Sultans Who Wrote Verse
Even Selim the Grim wrote rhymed poetry. When he died he left his successor Suleiman the Magnificent a royal divan of his poems, together with a vast empire bounded by the Euphrates, the Danube and the Nile. Among the two thousand two hundred Ottoman poets who have gained fame over six centuries are twelve sultans and many princes. One of them was Prince Jem, whose brother Bayezid II repeatedly asked kings and popes, with generous payments, to keep him under close watch.
Most of these poets borrowed their forms, themes and sometimes even their language from the Persians. In endless chains of rhymes they sang of the greatness and majesty of God, the knowledge and wisdom of the reigning king, or the cypress-like stature of the beloved. We in the West are too familiar today with the subtleties of womanhood to be moved by such delicate comparisons. But to the "terrible Turks" of that age, whose women were wrapped from nose to toe in black veils, such suggestions struck deep and set their whole being stirring. The same poetry that leaves us cold in a weak, altered translation could move those people toward faith, war or a new marriage.
Three Turkish Poets
From among thousands of immortal dead, the book picks three Turkish poets still unknown to the general public of the East. Ahmedi (died 1413), following the example of the master Nizami, composed an Iskandarnama, an immense epic with verse that was at times firm and at times crude. It told not only how Alexander overcame Persia but the history, religion, science and philosophy of the Middle East from the beginning of time to the reign of Bayezid I. To spare readers the nightmare of English translations, the book declines to quote any of it.
The poetry of Ahmed Pasha (died 1496) pleased Mehmed II so much that he made him his vizier. The poet fell in love with a young page of Mehmed's household. When the sultan, who shared such feelings, discovered the secret, he ordered the poet punished. Ahmed Pasha sent his patron a ghazal so touching and subtle that the sultan forgave him, but exiled both to Bursa. There Ahmed Pasha took into his house a younger poet who was destined to surpass him in fame.
Necati, whose real name was Isa (died 1508), wrote an ode in praise of Mehmed II, put it on a scroll and by a trick had it fastened to the turban of the sultan's chess partner. The sultan's curiosity led him into the trap. He read the scroll, sent for its author and gave him a post in the palace. Under Bayezid II Necati continued to enjoy royal favor and, under two powerful sultans, wrote some of the very finest ghazals in Ottoman literature.
Herat and the Circle of Nava'i
Still, the acknowledged masters of Islamic poetry were the Persians. The court of Sultan Husayn Bayqara in Herat was so full of these singing nightbirds that his vizier, Mir Ali-Shir Nava'i, complained that if you stretched out your leg, you would kick a poet in the back. A poet answered that if you drew your leg back, you would hit another. Nava'i (died 1501) governed Khorasan, supported literature and art, created works in miniature and music and was himself a great poet. Under his wise patronage, painters like Behzad and Shah Muzaffar, musicians like Gol Mohammad, Sheikh Nayi and Husayn Udi, and above all the great poet of fifteenth-century Islam, Nur al-Din Abd al-Rahman Jami (died 1492), could produce their work in comfort and ease.
Jami: Scholar, Mystic, Poet
In a long, quiet life Jami became known as a scholar, mystic and poet. In his Sufi writings he discusses, in fluent prose, an ancient mystical theme. The ecstatic union of the soul with the Beloved, who is God, comes only when the soul realizes that it is itself an illusion and that the beings of this world are shadows of passing phantoms, scattered in the dust of nothingness. Most of Jami's poetry is mysticism in verse, salted with an attractive sensitivity.
Salaman and Absal
In Salaman and Absal Jami tells a sweet tale to show the superiority of divine love over earthly love. Salaman is the son of a king of Greece, born without a mother (though that is, the book jokes, harder to believe than being born without a father), and raised in the lap of a beautiful lady named Absal. When Salaman reaches fourteen, Absal falls in love with him and tries to captivate him with all the arts of beauty. Jami describes in a long passage how she arranges her hair, darkens her eyes, adorns her cheeks, shows a glimpse of jewels at her neck and makes her bracelets and anklets sound as she walks. The poem is not quoted here.
The boy falls into these snares without resistance, and for a time the two enjoy the delights of a burning love. The king forbids his son this indulgence and orders him to prepare for military and state service. Instead, Salaman and Absal flee together on a camel, "like two almonds in one shell". At the shore they build a boat and after a month at sea land on an island, green and fragrant, full of flowers, singing birds and ripe fruit. But in this Eden the prince's conscience troubles him for having shirked his royal duties. He persuades Absal to return with him to Greece. He then tries to learn the ways of kingship, but is so torn between duty and desire that he nearly loses his mind and decides to destroy himself and Absal.
The two build a pyre and leap hand in hand into the flames. Absal burns, but Salaman comes out unharmed. Now that Absal's spirit has been purified, he inherits the throne and adorns it by his reign. All this is allegory, as Jami himself explains in verse at the end. The king is God, Salaman is the human soul and Absal is bodily pleasure. The pyre is the furnace of life's experience in which carnal desires burn away and are purified. The throne is the goal reached only by a purified soul, which alone can describe woman's beauty with such sensitivity and with such seriousness advise us to avoid it, except now and then.
Yusuf and Zulaikha, Layla and Majnun
With confidence in his purpose Jami dared a bold literary venture: retelling in verse stories like Yusuf and Zulaikha and Layla and Majnun, themes loved by a dozen earlier poets. In the poetic prologue to Yusuf and Zulaikha he sets out the Sufi theory of beauty. Absolute beauty, free of any outward form, reveals itself to itself by its own light. It is a bride in the chamber of the unseen, free of any blemish, with no mirror before her face and no comb in her hair. But because the nature of beauty is to appear, it cannot stay behind the veil. Look at the tulip in the mountains in spring, which splits the stone to reveal itself. Wherever there is beauty, this is its demand, and the first movement arose from eternal beauty. It left the realm of holiness and revealed itself in the world and in the soul, showing its face in every mirror. A ray of it lit the world of angels and men, a light fell on the rose and the nightingale was stirred, and the candle kindled its face and burned a hundred moths in every house.
From this high point Jami descends suddenly to the world of matter, describing at length and with passion the beauty of Princess Zulaikha. The book quotes a sensual description, which is omitted here.
Zulaikha dreams of Yusuf and falls in love at first sight, but her father marries her to his vizier, Potiphar. Later she sees Yusuf herself in the market, where he is displayed as a slave for sale. She buys him and invites him to her love. At first Yusuf refuses and flees her temptation, leaving her desolate and grieving. The vizier dies, and Yusuf marries Zulaikha. But soon both sink into pain and sorrow until death comes. Only divine love is real and alive. It is an old tale, the book says, but who can fall asleep after hearing such sermons?