, however, is not stated explicitly; the sources give no date for the couplet and do not say to whom it was written. The divan itself is no longer extant: Bursalı Mehmed Tâhir wrote that a copy of it was in the Hagia Sophia Library, but research has found no copy. This single Persian couplet thus remains the only concrete example confirming the anthologists' statement that the poet wrote in two languages.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Latîfî, Tezkiretü'ş-şu‘arâ ve Tabsıratü'n-nuzamâ, ed. Rıdvan Canım, Ankara: Ministry of Culture and Tourism (e-book), 2018, p. 256 (Zeyneb entry, notes 223-224).
  • Gelibolulu Mustafa Âlî, Künhü'l-ahbâr'ın Tezkire Kısmı, ed. Mustafa İsen, Ankara: Ministry of Culture and Tourism (e-book), 2017, Zeyneb Hatun entry, note 14.

Books

  • Mehmet Arslan, "ZEYNEB, Zeyneb Hatun, Zeynünnisâ", Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü (TEİS), Ahmet Yesevi University, 2014 (updated 2020). teis.yesevi.edu.tr
  • Hasan Aksoy, "Zeyneb Hatun", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 44, Istanbul 2013, pp. 360-361. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr

Online sources