Teftázání. Cadi Burhán-ud-Dín.
The earliest West-Turkish poets, the men whose work we have been considering, were all avowedly and exclusively mystics. But before the dawn of the fifteenth century a new note was struck, and secular, or at least quasi-secular, poetry — the eternal blending of love and religion renders dogmatising dangerous — made its appearance alongside of verse confessedly mystic and naught beside.
Before, however, we turn our attention to the valiant and adventurous Judge who, so far as we know, was the first to invoke the new spirit, we shall glance for a moment at a work which though only a translation calls for a brief mention in these pages.
In his article already referred to, Veled Chelebi, after a few remarks on Ἅshiq’s Gharíb-Náme, goes on to say that the next work in Turkish poetry is a versified translation of Sa῾dí’s Bústán or ‘Orchard’ made in 755 (1354) by the great and famous Persian schoolman Sa῾d-ud-Dín Mes῾úd-i Teftázání. Of this translation, I have seen no other mention; it is not referred to by either Kátib Chelebi or Von Hammer, nor is it spoken of in any work Oriental or European that has come under my notice. But Veled Chelebi says that he has examined it, and quotes a few of the opening lines as a specimen of its style. These show that Teftázání’s version is in the same metre as the original and, if they are fairly representative of the whole, that his translation is very close. There are in Turkish several commentaries on the Bústán, notably those by Surúrí, Shem῾í, and Súdí, all of whom flourished in the sixteenth century; but I am not aware of any other translation.
Teftázání, the translator, is one of the greatest scholars of Islam; it is he who resuscitated Muhammedan learning after the torrent of Mongol invasion had well-nigh swept all vestige of culture from those lands. Indeed, his appearance is looked upon by the ῾ulemá throughout the Muslim world as the central point in their history, the men of learning who preceded the great scholar being called ‘the ancients,’ while those who have succeeded him are styled ‘the moderns.’
Teftázání was born in Khurásán in 722 (1322), and died in 792 (1390); he was held in high honour by Timur who, for all his ferocity, knew how to reverence the representatives of learning.1
From the days of the Mongol invasion till the time when Báyezíd the Thunderbolt brought the more westerly districts within the limits of the Ottoman Empire, the vast territories lying to the east of the Decarchy were in a state of seething anarchy. From Angora, which had been annexed by Murád I, away to the farthest limits of Azerbayjan was a welter of Turkman clans, ever at war with one another and with their neighbours, and owning no real allegiance to any ruler beyond their tribal chiefs. From out of this chaos there emerged in the last quarter of the fourteenth century four local Turkman dynasties named respectively the Qara-Qoyunlu or ‘Black Sheep’ at Erzerum, the Aq-Qoyunlu or ‘White Sheep’ at Diyár-Bekr,1 the Zu-I-Qadr at Mer῾ash and the Bení-Ramazán at Adana.2
Somewhere about the time when the foundations of these little states were being laid, that is about the year 780 (1378), there was in the city of Erzinjan a very learned and accomplished Cadi or Judge named Ahmed Burhán-ud-Dín. Our information concerning the career of this remarkable man who, if not actually the first, was among the very earliest of the literary lyric poets3 of the Western Turks, is derived chiefly from the biographical work entitled Ed-Durer-ul-Kámine or ‘The Hidden Pearls’ of the famous Arab historian Ibn-Hajar.1 According to this contemporary writer, who is cited as their authority by Tash-köpri-záde, Ἅlí and Sa῾d-ud-Dín, Cadi Burhán-ud-Dín, as the poet is usually called, having completed his studies in jurisprudence in the city of Aleppo which was then, along with all Syria, in the hands of the Memlúk Sultans of Egypt, returned to his native town of Erzinjan, where he speedily formed a close friendship with the Emír or King. This friendship between the Emír and the Cadi ripened into intimacy till at length the former gave Burhán-ud-Dín his daughter in marriage. After this, for some unrecorded reason, their friendship changed into hostility, and Burhán killed his father-in-law and made himself king in his stead. He then seized the districts of Siwas and Qaysaríya and joining them to that of Erzinjan, formed a little kingdom with himself as Sultan. Here he reigned, according to Sa῾d-ud-Dín, for some twenty or thirty years, continually raiding the neighbourhood and fighting with the tribes round about.
In 789 (1387), Ibn-Hajar tells us, a powerful Egyptian army was sent against Burhán, to which he, though he knew opposition must be vain, being of a very courageous disposition, offered a valiant but unavailing resistance. In 799 (1396-7) he found himself hard pressed by some of the neighbouring Turkman tribes, whereupon he besought aid of his quondam enemy the Memlúk Sultan of Egypt, which, being granted, enabled him to overcome his foes. But towards the end of the following year 800 (that is the summer of 1398) he was killed in a great battle with the White Sheep chieftain Qara-cOsmán the Black Leech.1
In his narration of the events of the reign of Báyezíd the Thunderbolt, Sa῾d-ud-Dín gives a somewhat different account of the end of Burhán-ud-Dín. According to the Ottoman historian, Sultan Báyezíd having heard of the pretensions and excesses of the upstart ruler of Siwas, set out against him at the head of a large army. Burhán, terrified at the approach of so formidable an antagonist, abandoned his capital and fled to some high and steep mountains in the neighbourhood of Kharput. Here he waited for a time, hoping that something would happen in the Ottoman dominions which would compel the Sultan to retire, and so allow him to return to his capital. Meanwhile his old enemy the Black Leech seeing Burhán’s extremity to be his own opportunity, suddenly attacked the fugitive in his retreat, and there slew him after a desperate conflict. Thus when Báyezíd and his Ottomans arrived, they had nothing to do but take possession of Burhán’s territories which were straightway incorporated with their own dominions, Zeyn-ul-Ἅbidín, Burhán’s son, having previously been sent off to his sister’s husband Nasír-ud-Dín Bey, the Zu-l-Qadr king of Mer῾ash, by the people of Siwas who were desirous that no opposition should be offered to Báyezíd.2
We have no particulars concerning the fatal quarrel between Burhán-ud-Dín and his father-in-law and so can say nothing as to how far, if at all, the former was justified in bringing about the Emír’s death. But Tash-köpri-záde, following Ibn-Hajar, speaks of Burhán’s seizure of the government of Erzinjan as ‘the fruitage of the tree of craft and intrigue,’ and this, taken in conjunction with the ambitious and aggressive temper which the Cadi-Sultan afterwards displayed, inclines one to suspect that this dim tragedy may have been in but too true harmony with the fierce spirit of that lawless age.
But be this as it may, all the authorities agree in lauding the learning and courage of the gifted and daring adventurer. When speaking of the resistance that he offered to the overwhelming forces of the Memlúks, Ibn-Hajar, as reported by Tash-köpri-záde, says, that although Burhán-ud-Dín knew it was impossible to stem the flood, yet his native valour impelled him to stand up against it; and farther on, when describing his character, he declares that ‘courage and audacity were implanted in his nature, and he was passing brave and terrible, valorous and awful.’ ῾Ayní, another almost contemporary Arab historian, says of him, ‘his was bounty indescribable; but he busied himself with hearkening to instruments of music and with drinking things forbidden; and his is fair poetry in Arabic, in Turkish and in Persian; and he was a lord of high emprize, and he bowed not his head to the Lord of Egypt, nor yet to the Son of cOsmán,1 nor yet to Timur.’2
The best-known of Cadi Burhán-ud-Dín’s writings was his Terjíh, a commentary on the great work on the principles of jurisprudence called the Telmíh; both Tash-köpri-záde and Sa῾d-ud-Dín speak of this commentary as being in high repute among the ῾ulemá of their own time. Burhán wrote also a grammatical treatise which he called Iksír-us-Sa῾ádet or ‘The Elixir of Felicity;’ but it is his poetry alone that concerns us here.
Tash-köpri-záde, presumably following Ibn-Hajar, says, ‘Mevláná Burhán-ud-Dín was master of versification, and he was ranged and reckoned in the ranks of the poets.’ On the same authority, Sa῾d-ud-Dín and ῾Alí say, the first, ‘he was master of graceful verse;’ the second, ‘as were his culture and his learning, so were his poetry and his courage.’ ῾Ayní says, as we have seen, ‘his is fair poetry in Arabic, in Turkish and in Persian.’ And that is all; the Ottoman Tezkire-writers pass him over in silence. Von Hammer makes no mention of him. Not a line of this old poet was preserved by any chronicler; and in the world of letters, where he had played as bold a part as he had in that of politics, his was but the almost forgotten shadow of a name.
Little, if any, attention had been paid to the brief passages just quoted from the medieval historians till in 1890 the British Museum acquired from the executors of Mr. Thomas Fiott Hughes, a former Oriental Secretary to the British Embassy in Constantinople, who had there made a collection of Eastern books, a large and magnificent manuscript containing the Díwán of Cadi Burhán-ud-Dín.1 This volume, which, as far as is known, is unique, was written in 798 (1395-6), two years before the author’s death. On several grounds it seems not improbable that this manuscript was prepared for Burhán-ud-Dín himself. The date would favour such an hypothesis, while the beauty and richness of the decoration show that the volume was destined for some great personage. The scribe, who was certainly a client of Burhán’s, calls himself Khalíl bin Ahmed el-Melekí es-Sultání, that is, Khalíl, the son of Ahmed, the Royalist, the Sultanist. By way of descriptive title he prefixes to the volume this sentence in Arabic: ‘of the Words of the Sultan, the Wise, the Just, the Gracious, the Bounteous, in whom are manifest the Apostolic Virtues, in whom is manifest the Mustafavian Faith,2 the Sultan of Sultans, the Essence of the Water and the Earth, the Proof3 of the Truth and of the World and of the Faith, the strengthened with the strength of the One the Sempiternal, the Lord of Victory, Ahmed, the son of Muhammed, — may God eternalize his Empire and manifest his Proof unto the Worlds!’ This panegyric is clearly the work of a courtier, and reads very much as though the volume had been intended for the library of the royal poet. In the same key are the brief phrases such as, ‘And by him: be his kingdom eternalized.!’4 ‘And by him: be his fortune increased!’1 which the copyist has prefixed to each ghazel.
Burhán-ud-Dín is the earliest West-Turkish lyric poet of whose work we can speak with any confidence; as save for a few lines preserved by the biographers, the writings of his contemporary Niyází — of whom more by and by — have disappeared. His Díwán is thus the oldest monument of the literary lyric poetry of the Western Turks that remains to us; but it is more, it is in all probability practically the first collection of such that was made; as even should we eventually find the Díwán of the poet just mentioned, it would at best be contemporary, not earlier.
The volume consists of two sections, the first and by far the larger containing the ghazels, the second containing firstly twenty rubá῾ís and secondly a much larger number of detached quatrains described as tuyughát.2 Two points are to be noticed concerning the ghazels as differentiating this from later collections. The first of these is that the alphabetical arrangement universal in subsequent díwáns is here ignored, the poems following one another seemingly at hap-hazard, no order of any kind being observable. The second is that the poet never mentions his own name; the custom of using a makhlas or pen-name had not yet been introduced among the Turks.
We find in the ghazels the same prosodial peculiarity that we have noted in the mesnevís of Veled and Ἅshiq, namely, that while the metres are Persian, the feet are sometimes quantitative, sometimes syllabic. Here, however, the position of the two principles is reversed; it is the Persian or quantitative that is the more usual, the Turkish or syllabic falling into the second place. What may have been the case with Niyází’s ghazels we cannot say, but in those of the lyric poets, Ahmed-i Dá῾í, Ahmedí and Nesímí, who also were contemporaries of Burhán, though the bulk of their work is probably subsequent to Timur’s invasion, we find the Persian system alone observed, and, moreover, fully accepted in its every detail. Burhaán’s is therefore the only díwán of literary ghazels we have which was completed, even to receiving the last touches it ever got, prior to the development that synchronised with the Tartar inroad; and consequently these ghazels are the only known poems of their class which present that compromise between the Persian and Turkish prosodial systems so distinctive of the earlier portion of the First Period. In the rubá῾ís the Persian method is more consistently followed. These rubá῾ís are probably the first ever written in the Turkish language.
Cadi Burhán-ud-Dín is, so far as I know, the only literary poet among the Western Turks who has made use of the old native verse-form called Tuyugh. This, as may be remembered, is identical in rhyme-arrangement with the rubá῾í or quatrain; that is to say, it is a short poem of four lines, the first, second and third of which rhyme together.1 But it is not written in any of the Persian rubá῾í metres, being composed in lines of eleven syllables which are of course always scanned in the Turkish syllabic style.2 It is curious to note how in his tuyughs Burhán goes out of his way to be as much of a Turkman as he can. His ghazels and rubá῾ís are written in a pure, though somewhat peculiar, West-Turkish dialect, but the tuyughs abound with East-Turkish words and grammatical forms which he uses nowhere else. In writing in what is essentially an East-Turkish form he seems to have very properly thought that it behoved him as an artist to express himself so far as might be in the fashion of his Central Asian kinsfolk.
The sentiment and manner of Burhán’s poetry are of course Persian; he learned, as was inevitable, from the only masters who were there to teach; and in his own way he learned his lesson quite as well as most of his more famous successors. It would perhaps not be quite fair to charge his Persian instructors with entire responsibility for all the gems of rhetoric that glitter in his verses, seeing that according to no less an authority than Mír ῾Alí Shír,1 it is becoming to employ the tejnís or ‘homonym’ in the tuyugh, — a statement which seems to point to a native and inborn yearning after such pretty playthings. Burhán is indeed the first West-Turkish poet to pay serious attention to the art that is called Bedí῾. Homonyms of many varieties, prominent among which is the favourite merfú or ‘repaired,’ meet us at every turn; while of course the popular arrangement of an internal sub-rhyme is well to the fore.
Daring and original as Burhán-ud-Dín shows himself in his attempt to write West-Turkish lyrics in both the Persian and the East-Turkish styles, he proves himself no less so in his choice of subject. He is, as we have hinted, the first of the Western Turks to break away from the religious circle — be it mystic or philosophic — in which all the poetry of his people has hitherto revolved. Burhán is before all else a love-poet, the first love-poet of Turkish Asia Minor. ‘He busied himself with listening to instruments of music and with drinking things forbidden,’ says ῾Ayní; but if the verses do at all reflect the singer, the delights of love must have claimed quite as much of his attention. Though from time to time the mystic note is discernible, this comes faintly, as it were an echo from without; the true voice of the poet is heard in the praises of his mistress, glorying in the joy of her presence, wailing in the desolation of her absence.
To speak authoritatively concerning the literary side of Burhán-ud-Dín’s work would demand a careful study of his dialect as well as a more intimate acquaintance with the bulk of his poetry than I have had time to acquire. It is, however, clear that his conception of poetry was quite different from that of such men as Veled and Ἅshiq. To these verse was a vehicle — the most suitable and convenient they knew — for the exposition of their theory of existence; to Burhán it was before aught else an art, a field for the exercise of his wit and ingenuity. In direct opposition to his predecessors, he delighted in adorning his lines with all he knew of grace and fantasy; and in so far he, rather than any of them, is the true herald of the great army that is to come. That he had a genuine love of his art is self-evident; otherwise he never could have found leisure amid the cares and excitements of his busy and eventful life to produce so great a quantity of verse. This fecundity is the more remarkable in that he had no similar Turkish work behind him. The verse of his mystic predecessors was not of a nature to help here; such models as he had must have been exclusively Persian. His poems may have little to commend them on the score of actual accomplishment, but surely it is no mean achievement for a man who had to hold by the sword from hour to hour the kingdom he had created for himself, to have caught something of the spirit and the art of a foreign poetry and to have embodied this for the first time in an almost uncultivated language.1
In the following translations it has been possible to suggest some of the homonyms and other figures that form so prominent a feature of Burhán-ud-Dín’s verses; many, however, have had to be passed over unnoticed. The enormous difference between these verses and everything that has gone before will be apparent at once even through the veil of translation.
Ghazel. [13]
Thy ruby lips1 unto the sugar-bale2 have wroughten bale,
And made this parrot-heart3 of mine in melody to wail.
I flung my heart, ah, woe is me, upon her heart’s pathway;
To save the vial cast against the stone, whate’er may vail?4
She bent her eyebrow-bow and notched the arrow of her eye;5
It seemeth then she would yon Turks6 unto this battle7 hail.
Her tresses and her locks do burn my soul like aloes-wood,1
For this her rule with whatsoe’er she may to clutch avail.
O skinker, give into her hand the brimming bowl and see
The charm and seemliness she adds unto the wine vermeil.2
Ghazel. [14]
O thou, white of chin! and O thou, black of hair!
A myriad the tangles thy dark tresses bear.
What though that the tongue of the taper be long,
Its place is the lantern through thy radiance fair.3
Distraught and bewildered the soul for her locks, —
İt maketh the nook of her eye its repair.1
Mine eyes they are Ja῾fer (yea, e’en as her lips), —
Huseyn and Hasan are the twain of them there.2
I’ll waste to a hair for her hair-waist my frame, —
The Uweys-i Qaren3 of her path will I fare.
Ghazel. [15]
How shall I live on, ah, how, afar from thee?
Know not I what I shall do, afar from thee.
O my Liege, from fortl mine eyen pour the tears;
Poor am I, as beggar low, afar from thee.
Thou wouldst have my heart, I give my life instead;
Hard I’d hurt my heart all through, afar from thee.
Sad and woeful for each hair that thou dost wear;
To a hair I’d wear me too, afar from thee.
Lo, my eyes have entered my heart’s blood, alack!
Fain of my eyes’ blood I go, afar from thee.1
To thy life my life is joined, O beauty bright,
Like unto a veil I show, afar from thee.2
Far from thee, ah, far from thee, I burn alway;
Think not I am heedless, no, afar from thee.
Ghazel. [16]
See how yon dearest one again on us a ruse hath played, —
To turn our tears to blood3 she hath her cheek with rouge o’erlaid.4
Since I have seen that mouth of hers my life hath been a doubt;5
Since she hath shown that waist of hers she’s turned me to a shade.6
Her eyes my soul subduing, her ears my heart undoing,
Her words as honey flowing, my reason dumb have made.
Her absence I can bear not, her union I may share not, —
Yon Idol’s1 ’fore whose face doth plenilune to crescent fade.
God’s grace that beauty is which she to us unlawful makes;
How is it lawful for her eyne her lover’s blood to shed?2
A wand’ring vagrant is the wind since playing in her hair;
Not all ungrounded are the tales that thereanent are spread.
For all that at the fire of love of her she broiled the soul,
The moisture of her lip as cooling water she purveyed.3
Ghazel. [17]
Is not her love the soul within this lifeless frame of me?
And yet, and yet, is not the heart sore smitten by her e’e?
My heart hath girt it round with love of her upon her path;
Will not the door whereat with love one knocketh opened be?4
No riddle deem thou that the which her eyelashes have wrought;
Construed within the heart is not their cruel tyranny?
Though Noah reached his thousandth year, a thousand years it took;1
Hath not the twinkling of an eye vouchsafed this age to me?2
The Lover and the One Belov’d are one through fire of Love;
Is not the Lauder the Belauded then in verity?
Ghazel. [18]
O fairest one! O fairest one! O fairest!
Thy words the Stream of Life,3 thy love the clearest.
I drunken am, and save thy ruby liplets
Is none may heal the ill they’ve wroughten, dearest.4
Oh what shall we? — thy tresses rest them never!
What do with these that rest not, fluttering rarest?
Behind us let us cast what nothing boots us,
And let us hale the thing that boots us nearest.
Here are a few of the rubá῾ís, which are interesting as being, as we have said, probably the earliest Turkish experiments in this form.
Rubá῾í. [19]
I said: That I thy lip shall drain, may it be?
To this my pain, assain or bane may it be?
To union winning not, I am fallen far off;
In dreams that I thy lip shall drain, may it be?
Rubá῾í. [20]
What hurt were I made glad by union with thee?
And should I win not, what lack wouldst thou see?
Wound would I my heart, yea, to shreds it tear,
Knew I thy ruby lip the salve therefor would be.
Rubá῾í. [21]
Again for yon Leyli is my heart Mejnún-wode,1
Again for yon dearling are my tears Jeyhún-flood.2
May it be that her lips have torn this heart of mine? —
I looked, and behold, betwixen them was there blood!3
Rubá῾í. [22]
Said I: Thy lip! Said she: How sweet he speaks!
Said I: Thy waist! Said she: How neat he speaks!
Said I: My Soul, be all a ransom for thy locks!
Said she: This lack-all! of his wealth how feat he speaks!4
Rubá῾í. [23]
Said she: Why thine eyen weeping fain do I see?
And why thy heart full of pain do I see?
Said I: O Idol, ’tis for this, that thy lip
I see not always, but only now and then do I see!
Rubá῾í. [24]
Thy lips for my soul the cure or bane do I see?
Thine eyes’ wound1 the salve my heart to assain do I see
Love’s fire, the which doth burn up Either World,2
Weak for my heart alone and vain do I see.3
Rubá῾í. [25]
The heart for thine eyes to fragments torn must be;
The soul in thy locks distraught and lorn must be.
For him who is hapless in thy hair, the balm,
O Idol, from thy liplet born must be
Rubá῾í. [26]
Life for your Loved give! ye who Lovers be!
Who seeks a Love nor gives his life, — a child is he!
Though all the world be gathered on the Judgment-plain,
To me ’twill be a void so I but win to thee!
Tuyugh.1 [27]
That which God, or yet time was, hath writ, shall be;
Whatsoe’er the eye’s to see, ’twill surely see.
Refuge take we in The Truth in Either World;
What is Tokhtamish2 or Halt Timur3 to me;
Tuyugh. [28]
Thanks to God, ’tis now of heroes bold the day;
All the world doth view the age with sore affray.
From the land where sinks the sun to where it springs
Flies within one breath the man of Love4 straightway.
Tuyugh. [29]
That on earth I have no share, full well I know.
Ah, from no one but my dearling comes my woe.
Hope is leader still in Either World, for sooth
Other store than that there is not here below.
Tuyugh. [30]
Beauties like to thee within the world are few;
‘Coquetry’ thine air the which I held for ‘True.’5
For the partridge-hearts there is no hawk on earth
Save thy falcon-eyne that fierce and swift pursue.
Tuyugh. [31]
Pity ’twere if aught hid in the heart remain;1
Life and Death do still the self-same beaker drain.
At the wild carouse of earth is Either World
By the man of Love as but one goblet ta’en.
Tuyugh. [32]
All our works and deeds before The Truth are known,
All the lawful and unlawful we have done.
O cupbearer, give to us the brimming bowl,
That the stain of rust2 from off our heart be gone.
Tuyugh. [33]
Youthful charmer like to thee I ne’er did see;
Let the soul, the world, be sacrifice for thee.
Did there reach us of thy grace one single drop,
’Fore that drop a myriad seas one drop would be.
Tuyugh. [34]
With that dearling we’ve made merry all the night,
With that roguish fair whose riever glances smite.
Come then, up, and let us do by her anon
What we never yet have done by any wight!
Tuyugh. [35]
Still the lover’s heart doth burn and burn alway;
Still the stranger’s eyes are weeping weeping aye.
Longs the devotee for prayer and prayer-niche;1
He who is a man, he craves the field of fray.
1 These are the lines quoted by Veled Chelebi from the opening of Teftázání’s translation of the Bústán. The Persian student will observe how close they are to the original: —
I pronounce the name of Him who hath created the soul,
Who through (His) wisdom hath made speech flow on the tongue.
To take the hand of the fallen is His work;
Through grace He hearkeneth the excuse of faults.
The heads of kings who bow not the neck, —
Their work is grovelling at His threshold.
He seizeth not violently the rebellious,
Neither doth He push off the guilty.
The date of the translation is given in this passage which occurs in the canto on ‘The Reason of the Writing of the Book:’ —
And this year when this book was set out,
If the reckoning (thereof) from the Flight of the A postle be asked,
It was seven hundred and fifty-five, exactly,
That the date thereof may high and low hold in writing.
1 The Black Sheep and the White Sheep were so named from the devices on their standards.
2 The Black Sheep dynasty existed for about seventy years when it succumbed to its rival the White Sheep which, in its turn, was overthrown by Shah Isma῾íl of Persia early in the sixteenth century. The Zu-l-Qadr held out till the time of Sultan Selím I, the Beni-Ramazán till that of Suleymín I.
3 I say ‘literary’ lyric poets in order to exclude men like Yúnus Imre, who, though lyric poets, wrote without regard to the rules of the literary art.
1 Ibn-Hajar el-Ἅsqahání was born in Egypt in 773 (1371-2), and died there in 852 (1448-9). He is said to have written more than a hundred and fifty books. The full title of the work mentioned above is Ed-Durer-ul-Kámine fi A῾yán-il-Mi῾et-is-Sámine, ‘The Hidden Pearls, concerning the Notables of the Eighth Century;’ the book is a biographical dictionary of the prominent Muslims of the eighth century of the Hijre (A. D. 1300-1397).
1 Qara-Iluk or Qara-Yuluk, the ‘Black Leech,’ is the surname given on account of his bloodthirstiness to Qara-cOsmán, the grandson of Tur ῾Alí Beg, the first recorded chieftain of the White Sheep clan.
2 In this place Sa῾d-ud-Dín says there is some question as to the date of the death of Burhán-ud-Dín. He says that Molla Idrís mentions 794, but that he himself follows Ibn-Shuhne and Sheref-ud-Dín-i Yezdí who give 798, while Ibn-Hajar has 799. Sa῾d-ud-Dín here seems to forget that he had himself already given (in his notice on Burhán-ud-Dín among the learned men of Murád I’s reign) 800 on the authority of Ibn-Hajar. This last date is further given in the ῾Iqd-ul-Jumán fi Táríkh-Ehl-iz-Zemán, ‘The Necklace of Pearls, concerning the History of the Men of the Time,’ by another Arab historian, Bedr-ud-Dín ῾Ayní, who died in 855 (14S1). Kátib Chelebi also gives 800 as the date of Cadi Burhán-ud-Dín’s death.
1 In direct contradiction to Sa῾d-ud-Dín’s statement that Burhán fled on the approach of Báyezíd.
2 In his Bibliographical Dictionary (vol. ii, p. 139) Kátib Chelebi mentions a special history of Cadi Burhán-ud-Dín under the title of 
‘The History of the Cadi Burhán-ud-Dín of Siwas.’ He describes it thus: ‘In four volumes; by the accomplished ῾Abd-ul-῾Azíz el-Baghdádí. Ibn-῾Arab-Sháh relateth in his History that he (῾Abd-ul-῾Azíz) was a marvel of the age in verse and prose both in Arabic and Persian, and that he was the boon-companion of Sultan Ahmed el-Jeláyirí at Baghdad. On his (the Cadi’s) alighting thereat (at Baghdad), the Cadi besought him (῾Abd-ul-῾Azíz) of him (Sultan Ahmed), and he (Ahmed) refused, and set up those who kept watch over him (῾Abd-ul-῾Azíz); and he (῾Abd-ul-῾Azíz) desired to go, and he laid his clothes on the bank of the Tigris and plunged in, and he came out at another place and joined his companions who had thought him drowned. And he was honoured and esteemed by the Cadi, and he wrote for him a fair history; and he narrated therein from the beginning of his affairs till near his death; and it is more beautiful than the History of ῾Utba in its subtle phrases. And after the death of the Cadi he departed to Cairo, and there he fell from a roof and died, his ribs being broken.’
1 Or. 4126.
2 Mustafa is one of the names of the Prophet Muhammed.
3 The word Burhán means ‘Proof;’ Burhán-ud.Dín, ‘Proof of the Faith.’
4 
1 
2 Tuyughát is a pseudo-Arabic plural form of the East-Turkish word tuyugh.
1 See p. 90
2 The cadence corresponds to the Persian Hexametric Remel: — 
1 Mír ῾Alí Shír-i Newá᾽í, the famous East-Turkish poet and man of letters of the fifteenth century who has been mentioned on p. 127.
1 An essay on the British Museum MS. of Cadi Burhán-ud-Dín’s Díwán, along with the text and a translation of the twenty rubá῾ís and of twelve of the tuyughs, was published in 1895 by a Russian scholar, M. Melioranski; but as this gentleman elected to write entirely in the Russian language, his work is of little use outside his own country.
1 The ‘ruby lips’ — often contracted to ‘the rubies’ — of a beauty is a common-place of Persian and old Turkish poetry.
2 The ‘sugar-bale’ typifies sweetness.
3 The ‘Parrot’ is often mentioned by the poets, but not, as with us, to typify ignorant repetition; what the Easterns associate with this bird is, firstly, its faculty of learning human speech, and, secondly, the beauty of its plumage. When Burhán speaks of his ‘parrot-heart’ he means to imply that his heart has been taught to speak or indite in verse by the charms of his mistress.
4 The ‘glass vial’ represents the tender heart of the lover; the ‘stone,’ the hard heart of the beauty, — when these are thrown together the former must needs be broken. The metaphor is not unusual.
5 The ‘eyebrow-bow’ and the ‘arrow’ of the eye or glance are among the commonest of common-places.
6 The eyes or glances of a beauty are often compared by the Persian poets to ‘Turks,’ the latter being known to the Persians as people of handsome appearance and at the same time as bold marauders. They thus resemble the beloved’s eyes which are beautiful and yet steal the heart. Sometimes the beloved herself is called a ‘Turk,’ for the same reasons. The Ottomans and other Turkish peoples simply took over this fancy with the rest of the Persian paraphernalia, but it is not of very frequent occurrence in their verse. Háfiz of Shíráz, the great Persian lyric poet, alludes to it in the opening couplet of one of the best known of his ghazels: —
If yon Shirazian Turk would deign to bear this heart o’ mine in hand,
I’d give unto her Indian mole Bokhárá-town and Samarcand.
The phrase ‘to bear so and so’s heart in one’s hand,’ means ‘to make much of so and so,’ ‘to show him favours.’ In the second line the beauty’s mole, which is of course black, is imagined as her Indian slave, and the poet declares that if the lady were but kind to him, he would, in the exuberance of his gratitude, give the cities of Bokhárá and Samarcand as a ‘tip’ to her black slave (her black mole).
7 The battle waged to capture lovers’ hearts.
1 Aloes-wood is burned for the fragrant incense-like perfume it produces. The black locks of the beauty are like the black charcoal in the censer on which the aloes-wood is laid to be burned. There is in this couplet a series of untranslatable iháms. or ‘amphibologies;’ the word ῾úd meaning both ‘aloeswood’ and ‘lute;’ qánún, ‘rule’ and ‘dulcimer;’ ney, ‘whatsoever’ and ‘flute;’ chenk, ‘clutch’ and ‘harp;’ but I cannot make any clear sense out of the verse taking these words as the names of musical instruments.
2 By her reflection falling on it, or merely by her holding it, or perhaps by the fact that it will taste sweeter when drunk in her sweet company.
3 The ‘tongue’ of the taper is the wick. ‘To extend the tongue,’ is a phrase meaning ‘to be talkative,’ generally, in a bad sense. The idea in the verse is that though the taper or candle (one of the conventional symbols for a bright and smiling beauty) 
it is left unheeded in the candlestick or lantern when thy far brighter radiance shines forth, i. e. when thou gracest the banquet with thy lovely presence.
1 The eye of a beauty is conceived as restless, ever making assault upon the hearts of lovers. So my soul knows no peace, — it is distraught for her hair, yet it can fly for refuge only to her restless eye.
2 The poet here likens his eyes, stained with the tears of blood shed for his love, to the red lips of his mistress, and to the early martyrs in their gory raiment. Ja῾fer-i Tayyár, the brother of ῾Alí, died fighting for the Prophet at Múta. Huseyn and Hasan are the sons of ῾Alí and the grandsons of the Prophet. Huseyn was slain in the famous Battle of Kerbelá, while Hasan was killed in Medína. Possibly Burhán may have had in his mind the Hadís, ‘Whoso dieth for Love, verily he dieth a martyr,’ 
There is further an íhám or amphibology in the word ja῾fer, which besides being a proper name, means ‘a stream,’ to which the poet may aptly compare his weeping eyes.
3 Uweys-i Qarení (or Qaren), i. e. Uweys of the tribe of Qaren, a famous saint of the early days of Islam, was a native of Yemen. Though contemporary with the Prophet, he never saw him; but having heard that he had lost one of his teeth, and not knowing which, he broke all his own to make sure that the same one was gone. He was killed in battle in 37 (658), fighting alongside of ῾Alí, the Prophet’s son-in-law, against the usurper Mu῾áwíya. Burhán’s idea is that he will waste his own body till it becomes very thin and so resembles his beloved’s waist, in like manner as Uweys-i Qaren knocked out his own teeth in order to resemble the Prophet whom he loved.
1 The old idea was that tears are really blood which undergoes a process of distillation and so is turned into water; but as there is only a limited store of this water, if one weep much it is exhausted, and pure, undistilled blood comes from the eyes in its place. Thus to weep ‘tears of blood’ is a very common expression meaning to weep long and bitterly.
Burhán would suggest in this verse that he has wept away all his stock of tears of water, and that his heart has been melted for stress of love and become blood, which blood is now issuing in tears from his eyes.
2 i. e. my soul is joined to thy soul though my separate personality is interposed between us.
3 ‘Tears of blood,’ see above, n. I.
4 i. e. she has adorned herself so as to increase the stress of our desire. There is further a suggested association between the redness of the cosmetic with which she has painted her face and the redness of the tears of blood we are to shed through our passionate yearning therefor.
5 Smallness of mouth is one of the charms of the conventional beauty; this is sometimes exaggerated so that the fair one’s mouth is called an atom or monad (jevher-i ferd, see p. 67, n. 1.) The analogy in the present line is between the smallness (as it were to vanishing point) of the beloved’s mouth and the unsubstantiality (as it were even to the immateriality of a doubt) to which yearning for this has worn the lover. Or yearning for her mouth, which is so small that its existence is doubtful, has so preyed upon my life that its existence has become doubtful likewise.
6 Slenderness of waist is another of the conventional points in a beauty. The analogy here parallels that in the preceding line; it is between the slightness of her waist and the slightness of the measure of life to which desire therefor has reduced the lover.
1 The beloved is often called an ‘Idol’ as being the object of the lover’s adoration. There was moreover an idea, perhaps derived from the images and pictures in Christian churches, that an idol was a thing of beauty.
2 Her beauty is the grace of God, and being the grace of God, is lawful for all; yet by denying it to us she acts as though the grace of God were unlawful for us. Since she is so scrupulous as to make unlawful what is really lawful, how can she hold it lawful to shed blood, an action which is wholly unlawful?
3 i. e. she tempered her rigour with some kindness.
4 As says the Arabic hemistich which has passed into a proverb: —
‘And whoso knocketh at the door of the generous, it will be opened (unto him).’
1 In the Koran, xix, 13, we read, ‘And we sent Noah to his people, and he dwelt among them for a thousand years save fifty years; and the deluge overtook them while they were unjust.’
2 The poet here means to say that while it took Noah a thousand years to attain the age of a thousand, he himself has gained all the knowledge, experience and pleasure that would be won in a life of that length in the twinkling of an eye i. e. 
3 The legendary Stream or Fountain of Life, references to which are of constant occurrence, has already been mentioned, p. 172, n. 1. The mouth of the beloved is often compared to this Fountain, and the words issuing thence to the Water of Life that flows therefrom.
4 Love of her ruby lips has made him drunk or beside himself, so it is their kiss alone that can cure him.
1 Mejnún and his beloved Leylí are the Romeo and Juliet of Eastern romance and poetry; we shall learn their history in detail later on.
2 The Jeyhún is the River Oxus.
3 This is an instance of the figure Husn-i Ta῾líl, see p. 113. The poet here suggests that the moisture and redness of his beloved’s lips are due to the blood of his heart which they have wounded.
4 His speech is ‘sweet’ because it is of her lip which is sweetness itself; it is ‘neat’ because it is of her waist which is so slight and dainty. The last line is sarcastic: ‘this poor lover who has naught speaks yet of giving all things as a ransom for my hair.’
1 i. e. the wound dealt by thine eyes, — this is really a salve to my heart.
2 ‘Either World,’ the Here and the Hereafter, the Worlds Spiritual and Material, Real and Phenomenal; the various significations are generally present together in the mind when the poets use the phrase.
3 i. e. of all phenomena the heart alone can bear the mighty burden and stress of Love.
1 The eight Tuyughs translated here are among those printed by M. Melioranski whose selection is as good and representative as any other that might be made.
2 Tokhtamish is Burhán’s form of Toqtamish, the name of the last of the Qipchaq Khans. This famons Prince, among whose exploits was the sack of Moscow, was eventually overthrown by Timur. He died, according to Sir H. Howorth’s ‘History of the Mongols’ in 1406, according to Sámí Bey in 799 (1396-7).
3 ‘Halt Timur;’ the great conqueror walked with a limp, the result of an arrow-wound, whence the Persians call him Timur-i Leng or ‘Timur the Lame,’ which is the original of our corrupt forms Tamerlane and Tamburlaine.
4 ‘The man of Love,’ i. e. the mystic lover.
5 Shehnáz i. e. ‘Coquetry,’ and Rást i. e. ‘True,’ are the names of two of the Oriental musical notes and also of two well-known melodies; they are used here amphibologically, the literal and technical senses both being kept in view.
1 This probably means that it were a matter for regret should any ill-feeling against another be harboured in the heart, life being so uncertain and the world so small a thing.
2 ‘Rust’ is constantly used figuratively for sorrow, the idea being that sorrow eats into the heart, which is compared to a mirror, as rust does into the metal mirrors that were used in those days.
1 The mihráb or prayer-niche in a mosque indicates the direction of Mekka whither the faithful turn when worshipping. It corresponds in a manner to the altar in a Christian church.
