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ON Tiir. 
 
 HISTORY. SYSTEM, AND VARIETIES 
 
 OF 
 
 TURKISH POETRY. 
 
 XT ED BY SELECTIONS IN THE ORIGINAL, AND IN 
 i PARAPHRASE, WITH A NOTICE OF THE 
 LAMIC DOCTRINE OF THE IMMOR- 
 TALITY OF WOMAN'S SOUL IN 
 TITI 7 FFTFRE STATE 
 
 BY 
 
 J . W. REDHOUSE, ESQ. 
 M.RA.S. 
 
 
ARTHUR PROBSTHAIM 
 Oriental Bookseller 
 41 Qt. Russell Street 
 LONDON, W.C. 1 
 
ON THE 
 
 HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND VARIETIES 
 
 SOI 
 
 TURKISH POETRY 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY SELECTIONS IN THE ORIGINAL, AND IN 
 ENGLISH PARAPHRASE, WITH A NOTICE OF THE 
 ISLAMIC DOCTRINE OF THE IMMOR- 
 TALITY OF WOMAN'S SOUL IN 
 THE FUTURE STATE. 
 
 BY 
 
 J . W. REDHOUSE, ESQ., 
 'k.RA.S. 
 
 LONDON : 
 TRUBNER AND CO 
 
 57 & 59, Ludoate Hill. 
 
A 
 
 1 V 4 
 
 it 
 
 
 
 
 
[Reprinted from the Trans. Roy. Soc. of Literature; 'Vol. xii. Pa,t 1, 1879. J 
 
 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND VARIE- 
 TIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY SELECTIONS IN THE ORIGINAL, AND 
 IN ENGLISH PARAPHRASE, WITH A NOTICE OF 
 THE ISLAMIC DOCTRINE OF THE IMMORTALITY 
 OF woman's SOUL IN THE FUTURE STATE. 
 BY J. W. REDHOUSE, ESQ., M.R.A.S., H.M.R.S.L., &C. 
 
 (Read February 12th, 1879.) 
 
 The " Pleasures of Imagination " are the inheritance 
 of the whole human race, barbarous or civilized. 
 None are so untutored as not to indulge in reverie. 
 By some authors, poetry has been said to be the 
 elder sister of prose. 
 
 Europe has long been aware that the poets of 
 Greece and Rome were not the first on earth to 
 versify their thoughts. 
 
 Classical culture, however, to the virtual exclusion 
 of almost every other branch of study from our 
 schools, colleges, and universities for a long course 
 of centuries, trained the mind of modern Europe, 
 notwithstanding national and linguistical divergences, 
 into a single system of poetical conception ; and 
 hence, the poetry of every modern European people 
 is cast in one unvarying fundamental mould ; makes 
 use of the same imagery. ; repeats, in spite of the 
 profession of Christianitv, the same old pagan myths ; 
 
2 : -'ON 'THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 and follows the same methods of rhymes and metres. 
 Consequently, the barriers of idiom and grammar 
 once surmounted, an English reader, for example, 
 has generally no difficulty in understanding the 
 poets of France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Scandinavia, 
 or even Eussia. 
 
 When Sir Charles Wilkins and Sir William 
 Jones, nearly a century back, first opened the eyes 
 of the West to the existence of Sanscrit poetry, it 
 was found that Greece had not been the teacher of 
 the whole world in what, for want of a more appropri- 
 ate term, we are constrained to speak of as the belles 
 lettres. But it was also seen that a not very remote 
 community of race between the authors of the 
 Vedas, &c, and the writer or writers of the Iliad, 
 &c, had had, as one effect, the natural consequence, 
 that, on the whole, the ideas and methods of the 
 two branches, eastern and western, of inditing verse, 
 were not so radically different as to create for Euro- 
 pean students any great difficulty in understanding 
 and admiring the productions of those hitherto un- 
 known Eastern cousins, who, beginning with allusions 
 and metaphors drawn from regions of ice and snow, 
 ended in descriptions of tropical scenery and prac- 
 tices. 
 
 The study of Hebrew had already revealed, in 
 some of the books of the Old Testament, a style of 
 poetry very different, in form and matter, from 
 what had come down from the pagan authors of 
 Greece and Home. Leaving out the form, such 
 portions of the matter of those books as were found 
 appropriate have been, mpre or less, turned to ac- 
 count, and incorporated in modern European litera- 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. J 
 
 ture, sacred and profane. But those materials are 
 too scant, and their students too few, besides that 
 these are already ineradicably tinged with the ideas 
 and methods of Greece and Rome, for any notable 
 impression to have been stamped on recent secular 
 verse through this slight intermixture. 
 
 Arabian poetry has been studied with success for 
 several centuries ; especially in its more archaic and 
 pagan stages. A certain celebrity has thus been 
 given to it in Europe, as one branch of the fruits of 
 mental activity shown by the primitive followers of 
 Islam and their more immediate forefathers. The 
 Mu'allaqat {Suspended Poems, though the actual 
 meaning of the term is a subject of doubt), the Ha- 
 masa (Odes on Courage, &c), and the Agani (Songs), 
 are the best known ; others have, however, been 
 noticed by Western scholars. 
 
 Persian poetry has also been, to a certain very 
 limited extent, examined by European students. 
 The Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Firdawsi, an im- 
 mense mythical history of Persia from soon after the 
 Deluge to the advent of Islam, in between fifty and 
 sixty thousand couplets, the prose and poetical 
 writings of Sa'di, and the Odes of Hafiz, are those 
 most quoted. These authors died, respectively, in 
 a.d. 1020, 1292, and 1395. The first is an epic, the 
 second a didactic, and the third an outwardly bac- 
 chanalian or anacreontic, but inwardly a religious 
 mystic, whose writings must be interpreted as our 
 Song of Solomon. Every word in the Odes of Hafiz 
 has a deep, recondite, inner meaning, the natural 
 parallels being systematically kept up between the 
 details of the inward and spiritual with those of the 
 
 B 2 
 
4 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 outward and visible, as to things and actions. To 
 understand this poet fully, therefore, a complete in- 
 sight into the mysteries of dervish-doctrine, Sufiism 
 mysticism, as it is commonly called must be pos- 
 sessed by the inquirer. Of this doctrine, a spiritual 
 union of man with his Maker, through man's love for 
 God, is the central idea, about which all others 
 grow and cluster. The Dervishes may be considered 
 a sort of Freemasons of Islam. 
 
 The Turks, the Ottoman Turks, the Turkish- 
 speaking and Turkish- writing Muslim Ottomans, 
 who have so vexed the soul of all Europe for the last 
 six centuries, who have for the last fifty years been 
 themselves rapidly becoming Europeanized in general 
 education, as in laws, naval and military science, and 
 industrial enterprise ; but who, with no fault of their 
 own, have been so much misunderstood and mis- 
 represented of late by political hypocrisy, religious 
 bigotry, and classical bias, have been at all times as 
 successful in the poetical and literary lines as they 
 have been great in war and politics. Notices have 
 not been wanting in European writers, from time to 
 time, of the fact that poetry and literature were and 
 are successfully cultivated by the Ottoman Turks. 
 Their talents have frequently been spoken of in 
 terms of very high praise ; and specimens have been 
 given, with translations of some of their poets. Von 
 Hammer, 1 in particular, has published in German a 
 special work in six volumes, with extracts from more 
 than two thousand of them ; and again, in his history 
 of the Ottoman Empire, mentions at the end of 
 
 1 Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte der Osmanischen Dichtkunst, &c, 
 with translated extracts from 2,200 Poets. Pesth. 1826-31. 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. O 
 
 every reign the most conspicuous sons of verse of the 
 period, among whom the deceased Sultan himself has 
 frequently been included. Several of these sovereigns 
 have been poets of the highest class ; as, for instance, 
 Sultan Selim I, the conqueror of Syria and Egypt, 
 in a.d. 1517, the first Caliph-Sultan. His father, 
 Bayezid II, his grandfather, Muhammed II, the 
 conqueror of Constantinople in a.d. 1453, and the 
 highly talented and noble-minded, but misguided, 
 rebel prince Jem, brother of Bayezid, and poisoned 
 by the pope Alexander Borgia, were poets also ; and, 
 perhaps, of no less merit. The gift has not departed 
 from the Imperial line. Mahmud II was a poet, and 
 bore the literary pseudonym nom de plume of 
 'Adll. His youngest son, the late Sultan 'Abdu-'l- 
 'Aziz, possessed the lyric vein, and wrote an auto- 
 graphic impromptu in Turkish verse in Her Majesty's 
 album on board the royal yacht at Spithead, on the 
 occasion of the naval review held there in his honour 
 in 1867. The friend who related the incident, and 
 had read the verses after they were written, could 
 not remember, in their entirety, the exact words re- 
 corded. The sense of their conclusion, as furnished 
 at the time, was simply this : "As a memento have 
 I inscribed my name in this book." 
 
 His Imperial Majesty's talented Minister of 
 Foreign Affairs, Fu'ad Pasha, who was in the suite 
 of his sovereign during that journey, was a poet of 
 distinction, as was also his father, Tzzet Molla, one 
 of the Vice-Chancellors of the Empire in the time of 
 Sultan Mahmud. At some time during the calami- 
 tous days of the Greek insurrection, before the epoch 
 of the destruction of the Janissaries, Navarino, and 
 
ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 the Russian War that led to the treaty of Adrianople 
 namely, at about the date when the Prince, after- 
 wards the Sultan 'Abdu-'l-Majld was born, in 1823 or 
 1824 'Izzet Molla had incurred the displeasure of a 
 powerful colleague, and had been banished from Con- 
 stantinople to the town of Keshan, situated between 
 Rodosto and the Lower Maritza. At his death, a 
 poem of about seven thousand couplets, and entitled, 
 
 according as its name, Ulu^, niay be read or 
 understood, "The Suffering One/' "The Sufferers," 
 or " The Sufferings of Keshan," was found among 
 his papers, and was published by his grandson, 
 Nazim Bey, son of Fu ad Pasha. From this poem, 
 which contains the chronogram of the birth of Sultan 
 ; Abdu-'l-Majid, a.h. 1238, a few selections are given 
 among the paraphrases that illustrate this paper. 
 Another Turkish impromptu, here given also 
 No. 1 2 of the Series was composed by Fu'ad Pasha 
 himself, and written by him in the album of Her 
 Royal Highness the Princess of Wales. The delicacy 
 of appreciation and refinement of epigrammatic ex- 
 pression contained in this poetic gem can hardly be 
 surpassed. 
 
 The tender pathos of the " Elegy on a Lady," by 
 Fazil, found among the paraphrases No. 2 of the 
 series is of so sweetly graceful a character, that 
 few such productions are to be hoped for in any 
 language, ancient or modern. Its address to the 
 " Trusted Seraph," the archangel Gabriel, to "wel- 
 come her with smiles," is in itself a sufficient refuta- 
 tion to the erroneous idea so current in most Euro- 
 pean circles, and pointedly repeated in an address 3 
 
 '-* The Gospel in the Ottoman Empire. A Paper read at the Meet- 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 7 
 
 read on the 2nd of October last, at Milwaukee, to 
 the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign 
 Missions, to the effect that " the faith of Islam teaches 
 its followers that woman does not possess a soul." 
 Sale, in a paragraph of the fourth section in the 
 preliminary discourse to his translation of the 
 Qur an, 3 has long since shown this notion to be 
 false, and has referred to a series of texts in that 
 book to prove his assertion. It would be nothing 
 less than infamous, wilfully to make such unfounded 
 statements with a guilty knowledge of their falsity ; 
 it is still a sin and a crime to spread them abroad 
 thoughtlessly, wrongfully, mischievously, in ignor- 
 ance of their erroneous nature. The following 
 passages from the " Quran " are conclusive on the 
 subject : 
 
 ..O j-0 
 
 " God hath promised to the hypocrites and hypocri- 
 tesses and to the blasphemers, the fire of hell, wherein 
 they shall be for ever." (Chap, ix, v. 69.) 
 
 j/tl-O s O x 
 
 " God hath promised to the believers and believeresses, 
 gardens through which rivers flow ; wherein they shall be 
 for ever." (Chap, ix, v. 73.) 
 
 in- of the A.B.C.F.M., at Milwaukee, October 2nd, 1878. By Rev. 
 N. G. Clark, D.D., Foreign Secretary of the Board. Cambridge : 
 Printed at the Riverside Press, 1878. (See p. 8, par. 3.) 
 
 The " Chandos Classics." The Koran, &c., by George Sale. (See 
 p. 80, 1. 11.) Unfortunately, the verses in the Chapters had not then 
 been numbered. Reference is, therefore, next to impossible. For this 
 reason, I give the original, with chapter and verse in each case. 
 
8 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 O y y y C y y yy i* > (,/ ^ y ~> "i> y tS-O y C, -> Ij/ x - - 
 
 " These are they who shall have the perpetuity of the 
 mansion, the gardens of Eden, which they shall enter, and 
 they who have been righteous from among their fathers, and 
 their wives, and their offspring. (Chap, xiii, v. 22-23.) 
 
 * /(^fl y y OJO'O./' y O^C-^5 y y OJO-O y y <^**iy~G <> 
 
 x- 'Gi -O y y & -O x y $ y y "i> -O y y y (y*G 
 
 x V <* y -~ y y -0-"O y y * y x-C O x x xC"0 x x O-O 
 
 x "' y y y y y y y y 
 
 ^o S 
 
 x x I y y y 
 
 " Verily for the believers and believeresses, the faithful 
 men and faithful women, the devout men and devout 
 women, the veracious men and veracious women, the patient 
 men and patient women, the meek men and meek women, the 
 almsgiving men and almsgiving women, the fasting, men and 
 fasting women, they who preserve custody over their secret 
 parts, men and women, the frequent invokers of God, men 
 and women, hath God prepared forgiveness and a great 
 reward." (Chap, xxxiii, v. 35.) 
 
 'Ji. cjjT'jf Js. jib j, !-$ j 12 
 
 y y y -y y y ' ' 
 
 u They and their wives, in shady places, reclining on 
 couches." (Chap, xxxvi, v. 56.) 
 
 " Enter into paradise, ye and your wives ; you shall be 
 gladdened." (Chap, xliii, v. 70.) 
 
 J^-oiL^ y c y c ' y "& y > c-C^ y y C^0 O y c-> 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 9 
 
 " That He may cause the men who have faith, and the 
 women who have faith, to enter into gardens through which 
 the rivers flow, to be therein for ever." (Chap, xlviii, 
 v. 5.) 
 
 O -J^~0 s 
 
 " And that He may inflict torment on the hypocrites and 
 hypocritesses, on the men and women who attribute partners 
 unto God, the unjust towards. God in their wicked imagination." 
 (Chap, xlviii, v. 6.) 
 
 O yd x-o o5^o^o--' y C y ^c- (y> y y ly& y y y o y 
 
 y y y j^o5o-o O^O G -^ . 'Si ^ ^G^G-O^J ^ G ^ 
 
 "On a day when thou shalt behold the believers and 
 believeresses, whose light shall go before them, and on 
 their right hand {the salutation unto them shall be) : Your glad 
 tidings this day (is) : Gardens through which rivers flow, to be 
 therein for ever." (Chap, lvii, v. 12.) 
 
 ' V y yy y ~* yiy^yG y - ^5^0-0 -jyy y $ -yy y -*& ~0 y yy 
 
 V^csT \sj% \>jl b\f\ j _y t\j*\ \}j& ^jJJ ll<4 <d)\ L-JjJ> 
 
 3 ~0 y y J C y y G G *"> y*t yy y -^ (, y* y y y G G ^ G ^ 
 
 & O ^- y y '^O y -J (yO y y ? G y 
 
 " God hath offered, as a parable for them who blaspheme, the 
 wife of Noah and the wife of Lot, which two women where 
 wedded to two righteous men, servants from among our 
 servants, towards whom they were disobedient, so that the 
 two men were of no avail for them with God : and it was 
 said : Enter you two into hell-fire, with them who enter." 
 (Chap, lxvi, v. 10.) 
 
 y yyiyGyy^y J^%y(yi y yy y y 4>y y G ' y 
 
10 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 " He shall roast in a flaming fire, and his wife shall be the 
 carrier of its firewood, with a rope of palm-fibre round her 
 neck." (Chap, cxi, v. 3-5.) 
 
 Another passage of the Qur an, not so explicit in 
 words, but equally decisive in sense, is found in the 
 eleventh and twelfth verses of the sixty-sixth chap- 
 ter, already mentioned, which are as follows : 
 
 " God hath also propounded, as an example of those who 
 have believed, the woman of Pharaoh ; for she said : My Lord 
 build Thou for me a chamber by thee in paradise, and deliver 
 Thou me from Pharaoh and his works, and deliver Thou me 
 from the unjust people ; and also Mary, 4 the daughter of 
 'Imran, who kept herself a chaste virgin, and into whose 
 womb We breathed of our spirit, who held for true the 
 words of her Lord, and His scriptures, and who was one of 
 the devout." 
 
 Apostolic tradition, as related concerning the 
 sayings and doings of Muhammad by his personal 
 disciples, and handed down by successions of trusted 
 witnesses, is equally strong on this subject, and is 
 second in authority, with Muslims, only to the 
 Qur an itself. For instance, he is thus reported to 
 have informed his followers, as points of incontest- 
 able knowledge divinely revealed to him, that 
 
 4 The Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus. 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 11 
 
 certain of his deceased friends, about a dozen in 
 number at different times, had already been re- 
 warded for their earthly virtues by admission into 
 the joys of heaven. Among these was his first wife, 
 the faithful and devoted Khadija, his first convert, 
 of whom he is related to have declared : 
 
 "I have been commanded to gladden Khadija with the 
 good tidings of a chamber of hollow pearl, in which is no 
 clamour and no fatigue." 5 
 
 An apostolic injunction, similarly reported, and 
 regularly carried out as a constant practice in 
 the divine worship of Islam, repeated five times 
 daily, at least, as an incumbent duty, is that, on the 
 conclusion of the prescribed form of service, each 
 worshipper, male or female, shall offer up a voluntary 
 prayer, a collect, for the forgiveness of the sins of 
 the supplicant, and of his or her " two parents." 
 This is the more remarkable,, since Muhammad is 
 reported to have declared himself expressly for- 
 bidden to pray for his own parents, they having 
 died pagans in his childhood. He wept over his 
 mother's grave on visiting it in his old age, but he 
 was inhibited from praying for God's mercy on her. 
 
 Noah and Abraham are mentioned in the Qur an 
 (xiv, 42, and lxxi, 29) as having so prayed for their 
 " two parents." 
 
 Another institution of Muhammad, continued to 
 this day, is the solemn address or sermon named 
 
 Wustenfeld's " Ibnu-Hisham," Vol. I, p. 156, 1. 2-3. 
 
12 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 Khutba, 6 JuJkj! and pronounced every Friday at 
 noon, in two parts, after the congregational service, 
 in every cathedral mosque, by a special functionary 
 (there are no "priests" in Islam), thence called 
 
 Khatib, e-^k^ . In the second part of this ad- 
 dress, a special clause is always inserted, praying for 
 the bestowal of the divine mercy and grace on 
 Fatima (Muhammad s daughter, his only child that 
 survived him), on his two first wives, Khadija and 
 'A'isha, (all three by name), on all his other wives 
 (without mention of their names), and on "all 
 resigned and believing women, living or dead." 
 
 In imitation of these two practices, it is a very 
 general custom for authors and copyists, Muslims, 
 on completing a work, to add a colophon, in which 
 they praise God for the mercy, and offer a prayer 
 for the pardon of their sins, with the extension of 
 mercy and grace to them in the life to come, and to 
 " both their parents." To this is sometimes added : 
 " also to my elders, to my brethren in God (whose 
 name be glorified), to all resigned men (muslimm) 
 and resigned women (muslimat), to all believing 
 men (mu'minm), and believing women (mu'minat), 
 living or dead ; Amen ; " thus : 7 
 
 The following is a paragraph from the Burial 
 
 6 Lane's " Modern Egyptians ;" London, 1860, p. 89, I. 1-7. 
 
 7 From an old manuscript in my possession. 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 13 
 
 Service of Islam, as recited over every adult female 
 on interment : 8 
 
 s y s y y y y y ' m * y - y O lyO $*<* ~G 
 
 &-0 ^^ ^C-O <* y C- ^ j'&yyy & ~iy(^^yy O ^ 
 
 y^^t.iyO y<J$ly^ y-y y^y O y y -?y O y y O y y L. 
 
 /O Oi y - -O C^0-0 y y O y is~ y y<Si> "O y y yyiyO 
 
 y O S y^y yyOy C y C ~& *>**> ~& y C C O ^ ^ y y(yO y 
 
 y y \ y y y ^ y 
 
 y y Ci- y y y^ y y - -O x> O <*Vc - ^ ^C^ (^ y (^ y y <i yiy~) 
 
 w God, pardon Thou our living and our dead, those of us 
 looking on and those of us absent, our little ones and our 
 adults, our males and our females. 
 
 " God, unto whomsoever Thou grant life, cause Thou him 
 to live resigned to Thy will (a Muslim) ; and whomsoever 
 Thou call away, make Thou him to die in the faith (a 
 Mu'min). 
 
 " Cause Thou this departed one to possess the solace and 
 the ease, the mercy and the grace. 
 
 " God, if she have been a worker of good works, then do 
 Thou add unto her good works. And if she have been an 
 evil-doer, do Thou pass it over. And may security and glad 
 tidings surround her, with honour and privilege. And free 
 Thou her from the torment of the grave and of hell-fires, 
 causing her to dwell in the abode of the paradises, with her 
 children. God, make Thou her tomb a garden of the 
 gardens of heaven ; and let not her grave be a pit of the pits 
 
 MawqflffttI, Commentary on the Multaqa, vol. i, p. 148, 1. 14-19. 
 
14 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 of perdition. For Thy mercy's sake, Thou most compas- 
 sionate of the merciful." 
 
 When the defunct is an infant, a non-adult, not a 
 stillborn corpse, a different prayer is used, as follows; 
 no prayer for pardon being needed for one not re- 
 sponsible : 
 
 " God, make Thou her unto us a fore-runner, a means of 
 reward and of future provision, and an intercessor whose 
 supplication is acceded to." 
 
 That the idea of the coequal immortality of the sonls 
 of women with those of men is an ever-living prin- 
 ciple of faith among Muslims, is further strikingly 
 evidenced on the tombstones of deceased Muslim 
 women, which everywhere, and throughout the 
 whole thirteen centuries that have elapsed since the 
 promulgation of the faith of Islam, contain inscrip- 
 tions parallel to those graven over the tombs of men, 
 ending, like these, with the appeal to passers-by, 
 that they will offer up to the throne of grace a 
 recitation of the " Opening Chapter " of the Qur an, 
 
 diasrUM , as a " pious work " for the benefit of the 
 
 soul of the departed one. 
 
 As a special instance of the vivacity of this belief 
 among Muslims in the immortality of women's 
 souls, it may be considered interesting if I here add 
 the original and a versified translation of a very 
 remarkable passage in the Bustan of Sa'di, one of 
 the greatest of Persia's modern poets, who died at 
 his native town of Shlraz in a.d. 1292, at the age 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 15 
 
 of a hundred and twenty, after having been for a 
 time a prisoner of war, a galley-slave, in the hands 
 of the Crusaders in Syria. 
 
 G ^ G G ^ y ^ y -J G^- G ^ G G ^ <^ y y y O^ G ^- y 
 
 G G ' Gx-G^ G X ^GG^G-O J J 
 
 GGx- y O ^ x G y y y G < 
 
 JUjJoJ Ls.l)lj ^)'*^< J 
 
 G - G^ <^~yy(~,yy<^yy 
 
 (jljj yj] JyJ Ijjjljj ^>V ^ 
 
 CO/ 
 
 ,b 
 
 (ir* \J*i 
 
 / j' J^ 
 
 CO/ G G / G- G G 
 
 G/ G - G < _ G/ 
 
 uJi 
 
 Jojy>- u^*j&j * jJlac^ 
 
 GO// 
 
 G /fc// G 
 
 Ji ^ Jlij" 
 
 G 
 
 G/ 
 
 G/ y GO/ /- 
 
 V^.f*- lS&j* } 
 
 Jolj A^a \j 
 
 G G 
 
 < G 'S>^ - 
 
 G *^ * G y y 
 
 C^uudl) A$ (J^ JC ' C 
 
 J&M \j Jjj 
 
 y y s- 
 
 <^ y y G / y <^ y G / G < G/ G/- -J G/GGJ -J 
 
 " Be ashamed, my Brother, to work deeds, of sin ; 
 Or rebuked thou'lt be in the face of good men. 
 On the day thou'lt be question'd of thought, word, and deed, 
 E'en the righteous will quake from just dread of their meed. 
 In that court where the saints may well crouch with dismay, 
 What excuse wilt thou give for thy sins ? Come now ; say ! 
 Devout women, the Lord God who've faithfully serv'd, 
 Shall high precedence hold over men that have swerv'd. 
 Hast no shame, thou, a man, as thou call'st thyself now, 
 That then women shall o'er thee a preference know ? 
 Spite their physical hindrances, women shall then, 
 Here and there, through devotion, take rank before men. 
 Thou, excuseless, shalt there, woman-like, stand apart. 
 Plume thee not as a man ! Less than woman, depart ! " 9 
 
 Return we now to our Ottoman poetry. 
 
 The remaining paraphrases have, like the " Elegy 
 on a Lady," been taken from a treatise on Rhetoric 
 in Turkish, by Sulayman Pasha, the unsuccessful 
 general of the Sultan's forces in Rumelia during the 
 
 Graf's "Boustan de Saadi," p. 419, 1. 1-6. 
 
16 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 late war, composed by him when a Professor in the 
 Military Academy of Constantinople. Two, how- 
 ever, must be excepted, the " Epitaph on an Officer 
 killed in Battle," and the address "Toa Lady, with 
 the writer's photograph." These were furnished by 
 a friend, and are quite recent. 
 
 Poetry never having been an especial object of my 
 past research or predilection, though a choice passage 
 always had a high value in my esteem, I must 
 tender an apology to the able wi iters whose ideas I 
 have ventured to clothe in words of an alien tongue 
 utterly incapable to convey the many charms which 
 a good poet always knows so well how to blend with 
 his diction. The excuse for my undertaking is to be 
 sought in my wish to remove from the public mind 
 the idea that the Ottoman Turks are an ignorant, 
 untutored set of barbarians, void of literature, desti- 
 tute of poets, and lacking of statesmen, as has been 
 set forth of late by sundry of our public speakers. 
 
 I do not know who may have been the orator, that, 
 according to a letter printed in the Supplement to 
 the Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 194, of Friday, 13th 
 July, 1877, being himself "a lord who passes for 
 both learned and talented," communicated to his con- 
 stituents the weighty information that the Turks are 
 a barbarous people, since they have no literature, and 
 have never had any poets, &c, &c. " Da hatten wir 
 das erquickende Schauspiel einen fur gelehrt und 
 geistreich geltenden Lord zu sehen, der seinen Wah- 
 lern die wichtige Mittheilung machte : ' die Ttirken 
 seien auch schon desshalb ein barbarischees V oik, weil 
 sie gar keine Literatur besitzen, nie Dichter gehabt 
 haben ; u.s.w/ ' I do know, however, that the 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 17 
 
 Turks possess, and have long possessed, both before 
 and since the foundation of the Ottoman Empire, a 
 body of very learned, erudite men of letters, as deeply 
 read as the best of our University Professors ; a 
 voluminous literature in poetry, history, science, and 
 fiction ; and a succession of talented statesmen, of 
 whom any nation might feel proud. That " learned 
 and talented Lord " must have relied upon the lack 
 of information of his audience when he gave ex- 
 pression to the proposition above set forth. 
 
 The remote ancestors of the Turks were, possibly, 
 not only the first nation that worked iron, steel, and 
 all metals ; but were also, perhaps, the very inventors 
 of writing, or its introducers into the west of Asia. 
 The oldest cuneiform inscriptions are in a Turanian 
 language, the science contained in which was so 
 highly valued by the neighbouring monarchs as to be 
 translated at their command into the primitive 
 Semitic, at a date when the Greeks were still un- 
 lettered barbarians. In modern times, the observa- 
 tory erected by order of Ulug-Beg (sometimes 
 written " U lugh Beigh "), grandson of Timur, at 
 Samarkand, in about the year 1430-40, where the 
 twelve hundred and odd stars contained in Ptolemy's 
 catalogue, except a few of the most southern ones, 
 invisible there, were re-observed and re-catalogued, 
 was a Turkish tribute to science. The " Alphonsine 
 Tables," the first astronomical tables prepared in 
 Europe, between 1250 and 1284, and even then from 
 Arabian sources, were not published (read, printed) 
 until 1483 ; 10 while Tycho Brahe's catalogue of only 
 777 stars was first given to the world in 1602. 
 
 10 Mem. Roy. Astr. Soc, Vol. xiii : London, 1843, p. 30, footnote (*). 
 
 C 
 
18 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 Timur, though he nearly ruined the fortunes of 
 the Ottoman dynasty in 1402, by his defeat and 
 capture of Sultan Bayezid I " the Thunderbolt," 
 
 jjlxL, was a Turk himself, and was a great patron of 
 
 learning. His " Laws " are still extant in his native 
 tongue, the Turkish. 
 
 Babur, his great-great-great-grandson, the con- 
 queror of India in 1525, was founder of the dynasty 
 that, erroneously known in Europe as the line of the 
 " Great Moguls," ruled with dwindling power in that 
 country to our day. He, too, was a Turk, and wrote 
 his own Memoirs in Turkish. These are now being 
 published in India, 11 in original and in translation. 
 
 Another Turkish writer of the race of Timur, was 
 Nizamu-'d-Din 'All-Shir, well known as Mir Alishir, 
 and by his poetical pseudonym of Newa/I. He was 
 the Vazir of his cousin, Husayn Mirza, Sultan of 
 Herat, also a descendant from Timur. He died 
 about the year 1500 ; and has left numerous works 
 on various subjects, in Turkish and in Persian, in 
 prose and in verse, that are highly esteemed to this 
 day ; especially his " Trial of the Two Languages," 13 
 in which he weighs the respective merits of the 
 Turkish and Persian tongues for literary purposes, 
 and decides in favour of the former, of the Turkish. 
 
 The Tatars, too, and the Turkmans, both Turkish - 
 speaking peoples, have had numberless writers and 
 poets. Of the former, besides 'Abu-'l-Gazi, Prince 
 of Khiva (born a.d. 1605), and author of the 
 
 / /-OJ x- 
 
 11 <Lo\j j\j The Autobiographical Memoirs of the Emperor Babur. 
 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETItY. 19 
 
 "Genealogy of the Turks," J>y n^-i, I will 
 only instance Shahln-Giray, the last of the Khans, 
 sovereigns of the Crimea, a traitor to his own 
 suzerain and country, a tool and dupe of the licen- 
 tious Catherine II of Russia, assassin of her own 
 husband and sovereign. There may be seen, in 
 Vol. 18, New Series, for 1861, of the Journal of the 
 Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 
 in original and in translation, a " Circular Ode," by 
 this prince, very ingenious in its arrangement. It 
 is accompanied by a summary of the history of 
 Catherine's treacherous and sanguinary theft of 
 Shahin's dominions. Both these authors were de- 
 scendants of Jinglz. As to the Turkmans, there 
 has been published, at the expense of the " Oriental 
 Translation Fund," in London, in 1842, a metrical 
 romance, called " Kurroglu," in English translation, 
 by M. Chodzko, with specimens of the original. It 
 is one of countless similar ballads current among the 
 Turkish-speaking peoples of the East. Its published 
 title of " Popular Poetry of Persia," is somewhat 
 misleading ; for the romance is composed in the pro- 
 vincial Turkish patois of the nomadic Turkmans 
 not in Persian of any sort : of which, however, some 
 pato is specimens are also added. 
 
 y/The Ottoman Turks have produced an uninter- 
 rupted succession of excellent writers from the 
 earliest times to the present. Besides their nu- 
 merous poets of repute, among whom figure a certain 
 number of ladies, they have had a long line of good 
 historians, and crowds of writers on law, theology, 
 tradition, ethics, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, 
 
 c 2 
 
20 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 and astrology, geography, medicine, materia medica, 
 biography, lexicology, fiction, &c. The works of 
 many Turkish authors on theologico -legal subjects 
 are written in Arabic, and those of some are in Per- 
 sian, as the great mystical poem known as the Mas- 
 nawl or Mesnevi, 13 composed at Qonya (Iconium), 
 by Jelalu-'d-Dm, commonly called Mevlana (our 
 Lord"), the founder of the order of dervishes known 
 as the Dancing Dervishes. 
 
 That the Ottomans had, like all other Eastern 
 nations, for the last several centuries, been content 
 to rest on their oars while Europe has been ad- 
 vancing, very gradually at first, but with a rapidity 
 in these latter days that has become marvellous, is 
 quite true. But during the last fifty years, intel- 
 lectual activity in respect to the applied sciences has 
 again been awakened in Turkey ; newspapers have 
 everywhere multiplied in numerous languages, to 
 suit the heterogeneous races that populate the 
 empire ; schools and colleges on modern principles, 
 in addition to the old and ubiquitous church and 
 mosque schools, have been established in every pro- 
 vince, among every religious community ; the mili- 
 tary and naval Academies may be ranked on a par 
 with those of most other nations ; codes of laws on 
 European principles have been elaborated, while 
 lawyers and judges for the administration of the 
 same, on the basis of perfect equality for all religions, 
 have gradually been forming; a constitution has 
 been proclaimed, and a parliament assembled ; 
 material improvement in many branches of activity 
 
 13 * i ' * 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 21 
 
 has been fostered ; and, though mistakes will natu- 
 rally have occurred in the hurry of eagerness to im- 
 prove, still to those who watch the inner workings 
 of the machine, it is clear that considerable progress 
 for good has been made, though wars and foreign 
 intrigues, as well as " vested interests," have tended 
 to clog the wheels and retard the pace. Now that 
 England has undertaken the very complicated task 
 of assisting to guide with her good counsel the 
 future course of the still great Ottoman Empire, 
 with its population of thirty millions under the 
 direct rule of the Sultan, in the well-being of which 
 the dearest interests, moral and material, of all 
 western Europe are indissolubly bound up, we may 
 at least wish and hope that all further calculating 
 mischief may be warded off, and that, after a reason- 
 able interval, the regenerated Ottoman Empire, with 
 all its varied populations, will be seen standing 
 proudly erect, in freedom, prosperity, and happiness, 
 serving as a firm centre from whence may be diffused 
 rays of light and comfort to more distant and less 
 happily circumstanced peoples. 
 
 The specimens of Ottoman Turkish poetry here 
 offered, in paraphrase of English verse, are fourteen 
 in number, and are of various ages, from the early 
 part of the sixteenth century to the present time. 
 In three or four centuries the Ottoman Turkish 
 language has not had to be modernised in expression, 
 as English, French, and German have been. The 
 language was as perfect then as it is now, in the 
 hands of masters : but there is as much difference 
 now as there was then in the respective vernaculars 
 of the capital and the various provinces. 
 
22 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 The orthography of Arabic words, whether em- 
 ployed in the Arabic, the Persian, the Turkish, or 
 any other Muslim language, has never admitted or 
 required modification, from the pre-Islamic days 
 downwards. The spelling of the Persian has also 
 been unalterably fixed for the last thousand years or 
 so ; with the addition that, unlike Arabic words, 
 which permit no modification, the long vowels in 
 Persian vocables may be rejected for the sake of 
 metre, and interchanged to a certain extent for the 
 sake of rhyme. The former privilege is utilized in 
 Persian words by Ottoman poets ; the latter is used 
 by Persians only. The spelling of Turkish words by 
 Ottomans, and by their Eastern cousins, has not this 
 absolute fixity ; more especially as regards the use 
 of vowel-letters. These, which are not then always 
 long, as they are in Arabic and Persian, are more or 
 less optional, being sometimes inserted, and some- 
 times omitted, even by the same writer ; and 
 especially in poetry, for the sake of metre. 
 
 Unlike English, French, and other Western lan- 
 guages again, in which all Greek and Latin words, 
 adopted or compounded, are more or less divergently 
 modified in orthography and pronunciation, to suit 
 the usage of each, or for example, eVicrKOTros, vescovo, 
 eveque, bischqf, bishop, &c. ; and unlike even the 
 Arabic, which, in adopting Persian or Turkish 
 words, always more or less modifies and disfigures 
 them, as does the Persian in adopting Turkish 
 words, the Persian takes all its Arabic words and 
 expressions, and the Turkish all its Arabic and 
 Persian words and expressions, exactly as found in 
 the originals, without altering a single letter in any 
 
VARIETUR OF TURKISH POETRY. 23 
 
 one of them. We use Latin and French or Italian 
 words in this way to a certain very limited extent, as 
 when we employ such expressions as crux, lapis-lazuli, 
 lapsus Ungues, lusus naturce, ad hoc, ipse dixit, &c. ; 
 laissez-faire, &c. : chiaroscuro, &c. ; but these are 
 then always marked as foreign importations. 
 
 What the Ottoman scholar does with his borrowed 
 Arabic and Persian words, exactly as educated 
 English people do with their Greek and Latin terms, 
 is to pronounce them in a way of his own ; and 
 always so as to soften down the asperities of the 
 horribly guttural Arabic, and of the much vaunted, 
 but really very harsh Persian. The Ottoman Turkish 
 is a beautifully soft, melodious speech, with eleven 
 different short vowel sounds, most of which may be 
 made long also. This is a fuller supply of vowel 
 power than is possessed by any other tongue known 
 to me ; though, to judge from the written repre- 
 sentations, ancient Greek must have been rich in this 
 respect. Russian is perhaps the best off for vowels 
 of modern European languages ; though the French 
 vowel u is wanting in it, as in English and Italian. 
 Russian, as Turkish, has eleven vowels ; or rather, 
 it has eleven vowel letters, while French has seven 
 vowel sounds, and Italian only five. Four of the 
 Russian vowel letters are, however, mere duplicates 
 of four others, with a consonantal y sound preceding 
 the vowel. This adscititious sound of consonantal y 
 is much used in Turkish also, but only after the 
 letters k, cJ, and hard g, ^f. It is of frequent 
 occurrence in English, too ; though, as in Turkish, 
 it has no written representative. Thus we write 
 tune, and pronounce tyune, &c. 
 
24 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 Turkish poetry follows the system and very 
 numerous rules of metre and rhyme elaborated by 
 the Arabs, and added to by the Persians. The 
 metres are extremely multitudinous ; and the 
 " feet " are of much greater variety than in Greek 
 and Latin verse. The rhyming system has two 
 principal branches ; the one is of Arabian origin, 
 the other is, I think, Persian. In the Arabian 
 
 method, the terminations of all the distichs ( ^J^ , 
 
 c^ooj rhyme with one another and also, for the 
 most part, with the termination of the first hemi- 
 c^^o, ^jr^*) f the opening distich. This 
 " opening distich," of which the two hemistichs 
 rhyme with one another, has a special technical name 
 
 -Ik, %Ak<), not borne by the opening distich of 
 
 a piece of poetry in which the two hemistichs do not 
 rhyme together, as is sometimes seen. In the Persian 
 system, on the contrary, the terminations of the 
 distichs do not rhyme with one another ; but those 
 of the two hemistichs in each distich are in rhyme. 
 This Persian arrangement bears the Arabic name 
 
 of Masnawi (^jyl*) ; in Turkish, Mesnevi ; and this 
 
 means consisting of paired rhymes. This name is 
 applied, par excellence, to the great mystic poem by 
 Jelalu-'d-Din of Qonya lately mentioned. Arabian 
 poetry, as in Persian and Turkish pieces, is some- 
 times found without an " opening distich " in which 
 the hemistichs rhyme. Such pieces aie styled 
 
 "fragments" (&, taLsi 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 25 
 
 Metrical compositions bear various names, accord- 
 ing to their respective lengths. Thus, there is the 
 
 single metrical hemistich l^a*), in which rhyme 
 
 cannot, of course, be considered. Many a solitary 
 sentiment is thus expressed. Next comes the 
 
 distich or couplet (l^uo), of two rhyming hemi- 
 stichs, and forming the complete expression of a 
 sentiment more or less compounded. Then we have 
 
 the tetrastich l^s.\jj), always in Arabian rhyme, 
 
 though sometimes the third hemistich rhymes pre- 
 ferentially also with the other three. Many beauti- 
 ful sentiments are expressed in this very favourite 
 form. Almost every poet's collected works contain 
 
 (G **K 
 
 t^{xe\ij V The " fragment 
 
 has already been defined ; it may be of two or of 
 any greater number of distichs. The "Ode" (J/0 
 
 always in Arabian rhyme, with a regular opening 
 distich, may contain from seven to twelve distichs, 
 in the last of which the poet must give his name. 
 
 The " Idyl " f iSj^s Y also in Arabian rhyme, is of 
 
 thirteen distichs and upwards. There are, further- 
 more, poems arranged in strophes or stanzas, the 
 strophes consisting each of an equal number of 
 distichs, generally from five to ten, arranged in 
 Arabian metre with an opening distich ; but the 
 various strophes need not be of the same rhyme. 
 Of the same metre they must be throughout any 
 one such poem ; and the last distichs of the several 
 strophes must rhyme with one another, something 
 like our " c/t or us." This rhyme may be the s.nnc 
 
26 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 with that of the first strophe, though this is 
 not obligatory; and the last distichs of all the 
 strophes may be repetitions of the same words in 
 each; though this, too, is optional. A separate 
 special name is given, technically, to such poem 
 according to the recurrence or non-recurrence of the 
 same words in these last distichs of the strophes 
 
 According to the subjects, there are epics and 
 ^j> 9 4r^' l5"**"/> anacreontics, eulo- 
 giums (<u^xj, satires (j?M, lampoons, elegies, dirges 
 (tUo^Y anthems ( L c & ^), ballads, epigrams, chrono- 
 grams (jr.\j\ enigmas (U*^), facetiae (c^Uljaj, and 
 
 what not, in as great profusion and variety as in 
 any other known tongue. This is not, however, the 
 place for an exhaustive survey of the subject. 
 Enough has already been said, perhaps, to convict 
 of very unguarded venturesomeness, the " learned 
 and talented ; ' orator who had denied to a gifted 
 nation its meed of well-deserved literary reputa- 
 tion, and who deduced from his false premises 
 the unfounded and utterly irrelevant conclusion 
 that " they are therefore a barbarous people." In- 
 stances are by no means lacking among ourselves to 
 show that learning and talent do not always " soften 
 manners." It would not, then, be wise or true to 
 retort that " because the Turks possess a voluminous 
 literature, as old at least as that of England's ver- 
 nacular, and because they have now, as they always 
 have had, poets by the score, therefore they are a 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 27 
 
 civilized race." Civilization, after all, is something 
 like orthodoxy : " Mine is genuine ; all others are 
 spurious." Learned Turks, Persians, Chinese, &c, 
 in their isolation and pride of pedantry, usually look 
 upon us Europeans as unlettered savages, because we 
 do not speak, read, and write their languages. Ought 
 we, cosmopolitan as we fondly think ourselves, and 
 as we really are in comparison, to show ourselves as 
 narrow in our views, as unjust, and as uncharitable, 
 as they undoubtedly are in this respect ? 
 
 I have met with a very pertinent anecdote in 
 D'Herbelot's " Bibliotheque Orientale," voce "Ah- 
 med Basha," which shows to what an extent, and 
 in what olden time, poetry was commonly cultivated 
 among the Ottoman Turks, and employed on all 
 manners of occasions. 
 
 " Ahmed Pasha, known as Hersek-Oglu, from his 
 being a son of the Christian prince, Stephen, Duke of 
 Bosnia, was brought up as a Turkish Muslim. He 
 became son-in-law to Sultan Bayezid the Second, one 
 of whose generals he was," and was four times Grand 
 Vazir. " He was a good Turkish poet. Being one 
 day in a public bath, where he was waited on by a 
 number of handsome young slaves, a satirist there 
 present composed a lampoon to this effect : 
 
 " Le Ciel est maintenant bien deshonore, 
 Puisque les Anges sont obliges de servir le Liable. 
 
 " The Pasha avenged himself, poetically, by answer- 
 ing with the following squib : 
 
 " Le Ciel e'tait aveugle ; et il est ma in truant devenu sourd ; 
 Car il n'est plus reste de muets dans le monde, depuis 
 (|u'nn Chacon so im'le de faire des vers." 
 
28 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 It were devoutly to be wished that D'Herbelot 
 had given the original Turkish, as he sometimes does 
 with Arabic and Persian sentences and verses. 
 
 Proceed we now to our specimens, beginning with 
 the oldest. 
 
 I. Concluding Strophe of an Elegy on Sultan 
 Selim I ; by his contemporary, 'A shiq-Pasha-Zada. 
 (This monarch reigned less than nine years, and 
 died a.d. 1520.) 
 
 G OV-OJ / o G V -O - 
 
 -JjJuM L^oLj lJUuuy^ U_-a>-U> jjj *Jcv:jd- j U^^tP *XcJ. 
 
 o 
 
 G / G/ G G * <* G G/G / G / i- ~ / G / 
 
 G /(// ^ / G / G / GO / 
 
 OO/X o o - S s o o o * O V fe 
 
 ^^Ullc t^^J ^**W cA-icbL: ^JoAtfjJ (jauJ lift** JAjLcj jt 
 
 V" ^ x * V /-* / " y" yy"y " ^ * 1 '- / v -^ ' 
 
 G 
 
 o y yy o^ > j^ ~ o / /to/ go/ g / 
 
 ^n^ 2 -' Lr'^J J^ l^iS^ L5^ C^-yu^^^-oc^^^a^^^-A 
 
 o 
 
 O / G / /* ^_ G / GO/ J/*/ G/ GO// G / G / 
 
 ^J^-J J \j *Kjl ufJjt&il ^S^ J^ J^ ^T^ ^^' j p\i 
 
 O O G/G y y y G J (/,* / G - 0> & ^ 
 
 O / ' GO/ /G / O OO ' / G GO/ 
 
 O OO/ /O/ /O o^ O /O/ /O/ / o 
 
 _>jj ^->jj <ujj ^^v-* ^j^ j^ j^ *~*y. U^ *^^~ 
 
 // // / //// / 
 
 o 
 o o o y o^_ G/G / "* A _ o-o 0/0/^ 
 
 O G / O / O O// O/ O OO/ //0/0-* GO'' 
 
 In energy an ardent youth, in prudence an old man ; 
 
 Of sword, the lord, in fight ; successful each adopted plan. 14 
 
 14 Lit. "Lord of the sword, hitting of plan"; i.e., a warrior and a 
 statesman. 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 29 
 
 With armed hosts, a strategist : a Solon in debate ; 
 
 No captain needed, but himself ; no Councillor of State. 
 
 His hand a trenchant falchion was; Ins tongue, a dagger's 
 
 blade ; 
 A lance's beam, his arm ; his finger dread as arrow's shade. 
 In briefest space wide conquests made ; his word as law was 
 
 met ; 
 Sun of his age ; but ev'ning's sun, long-shadow'd, soon to set. 
 Of crown and throne most princes boast, and pomp of outward 
 
 pow'r ; 
 His diadem and seat rejoic'd to own him his short hour. 
 His heart's core revel'd in that grand and solemn festival, 
 Where trumpets sound the charge, and swords play out their 
 
 carnival. 
 In bus'ness of the battle-field, in pleasure of the feast, 
 His like the spheres have ne'er beheld, from greatest down to 
 
 least. 
 When striding forth to banquet-hall, a radiant sun he shone ; 
 When rushing to the scene of strife, his voice the lion's tone. 
 As evermore the shouts of war : Seize ! Hold ! roll o'er the 
 
 bourn, 
 The sabre shall recall him ; still, with tears of blood him mourn. 
 Alas for Sultan Selim ! Ha ! And yet again, Alas ! 
 Let poet's pen deplore his death ; and war's blade weep his 
 
 loss ! 
 
 This is no bad specimen of an elegy. Like some 
 of our ancient heroes, Selim was " wise in council, 
 valiant in the field n ; like champions of old, he was 
 " potent in fight and feast." But the whole strophe 
 is, furthermore, beyond its plain verbal meaning, a 
 very model of those parallels of sense and assonance 
 so much prized in the East. Every sentence is 
 nicely balanced ; each word has its counterpart. 
 The passage deserves careful study as an exquisite 
 example of the best style of Turkish poetry. Its 
 
30 
 
 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, ,\ N I > 
 
 date is seventy years before that of Spenser's 
 " Faerie Queene." 
 
 II. Elegy on a Lady ; by Fazil. 
 
 ^^ tiLj J ^^V^ ^'W*- U^-m** Jj^ i_o>_^ 
 
 bbH?' C ^ *^ lA)V ^k J*^ \&y ^ 
 
 S s s O A ^ ^ G ^ /O/" G ^ J g 
 
 Alas ! Thou'st laid her low, malicious Death ! enjoyment's 
 
 cup yet half unquaff'd ; 
 The hour-glass out, thou'st cut her off, disporting still in life's 
 
 young spring ! 
 Earth ! Ail-fondly cradle her. Thou, Trusted Seraph, 
 
 welcome her with smiles ! 
 For this fair pearl the soul's love was, of one who is a wide 
 
 world's king. 
 
 For tender pathos, this is the gem of the selection. 
 If poetic power were an antidote to fierce and hate- 
 ful passions, nothing " unspeakable " or " anti- 
 human " could have been looked for in the breast 
 of the master who could pen such sweetness. In 
 the original, Death is apostrophized as the " Cup- 
 bearer of the Spheres," with a double allusion. Like 
 Hebe of old, a cup-bearer is supposed to be young 
 and beautiful, capricious, and cold-blooded ; often 
 breaking the heart of one who might fall in love 
 with him or her ; and also, as sometimes offering a 
 lethal cup. Death, then, is Fortune and Fate in 
 one. The " Trusted Seraph ' ; is the archangel 
 Gabriel, held to be trusted by God with all His 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 31 
 
 revelations to the prophets, and to hold the office 
 of receiving and introducing saints to heaven. 
 Hence, he is kindly to receive the deceased, and 
 conduct her to her allotted place in paradise. But 
 the address to the Earth our " cold earth " how 
 beautifully is the grave turned into a tender, loving 
 mother's lap or bosom, where the lately romping, 
 now sleeping child is to be kept nice and cozy, 
 fondly, as befits also the much-prized, beloved bride 
 of a great monarch. 
 
 III. A Quotation ; by Tzari. 
 
 C/ y^y 
 
 j\j^\ j*C { j!uj\ fcj J jl> ^JJLS. jJ^jSj^ *tji 
 
 \t> -o 
 
 * * s \ / / y y >y y 
 
 Tormenting, threatening, here, stands my deep love for her : 
 There, jealous rivals spy my ev'ry breath ; 
 With which to grapple first, I know not well : 
 " From battle, murder, and from sudden death, 
 
 Good Lord, deliver us ! " 
 
 The original passage, which I have paraphrased 
 from our Litany, is taken from the Quran, ch. II, 
 v. 197 : " Save thou us from the torment of hell-fire, 
 O our Lord ! " May I hope that my quotation may ap- 
 pear sufficiently apt, though perhaps less incisive than 
 the original. The Scylla and Charybdis of fire, from 
 which the poet prays for deliverance, are the " fire of 
 love, on one side," and the burning irritation caused 
 "on the other side," by the "jealous rivals" who 
 seek to supplant him. There is an ingenious play 
 upon the original word here rendered by " grapple." 
 In Turkish it has two meanings, to catch fire and to 
 struggle with another. Both senses are apposite ; 
 
32 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 but I have not found a word in English that will 
 convey them both at once : "In which fire shall I 
 burn ? " or, " With which shall I grapple ? " 
 
 IV. A Simile criticised ; by Husni. 
 tiyj CA?*^ >^:1^J^ ^jojkx^o f^i^ <-->\j (Jj*^ *>V. *-r^ 
 
 o ^ ^ o - o^ o 
 
 / C / O ^ ** ** C / ' S S U C s <^s 
 
 U 
 
 I liken' d the lips of my love to the ruddy cornelian stone. 
 My critical friends thus objected, 'twas relish'd, forsooth, by 
 
 not one : 
 " A dry fragment of flint is this latter, in Arabia Petrsea so rife ; 
 * The former's the ever fresh margin around the one Fountain 
 
 of Life." 
 
 An instance of the rhetorical figure by which 
 praise is added to and heightened, when a different 
 intention is foreshadowed. The " Fountain of Life, 
 Water, Stream, River of Life," is an Oriental myth, 
 made use of in Revelation xxii, ver. 1. We shall 
 see it alluded to again in No. 9. This " Fountain " 
 or " Water " is supposed to exist in a land of " Dark- 
 ness," and to have been visited by Alexander the 
 Great, or by his Eastern " double," known as the 
 
 " Two-Horned One," tJ JJ&\ .J, in a journey to the 
 extreme East, though he was diverted from drinking 
 thereof, and so acquiring immortality as Elias had 
 done. A lover may well be supposed to liken 
 his sweetheart's lips to the margin around a life- 
 giving fount, when the word of consent, his " Stream 
 of Life," is hoped or wished for from her mouth. 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 33 
 
 V. The Alternative ; by 'Akif Pasha. 
 
 Should disappointment track my fondest wish, 
 
 Then, let this mocking universal wheel 
 
 Into perdition's gulf chaotic reel ; 
 
 Its sun, its moon, its stars, in one fell swoop, 
 
 Losing all semblance of identity, 
 
 May crash away to sheer nonentity ! 
 
 'Akif Pasha was Minister for Foreign Affairs 
 about the year 1836, and sent to prison, for trial, 
 an English merchant, resident in a suburb of Con- 
 stantinople, who had accidentally, but very incau- 
 tiously, wounded a Turkish child, by firing through 
 the fence or hedge of his garden, while shooting 
 birds there. The child was feeding a pet lamb in 
 the lane, a public thoroughfare. The matter was 
 taken up by the ambassador ; the Pasha was dis- 
 missed, and the merchant substantially indemnified. 
 As to the child perhaps. 
 
 This couplet is an instance of the great amount of 
 meaning that can be condensed into a few Turkish 
 words of intense power. 
 
 VI. An Imprecation ; by Fazll. 
 
 ^jj ><ui ^ul u>\ y&ly* 15^ j~> jU J\ J^Jb. 
 
 O C^ ^ C C C ^ G * G ^ o -'O G Cv 
 
 uMld ****** **** ij\ Jj>j^ jV j***- t}j^ ^ dvtf 
 
 O s s G^G-*GxG^G* G * * s < G G x G > 
 
 ^^ *L! L^,-j *U u5^ Jj'jt /yf ; jW*JO Juu>- ^ Jill? 
 
34 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 o 
 
 O S O S-* O ^ O O s O -^ * O s s o*> ." O CO/ O z' x o 
 
 c 
 
 O v A o^ /C/ O O ^ X > O OS OSS O 
 
 o 
 O ~ s n x- x*0^ O -* XV *> s s s Os O s o * *> 
 
 Fall down, thou dome of highest heaven ; 
 
 Die out, Sun, from th' azure vault ; 
 Break up, thou elemental leaven ; 
 
 Eound of the seasons, be at fault ! 
 
 Flee, countless host of glitt'ring stars ; 
 
 Eclipse thyself with speed, moon ; 
 Weep, cloud thy tears the raindrop showers ; 
 
 Boar, thunderclaps ; growl, mutter, moan ! 
 
 Break, dawn ; burst thy heartstrings downright ; 
 
 Drown, morn, thy bosom in blood's bloom ; 
 In weeds of mourning drape thyself, night, 
 
 And shroud thy face in deepest gloom ! 15 
 
 This piece is rendered line for line. It is arranged 
 in stanzas, in the paraphrase, as being better suited 
 for the extent of the composition. The scenery will 
 be admitted to be grand and the antitheses most 
 appropriate. 
 
 I have now completed my selections from the 
 treatise on Rhetoric, and proceed to give some longer 
 specimens from the poem by 'Izzet Molla. They are 
 of a much higher grade of intellectual power, and 
 are excellent examples of the deep religious mys- 
 
 15 Compare Schiller's " Wilhelm Tell," iv, 1 : 
 
 "Raset, ihr Winde ! Flammt Lerab, ihr Blitze ! 
 Ihr Wolken, berstet ! Giesst herunter, Strome 
 Des Himmels, und ersauft das Land ! Zerstort 
 Im Keim die ungeborenen Geschlechter ! 
 Ihr wilden Elemente, werdet Herr ! " 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 35 
 
 ticism that pervades so much of the poetry of Persia 
 and Turkey. 
 
 VII. -The Mirror ; by 'Izzet Molla. 
 
 o "io ox ocXi o o- ox m o W* 
 
 O JO Ox O Ox /(// O v xC x X 
 
 x x x x x x 
 
 O x O x Ox xx xG x G x C C"i x x 
 
 c So ty c cox x x x c <> <% 
 
 c^Uo .Jul ii*o^ Vta ,J^- J^ ^5r* 
 
 X X * x x X x 
 
 C x C x C ^ G x x G .J Ox G xG x- G X 
 
 o So Gx o ox x ox -i> * ^x 
 
 L?j\ xC jo\ j^> ^^ *,<-> wX J ^ 
 
 G G X * O/ /O Ox Ox x 
 
 OjO Ox OOx x xOx /(/> 
 
 iZj\jso jt\A j&AJ ^Vj^ i^S* *^* J** ?> 
 
 X XX X X XX 
 
 O x Ox Ox Ox 00- x O Ox xx 
 
 O Jo OxOOxO xOx O G > xx 
 
 X X x I X *"x X X 
 
 o 
 
 OxOO G -* A x G xOx Ox Ox OX x 
 
 XX XX X 
 
 G > G Ox OOx x Ox xxoxv. 
 
 O x x JO/ xOx xO> x OJx 
 
 ^1)1?- -j/^ *Jix<> <Uuui- u;^.^ ^r^^ 
 
 f O JO Ox O Ox O xx Ox O'Si Ox x 
 
 My mirror shows that matter's forms are but a passing shade ; 
 With its mute tongue it inculcates the truth that all must fade. 
 So purely bright, it takes no stain from glint of outward 
 
 things ; 
 My minor thus may adumbrate the souls of virtue's kings. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 As sage of old, my mirror's sheen, proceeding from one Source, 
 Expounds to me the mystic theme : All nature runs its 
 
 course ! 
 A candid friend, it ever proves its ore's integrity ; 
 The mirror pictures to my mind nought else but verity. 
 For man's inconstant moods and states, to praise or blame the 
 
 spheres, 
 Is folly ; not the mirror, 'tis the face one loves, reveres. 
 No trace remains for long from good or evil work of man ; 
 The mirror's still an emblem true for his life of a span. 
 Like poet's heart, confronted with a thing of beauty, bright, 
 His mirror instantly evolves a counterpart, of light. 
 
 Can anything be conceived more philosophically 
 poetical than the images offered in this beautiful 
 ode 1 The Turkish words used are as choice and 
 sublime as the theme and sentiments demand. My 
 paraphrase is lameness itself in comparison, as even 
 the best versions of good poetry ever must be. 
 " Virtue's kings " is my forced rendering for the 
 author's " men of ecstacy ;" by which is meant true 
 dervishes ', spiritual dervishes,' men who, through 
 striving after God alone, with all their soul and all 
 their strength, are utterly impressionless to outward 
 visitations of weal or woe. The term " ore," in the 
 seventh line, refers to the olden fact of metallic 
 mirrors ; though, of course, a silvered glass mirror 
 has equally its " ore," from which it is made. The 
 " integrity " is its freedom from impurity, flaw, or 
 defect of any kind. The " spheres " are supersti- 
 tiously held by many to exercise " influences " on 
 mundane and human affairs. The world, the 
 material world, is here the " mirror " in which things 
 and events witnessed, are but the perceptible re- 
 flexions of a face, which is the divine power of God, 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 37 
 
 A ~> - s ** 
 
 -is God himself, the "Causer of Causes (c^xu^ 
 
 c_>lxJ \ ]," the Ultimate Cause of all. The poet no 
 
 sooner perceives a thing that excites his admiration, 
 than he celebrates it in song. 
 
 If the men, and women, too, now-a-days, who 
 "speak Turkish fluently, " who have been "long 
 resident in the country," or " born in the country," 
 and from whom our casual travellers, even though 
 " learned and talented," necessarily derive their 
 imperfect or utterly erroneous information, could 
 read a word of any Turkish writing, or could com- 
 prehend the phrases of such Turkish compositions as 
 this beautiful poem, when read to them by another, 
 their communications to travellers would wear 
 another aspect ; and both the tales of travellers, and 
 letters of correspondents, would have a better chance 
 of coinciding with facts and truth, than now comes 
 within the sphere of their consciousness. Alas ! 
 written Turkish, the language of Turkish men of 
 education, is to almost all Europeans, as it is to 
 nearly the whole of the native Christian population, 
 an unstudied, unknown tongue ; not even excepting 
 our official interpreters, as a general rule. 
 
 VIII. The Brook and the Tree ; by 'Izzet Molla. 
 
 o xO * /fa/ o- * O > s O s 0___ O ' 
 
 \+:\y>- i^ooUi' ^^liU- asa^jjiil ^J 
 
 o xo x O x O - * C XX C *0 w 
 
 \uy>- aj^ S-'jdj^ <uAx. u^y* a^ 
 
 s x X O xx Ox o ' O Ox 
 
 **k *y iJv J^ J^ jr r^^r 
 
 x - ' x 
 
 O /C > X O X OX Ox O ^x o x o* 
 
38 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 ,\jjy>- &jJSj\ L-?jjdj1 ^jJo^ *-* J 
 
 c 
 o - o x o ^ o^o^ i> o c- o o > 
 
 ^c3 U U~^ J^ r >iT j^ jT^ ^ 
 
 j\sjy>- x&j^cJ* ^^Ul &+jjs l<*/*|^ 
 ^j, L5^ l^V** 5 i-^J^ *Jj*X- Jai 
 \jj^>- XXs\j \J^jS L^LZiJ jW 
 
 O s L, S OC^-J ^ CO.- 0-0^ 
 
 CO C s o *> ***' o ^ o / _ 
 
 O /" O^ s S / S c ^ 
 
 ^ * S , y s ' s s 
 
 C / O * s O ^ G K O^ - C^- / O <- 
 
 Aju^>- x\sj t-T>ij\ *j^y ^Jbk~s 
 
 / L,s o ^ o - G * * * y ' O'S) 
 
 ^ ^-^ s ' y 
 
 G " G ^ -^ G^ x- x-G X o o^ 
 
 Sjjy* idJujst- <Uu^)jl (^.5-V.j^ j^i v^ 
 
 Apace my tears fiow'd as I seann'd the scene. 
 So gush'd a babbling brook in meadow green ; 
 Whose waters purl'd and murmur'd as they mov'd, 
 In circles round about a tree it lov'd. 
 
 From thence till now, each spring, in season, yields 
 Sweet recollection of yon brook, tree, fields. 
 A wand'rer then I was, distraught with woes ; 
 That streamlet seem'd to writhe in mazy throes. 
 
 Like trickling sap from wood in oven cast, 
 My tears the outpour of a flaming breast. 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 39 
 
 Hast never witness'd such ? A hearth survey. 
 Its ashes symbolize iny heart's decay. 
 
 A rosebud maid, indiff'rent to my pain, 
 
 Drew forth my tears. The log, for native plain 
 
 Weeps, burning ; an exile, from forest torn. 
 
 Both shame the brook ; we laugh its stream to scorn. 
 
 Or else, perchance, that river rose, a host, 
 To shield the frontiers of a land, else lost, 
 Bursting all barriers, like my tearful tides, 
 Afield ; its flood time past, like them subsides ; 
 
 A headstrong bully in spring's overflow ; 
 A humble mendicant in summer's glow. 
 Know, poet ! as that brook thus seeks its Source, 
 It does but mimic thy pen's streaming course. 
 
 The poetical idea of a brook loving and courting 
 a tree, a cypress, growing on its bank, recalls Moore's 
 pretty verse : 
 
 " If I were yonder wave, my dear, 
 
 And thou the isle it clasps around, 
 I would not let a foot come near 
 My land of bliss, my fairy ground." 
 
 This, and a construing the meanderings of the 
 stream into the agony of an impatient or jealous 
 lover ; the poetical exaggeration in comparing tears 
 and the sap-drops of burning firewood to a river ; 
 and the climax of darkly alluding to the origin of 
 the brook, through the rain-cloud, in the distant 
 ocean, to which it hastes to return, with a comparison 
 of this to the action of the poet's pen, which, in all 
 its copious effusions, seeks but to render tribute to 
 the great hidden Source of all entity, form the very 
 striking motives of this beautiful poem. In the 
 
40 ON THE HISTOftY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 passage rendered : " Bursting all barriers," there is, 
 in the original, a clever play on the word bag, which 
 in Turkish, means a bond, band, tie, tether, chain, 
 fetter, but in Persian a garden, park, woodland. 
 The river bursts from the wooded hills, the poet's 
 tears, like a chained madman in confinement, burst 
 their bonds, and both escape on their wilful course. 
 
 IX. Eulogy of the Pen ; by Tzzet Molla. 
 
 s y O x- / /C/ O ov s + O * * x- -J O x Ox x 
 
 4fajVj *& 2l)\jJ*\ i*S*Jj\ j^a dk-jlj ^J^ ^y J < *^ A* 
 
 Ox- /CoO xx- x Ox- xx Oxx- Ox x-Ox- x- 
 
 O J O x- x > OxO x-Ox-x-O^ x- x O Ox-x 
 
 Ox-x- ^ O O x- - xO x-x Oxx ^_^'' c x-Ox-0- * 
 
 O O Ox O * Ox-^ xx O OJO/ O xx x- x- 
 
 Ox-x O Ox-Ox-O Ox- ^x-x Ox O Ox Ox-Ox 
 
 lx X^ " I "*' ,* x-X-X-.x .X 
 
 O x- -* O x- Ox-x-O Ox Ox- O - Ox- x-x O-' O * 
 
 ^U^j' jJ ^LJ y*> jA^ l^W-t uW^ (/? ^-rVJ Jj*l^ 
 
 Oxx- x- Ox-x x-Ox- J O x- ~ Ox o Oxx- 
 
 o 
 
 OxO Ox- x-' x-x-Ox- Ox x x-O * 
 
 Oxx- x- x-O x-x- -< - O x ~ -O -ix-O /Ox- O J 
 
 xx- Ox-x- Ox O O Ox- x- x- x- x Ox-xO x- O x -J o x x- 
 
 <U* u-ijU^o Jw&l jj *a ^x <U^l3 J**l^ jlu*^ ^yUj 
 
 x- x x- I x- x- 
 
 /x-Ox x-x-Ox- x-Ox O x-x-Ox-'' ** *i- x-xo^" Oxx- 
 
 ^jjj Ajd^i-* ^^^^ j^j <*!! ^jU 4-Jl Lai jl ^ 
 
 Ox-x-OxO OxO x- Ox-Ox- Ox- Ox O x- O x- O x- x* 
 
 ij&S (jBf\ ^jjlfc W s5-***J JujI ^b &j>~J* jjij ffJudyrt* tj 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 41 
 
 *x x O 
 
 O XO JO X l,/ O X - O xO -* Ox, Ox xO- O -J x 
 
 O X Ox ^ A _ <* _ t" 1 ^ o x x ^^ ^ ^ ^ .X" 
 
 c ^.-' Jjb! c3oT <JuJf1 jib ^J J^H t^ *^^ 
 
 o-^ o o x xo xx x o- O O x * xx x o 
 
 s ' x ' x x x x x x 
 
 x O X x O x O x O c^J X O-Sx Ox x x x O xx 
 
 Juujuuaj' j\X^1 J**^J J**^ dJuu!\j u-i-tfj L-j,Ij ^b: 
 
 x x x x X ^ X " ** 
 
 Ox O O x x O ^ Ox Ox O ^ O x x x x /OJ - 
 
 X x x x x ' 
 
 O X O X O >* X_ XO X O - * Ox' XX x x O X 0- J 
 
 i\S _. lJLsy Ail >JlLj j^lj! sLl-o J^Jc* jLja^ul^- j^y 
 
 X O x O 0^__ x O x O xO ^ O x x O x O^ x x 
 
 L5 Jux*J ^iAJjiT <u$i-* jjlT ^^j ^- jsrT Xjlacy j^ 
 
 Ox $ O >J J O XO O X X O X x O X O X X O X X 
 
 Aj<La- .j!jl jj*\Jl u^'^ L--J C->^ .l J <LojjSlS iJoulfcJ 
 
 C Ox x O * 'Ox O ~ Ox OOxxOJ 0- O'Six'Six 
 
 VJ^w*\ ^ULLa^AJt^^jJ^jJ^JuUJ^ Ll-w^ ^UiT i/^y^ ^- *J^ (S ^ 
 
 S s ' ' X XX 
 
 O O x x > Ox > Oxox O Oxxx xO O x x O OOx ^ 
 
 'x X X X X 
 
 By serapli " Pen " at Nature's birth, 
 
 On " Tablet " of God's providence 
 
 All ineffaceably inscribed, 
 
 The fiat of Omnipotence 
 
 Was : " Be ! " Hence rose tliis wond'rous chain. 
 
 God, in His sacred scripture, swears, 
 Nor vainly swears, thus : " By the Pen ! " 
 That Pen the centre was, we see, 
 Of being. Otherwise our ken 
 Had not existed. All were vain. 
 
 God then proceeds to swear once more : 
 
 " By what they write ! " The reed pens now 
 
42 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 Are made the " Darkness," whence comes forth 
 The " Stream of Life," whose waters .flow 
 From inkhorn fount, drawn by man's brain. 
 
 The fluid of that sacred source, 
 Transform'd by genius into fire 
 Of spirit-stirring words, the fruits 
 Of lofty thoughts, man's noblest hire, 
 Wells up and overflows amain. 
 
 Not ev'ry Alexander may 
 Achieve a taste of that blest spring ; 
 Th' elect alone, the favour'd few, 
 Its waters to their lips may bring, 
 To send it forth a living train. 
 
 Though swart its hue, the dark reed pen 
 Diffuses light, a glorious sun ; 
 No climes but what its fruits enjoy, 
 No land but where its workings run, 
 Maturing still sweet wisdom's grain. 
 
 No time but where the pen records 
 Th' events or tales that mark its course, 
 The sov'reign's triumphs, battles, feasts. 
 It speaks all tongues with equal force ; 
 No " Truchman's " aid need it retain. 
 
 It travels far, is prized by all, 
 This son of Persia's torrid shore, 
 The judge it is whose firm decrees 
 Eespected stand for evermore ; 
 Its mandates legists must maintain. 
 
 The pen's a patron, in the sense 
 That from it flows or * Yea" or "Nay." 
 Dumb it remains with worthless wights : 
 Grows eloquent, wit's flashes play, 
 When talent prompts the fervid strain. 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 43 
 
 With awkward scribblers, one and all, 
 It splutters, blurts, befouls the page ; 
 Like well-train'd courser, on it speeds, 
 When guided by a master sage, 
 Who knows to check or slack the rein. 
 
 Capricious, true, its moods are found, 
 Now garrulous, now taciturn ; 
 At times dilates on tresses dark, 
 As wishing ev'ry curl to learn ; 
 At times one hair will give it pain. 
 
 None dare dispute the pen's great pow'r ; 
 The author notes, obeys its rules. 
 Contemporary with each age, 
 It settles all disputes of schools ; 
 None, of its judgments, e'er complain. 
 
 Tongue cannot tell its magic force ; 
 Its powers no mind can well conceive. 
 The pen's throughout the world renown'd ; 
 All men, with thanks, its gifts receive ; 
 And all its debtors must remain. 
 
 Its stream sometimes will fail at need ; 
 The pen will flag through lack of food ; 
 Nor can its strength recruited be, 
 Save by renewal of ink's flood. 
 Then it resumes its work again. 
 
 Taking no thought about itself, 
 The parent stork to callow brood 
 Its blood gives up. Just so the pen 
 To paper yields its store of food, 
 A tribe of offspring to sustain. 
 
 Nay, more ; if but a trace be left 
 Of moisture, this the scribe will sue ; 
 His greedy lip claims as a fee, 
 What justly is the wiper's due. 
 So, authors, fares your scanty gain. 
 
44 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 God bless the poet who has said, 
 To paint this subject with due care : 
 " The public voice a proverb has r 
 " ' The more man shows of talent rare, 
 " Less daily bread may he obtain.' " 
 
 The composition of this poem appears to have 
 been called for by the author's admiration of a 
 panegyric he had just before indited in praise of 
 Saltan Mahmud, through which he had hoped to 
 obtain his recall from banishment, but in which hope 
 he was as yet for some months doomed to disappoint- 
 ment. The " Eulogy of the Pen " exhibits a great 
 exuberance of imagination ; but its subject was only 
 half worked out, as our next specimen, the " Answer 
 of the Pen," will show. 
 
 The religious myth, with allusion to which the 
 poem commences, of the " Pen," the " Tablet," and 
 the " Fiat," is based, partly on the text, eight times 
 repeated in the Quran (ch. ii, v. 3; iii, 42, 52; 
 vi, 72 ; xvi, 42 ; xix, 36 ; xxxvi, 82 ; and xl, 
 70), of; "Be; and it is": a parallel to the 
 biblical text : He spake ; and it was done " (Ps. 
 xxxiii, 9) ; where " done " is printed in italics, as 
 not being in the original Hebrew ; partly on the 
 first verse of the sixty-eighth chapter of that volume : 
 " By the Pen ! And, by what they write ! " and 
 partly, again, on sundry other texts dispersed over 
 the book. The myth is as follows : God, in all 
 eternity, contemplated the perfection of a saint, 
 entertained a divine love for the conception, resolved 
 upon realizing it, and issued His fiat : " Be." 
 Hereupon, the potential essence of the prophet, 
 
 Muhammad, the "Beloved of God" (i)f ,^1ju^) 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 45 
 
 before all worlds, the seraphic " Pen/' and the 
 " Hidden Tablet," starting into an eternal existence, 
 the Pen inscribed the fiat on the Tablet, and thus 
 became the means of all created existences, "this 
 wondrous chain " of spiritual and material beings, 
 that were called from non-entity in order to the pro- 
 duction and glorification of that saintly conception. 
 By that Pen does God swear in the passage men- 
 tioned. The actors indicated in the second clause of 
 the oath : " By what they write ! " is by some ex- 
 plained as the transcribers of the Qur an, by others as 
 the " Recording Angels," who note down men's 
 thoughts, words, and deeds, for use at the final 
 judgment. 
 
 Of the " Stream of Life " and the " Darkness " 
 I have spoken before, in No. 4. But here, in con- 
 nection with the " pen," ink is made a " stream of 
 life," the inkhorn its " fount," the pen its channel, 
 and writings its branches, carrying intellectual life 
 everywhere. The mention of Alexander is also 
 explained in No. 4. 
 
 " Truchman" was, in bygone days, the accepted 
 form of the title now written drogman or dragoman. 
 All three are corruptions of the word terjumdn, 
 J^jt which the Egyptians pronounce with hard g : 
 targumdn, and which signifies an interpreter. 
 This word terjumdn is Arabic, but derived from the 
 Syriac or Hebrew. It is used in all Muslim lan- 
 guages. The drogmans in Turkey and elsewhere, 
 other than those of some of the embassies, are 
 usually a very ignorant race, who jabber a kind of 
 broken lingo that is taken for fluent speaking by 
 the uninitiated. Of the first rudiments of reading 
 
46 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 and writing the various Muslim tongues they are 
 entirely innocent, even when born in the country. 
 
 The reed pens used all over the world of Islam 
 for writing, are brought from Persia and carried 
 everywhere by itinerant merchants of that country. 
 The " hair " in a pen's nib is a well-known source 
 of annoyance to writers. It makes a pen " sick." 
 
 The ink used in the East is very different from 
 what we are acquainted with. It is more of the 
 nature of " Indian ink," and is a compound of lamp- 
 black, gum, and water. The inkstand is provided 
 with a certain quantity of the rougher fibres of silk 
 found on the exterior of cocoons. This absorbs the 
 ink, prevents its too rapid evaporation, and makes 
 it somewhat portable in special inkstands. The silk 
 further forms a soft cushion, on which the trans- 
 versely truncated nib of the reed pen impinges in 
 dipping for ink, and is so shielded from becoming 
 bruised against the silver, brass, china, or earthen- 
 ware bottom of the inkstand. The ink will, how- 
 ever, from time to time, become too thick. It then 
 requires the addition of a few drops of water to 
 restore its requisite degree of fluidity. The very 
 common trick of " sucking " a pen is cleverly turned 
 to account ; as also the mere vehicular function of 
 the pen itself. With the sly poke at patrons and 
 publishers, not to forget their satellites, many an 
 author will be found to sympathize all over the 
 world. 
 
 X. The Pen's answer to the Poet. 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 47 
 
 b/U ^ G ^ G Ox G ^ o xG j c g o x- x- 
 
 o xx x x j oxo * g x x- o x x o x Gx yv< ox>- 
 
 u Ijj *jU/ j;*)j\ ^jJjIj <J l^LU ^-^/ ^^vJ ^ 
 
 o JJ ox O OJ J o -> x- o GxG ^ x> o ^o x 
 
 O -ij o ^O x^ xx G x G J ^ J x x ox o x 
 o 
 
 O G J A x- O X X - G G S O O J CA x-G O xG J G ^ 
 
 o 
 
 t(,/ x G o x* O <J A x-X OO/OO^ ** o x o o ^ ^ 
 
 x * ' - *V '' 
 
 c 
 
 O X X X O - A G O x^ x x XX -< X ^O-' J Xx 
 
 j ^ o o /o ^ ^ * j~gx o j ^ j xx- 
 
 Ox- Cii^j G x-OO xx G x x G x X G ^o x G ^ j 
 
 x J XX .X O G* X <^ O XO ~ O *J ^. X J 
 
 Jjtfv. *K ^^ S&*? <0 ^JcjI <Lu*1j! J^"* *iJ*J 
 
 O xx Ox x G /(,> x G x G O J x xxGxOxj 
 
 c_x*L ^Jb fj-Jb JJ^Jj^ l5^ J ^U2ji ^J^J ^IaI^/ 1 * 
 
 O ^"^ O x x OX' O ^ .x-oo O O Ojj 
 
 ^-'x ^^ x "J> *T m ' Xx "'xx' V ' 
 
 O xxOxO xO O 'O >0^ U + * O .^O^Gx 
 
 C^UfiT ^ JkC^tyuJ J^^? LA?^ ^-^Vf**" S^' c^*vv|j * ^ ^^-' 
 
 S S S X xxx x- 
 
 O 4/ x x O O xx O J^ O ^ x xOx O x- 
 
 j^ ^^' J^r j J^ iJ^Mt }r^ [Jh^ ^^y J^ ij*-* 
 
 O xOxO x^O x- 0^x O^O O OO O^Ox" 
 
 xx O OxOJ x ^xOxO .'xGx x j x j j 
 
 Ox0^ x X Ox Ox- xO OxxO Oxx 
 
 * J ~ , J -"'s x"^ X "^ * X x xx *'x -^ 
 
 Ox Ox" C /-O/ x x-^Ox x xOx O Ox o * > 
 
 O O x O C^O > x JxOx **xG O^ XOx O G' ^ 
 
 Ox Ox 1 O^xOxO** Oxx Ox O Ox O^ 
 
48 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 ^ ." G ~ * G-'G^ .-- g G ^ O^O^^O^ G J^G^ g^^ 
 
 JlJ J J-J L5 ^>~ jb 4 *.^ '^^ J^*" <-W fV* J trJjJjl // 
 
 G ^ G G G ^G J J G s * /G ^ is" G G < 
 
 G ./> C G O ^G ^ ^ G G * G - -^ C s ' G^G^- rf 
 
 G^ O & G G * * G ^-^ -* /G ^ J G G ^ 
 
 Your praises, poet, touch my heart : 
 They're proofs of kindest favour felt ; 
 Could envious railers silenced be, 
 By disappointment on them dealt, 
 'Twould be a happy end attain'd. 
 
 What virtue is there in me found, 
 A stick, a straw, of no account ? 
 With humble broom I might be rank'd ; 
 But men of talent made me mount, 
 And gave a worth, not else retain'd. 
 
 I never should have found my tongue, 
 Had I been left in native pool ; 
 Could I have learnt each word, each term, 
 That noble science makes her tool, 
 Had I a rustic still remain'd ? 
 
 What thing am I to have a pow'r ? 
 My strength is in the guiding hand 
 Of genius. Ye, men, lend us fame. 
 The only true lords of the land 
 Are they who have the right maintain'd. 
 
 How many of my fellow reeds 
 Are to the weaver's web confin'd ! 
 Whilst thou, my poet, teaching me, 
 By God to thy fair charge consign'd, 
 Far nobler duties hast explain'd. 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 49 
 
 Thou'st set me free from abject use ; 
 Thus bow I down on wisdom's floor, 
 Bathing my head in hallow'd rill, 
 That sanctifies me to adore 
 The Pow'r before whom all must bend. 
 
 Prostrate, with forehead in the dust, 
 As on pray'r-mat, on paper prone, 
 My soul pours forth in words of fire ; 
 I beg for humble needs alone, 
 Or glory give where justly claim'd. 
 
 Did not the scribe me first baptize 
 
 In font of learning, had I zest 
 
 To oft repeat the Word of God , 
 
 Or formulate the soul's behest 
 
 In prayers, from Saints of old retain'd ? 
 
 By yielding service to the wise, 
 
 I've 'scap'd the doom of roasting-spit, 
 
 Or fuel for consuming fire, 
 
 That men with me had gladly lit, 
 
 My flaming soul hadst thou not train'd. 
 
 The fen's dank soil prov'd not a charm 
 
 To save me from my parch'd estate ; 
 
 Still young and green, in jungle bed, 
 
 Scorch'd, burnt each summer, such my fate, 
 
 My thirst no water-drop restrain'd. 
 
 What wonder, then, that now I serve, 
 
 With willing steadfastness, the hand 
 
 Of ev'ry son of genius, kind, 
 
 Who ministers to my demand 
 
 Deep nectar-draughts, in ink contain'd ? 
 
 Had they not seen my latent gifts, 
 And put me to a higher use, 
 I'd been, perchance, a walkingstick, 
 Child's hobby-horse, some fool's abuse, 
 Or urg'd some slave, to toil constrain'd. 
 
 E 
 
50 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 My fellows, here and there, are flutes, 
 In dervish hands, at sacred dance ; 
 Whose hopes or fears, loves, joys or cares, 
 Are whisper'd, in ecstatic trance, 
 To loyal breasts that ne'er have feign'd. 
 
 The vulgar see in us but reeds ; 
 Those mystics make us confidants ; 
 Pouring their secrets in our ears, 
 Confiding all their inmost wants ; 
 A double solace thus is gain'd. 
 
 Through them we join in holy choir, 
 We're sanctified in their bless'd throng. 
 Those warbling notes thus raise our kind ; 
 Cherish'd we are like birds of song, 
 Who, else, as outcasts were disdain'd. 
 
 Though but mere waifs, our little ones 
 
 Are fondly tended, put to bed, 
 
 A home provided by their friends, 
 
 At fitting season duly fed, 
 
 Cleans'd, trimm'd and fashion'd ; so ordain'd. 
 
 Their house, cup, cradle, all in one, 
 The inkhorn is, our source of fame. 
 Poor weeds we are, all valueless ; 
 Pow'r we have none, except in name ; 
 Through man we rule, by him sustain'd. 
 
 To " envious railers " among his rivals did the 
 poet attribute his exile, more than to any political 
 enemies. By the exertions of literary friends was 
 he ultimately recalled. 
 
 A characteristic instance of the ingenuity with 
 which homonyms can be used in Turkish, occurs at 
 the beginning of the fifth couplet of the original of 
 this poem, and is repeated at the beginning of the 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 51 
 
 last couplet in a modified form. The figure of 
 homonymy -.the |wn, of which Addison said : "it 
 can be no more engraven than it can be translated," 
 may consist, in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, of one 
 or more words, taken again as one or more words, 
 similarly or differently subdivided, but having a 
 different meaning. It is of various degrees, from 
 perfect identity of spelling, pronunciation, and sub- 
 division, to mere etymological suggestion, and affords 
 a rich field for the secondary embellishment of 
 primarily beautifid poetry. For, though it is looked 
 upon, in the East also, as " a low kind of wit " in 
 itself, it is deservedly considered a legitimate adorn- 
 ment of such language as is essentially all ornamen- 
 tation. Turkish is richer in this faculty than Arabic 
 or Persian ; if not, as Mir 'Alishlr asserted, in its 
 own native vocabulary, it is so in its literary full- 
 ness ; since it may employ a word in its Arabic, 
 Persian, and Turkish meaning, provided that the 
 sentence in which it is found suits those various 
 senses. Turkish grammar, even, applied to words 
 of either of those languages, may convert them into 
 homonyms with a new signification. The old and 
 vulgar Latin- English pun of " Quid rides " may help 
 to explain. The original Turkish in the fifth couplet, 
 rendered in the opening line of my fourth stanza by 
 " What thing am I ? " is ne-yim ; where ne means 
 " what" im means " / am" and, by reason of the 
 interrogative, " am I " ; while the y is intercalated 
 grammatically, exactly as the t in the French a-t-il, 
 and for the same reason, to separate two vowels 
 that would otherwise, by phrasal construction, be 
 brought accidentally together. But, on the other 
 
 E 2 
 
52 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 hand, the Persian word ney, much used in Turkish, 
 means a reed, and also a flute ; the letter y being 
 already an integral part of its orthography, and of 
 itself a consonant. On adding to this the Turkish 
 verb im, as before, we have ney-im instead of ne- 
 yim ; the meaning now being I am a reed. Either 
 of the two senses What am I, and I am a reed, is 
 applicable to the remainder of the phrase. Had I 
 adopted the second, the line would have had to be 
 rendered : " / am a reed, and God forfend that I 
 should be so presumptuous as to claim a possession 
 of power." 
 
 " Weavers " use " reeds " as bobbins in their 
 shuttles. The poet here made his weavers women, 
 or perhaps he intended rather the spinsters than the 
 weavers ; for neither word is explicitly given ; on 
 the contrary, he greatly heightens the beauty of the 
 line by making those bobbin-reeds " captives in the 
 threads of the tyranny of women," hapless lovers, 
 hopeless slaves, victims of unrequited love. 
 
 As the Muslim must perform an " ablution " before 
 divine service (which with him is not "prayer," but 
 "praise"), and before touching or reciting the 
 " Word of God," i.e., the Quran, so also must the 
 " pen " be metaphorically " baptized " in ink, ere it 
 can perform its office, which is often that of " repeat- 
 ing " the " Word," by transcribing it. With Mus- 
 lims, manuscript is greatly preferred to printing for 
 all books of a religious nature ; though even the 
 Qur an itself is now printed and used by them. 
 
 " Flutes, in dervish hands "is an allusion to the 
 religious ceremonies of the " dancing dervishes," so 
 well-known to travellers who have paid a visit to 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 53 
 
 their establishment near the European suburb of 
 Constantinople. Their " waltz " is performed to 
 the accompaniment of reed " flutes," to which they 
 are devotedly and sentimentally attached. They 
 are of the " order " founded at Qonya by the great 
 mystical poet Jelalu-'d- Dm, already mentioned. 
 
 XI. The Mufti of Ergena 16 ; by Izzet MoUa. 
 (A specimen of light banter.) 
 
 o 
 
 xXG.* C- OX/, x xo y j //t/ O C O O x 
 
 **)\ (A-rJ j'*> iJJlJjLp-yf Sjj\ ^jJl* /JoJ ij5fJL.\\ 
 
 * s~s ~*J ' * * /' I x 'V x x "x 
 
 Si C O yO x ^O O s*3 &** x O O x<j O X 
 
 ' 'V ^ x * * * x x^ ^ * " x 
 
 c 
 
 O XX G X ,, /. G X OX XO X OX XO>* 
 
 x "x x x "x x" ' x-x X 
 
 G xO x /.J O xx jx j O J OO O O G x x 
 
 jjjjT ^jLi J^f ^l^ ^^ <-r>j^ ^P ^>^^ 
 
 Ox x o X j G G X C XX X-> .J v, 
 
 G Ox G X 
 
 - -* x V'x X^ 
 
 ox g G G X G G & 
 
 a iff *- Jj! i^fc^ ^* j* 
 
 G x GxG * x OxC * x 
 
 Ox O x O xx A * * -* O - 
 
 G A /oj x x G ** x G * xG x x Ox O C ^ 
 
 Ci)ciM *<Ulj S-^ h*J C^ixii? <JJ^J ^J^ < -*^^- 
 
 16 Ergena (Erkeneh on the maps) is the town, about twenty miles 
 south of Adrianople, on the large Thracian stream that joins the Marizza 
 from the east, and is there crossed by a very long bridge, Jisri- 
 Ergena (Bridge of Ergena) otherwise Uzun-Kyupri (Long Bridge). 
 
54 *0N THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 G GxG-O J^G x g 
 
 /C xG J x xGx o x G x C x G X o x x c 
 
 G X l X X X X G ** x G /G ^ x >J G- >J CO X 
 
 jL j jlj" <u^b ,<^Li> ^^L? J^J3j ^f* 8 ^) j^ f^Jr ^ 
 
 Gx G XX Cx C X xGxG C G X * Gx G J x G - 1 
 
 (^^ ^ljus' jL&\i 4A*^ ^5^ ^fry l t^' ^ J jyy 
 
 c <* 
 
 ' 'x X X * X* X X X x 
 
 j C - X CxG G 'X XG x >J G GJXG G x G J 
 
 X X s / I x X X 
 
 xGxGx G Gx Gx xGx x xx 
 
 ^^^j-Xj! L-^Ovxilj* ^>yi ^T ^^ JJ&Uj ^JuJ ^^ 
 
 G^G*X Xj C A Gi , GxGxGxGxx 
 
 J-wj J***"" u5^^ ^J^sJL^Ix Jxl j^ ^jjbjx* Cx'Lili. 
 
 G x x*x x x J G x G G xcx x G x x 
 
 GXG G->x G-GOvGxG G ^ C J G ~> 
 
 Gxx X * </** xGxx Gx GXXG^G* GG^ 
 
 G 
 G X XG>> GX O O C X G XX GG G * GxG- 
 
 xGx G * XXG^ O// GxG GxGx C 
 
 jjgfiul fcX^jl /*>j Jfi^Ui^ ^?l L5 A^ ^Vfjft Jjbl ^Jjl jjSjS ^T 
 
 x x xx G A x G * Gx xxx G G xx Gx G x 
 
 x"x X X V -/ " ^ "^ y 
 
 Mufti of Ergena ; I'd heard his fame : 
 
 " In age, to look smart bachelor, his game ; 
 
 His chin and cheeks had ne'er been grac'd with beard ; 
 
 Youthful for ever, then' his motto heard ; 
 
 Tierce janissary like, his turban shawl, 
 
 Extinguisher to hide his science all." 
 
 Casting in mind this youthful, beardless face, 
 Desire to see him in my heart took place. 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY.- 55 
 
 Trusting a ready Mercury to meet, 
 This tetrastich I wrote the sage to greet : 
 
 " Dear Mufti, whiskerless, but learn'd in law ; 
 Of luckless 'Izzet know, with ne'er a flaw, 
 That he has pin'd for thee, sad, eve and morn, 
 These months, since Keshan is his jail, forlorn." 
 
 A friend just then on journeying intent, 
 Serv'd as my messenger ; my missive went. 
 My pen, like drinking-fount with waters sweet, 
 Was welcom'd in its invitation meet. 
 
 In Sha'ban's month my billet was sent forth ; 
 
 In Eaniazan he reach'd me from the north. 
 
 Great my surprise ! A marvel of the age ! 
 
 His ev'ry turban-fold of hearts a cage ! 
 
 As bashful youth he took a seat down low ; 
 
 Moustache and eyebrows, each like archer's bow. 
 
 Girded on waist his sword, our foes' affright, 
 
 Made me conceive 'twas Eustem come to light. 
 
 His silver-mounted Arnaut pistols gleam'd, 
 
 And Moscow's awe-struck hosts to menace seem'd. 
 
 His speech gave evidence of talent keen ; 
 
 Belied, however, by his fatuous mien. 
 
 In troth, well versed he was in ev'ry " art " ; 
 
 No " crib " of learning, nor from fashion's mart. 
 
 A Dervish-Chief, Eufa'i's ordsr 'tis 
 
 Whose precepts, rites, to teach, to act, were his. 
 
 His second nature, equity and law ; 
 
 Of outward show the world him careless saw. 
 
 Two days, or three, he lodg'd with me, a guest ; 
 
 Departing then, at home he sought his rest. 
 
 Ne'er had I met before such garb, such feature ; 
 
 A genuine laughing-stock of human nature. 
 
 The stars had never twinkl'd on his peer ; 
 
 To see him and not smile ? 0, never fear ! 
 
 Should any son of learning, man of taste, 
 
56 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 Hear this, though unconcerned in land of Thrace, 
 Of Beys and Pashas let him make but light, 
 And straightway visit this most wond'rous wight. 
 
 A " Mufti " is an equivalent to our " Queen's 
 Counsel." One is appointed in every district in 
 Turkey by the Government. It is his duty to fur- 
 nish all applicants, on payment of the fees, with a 
 written " legal opinion " on any case submitted to 
 him in general terms. He is not a judge of facts. 
 The judge's office is filled by the Qadhi (Cadi), who 
 applies the law, as furnished by the Mufti, to any 
 particular case investigated judicially by himself. 
 It is unusual for the members of the body of the 
 'Ulema, the Learned (scil., in the Law), who are 
 lawyers (not priests for there are no priests in 
 Islam, where everyone is a priest unto himself), to 
 wear " shawl " turbans. They generally wind white 
 muslin sashes round their caps, exchanged for green 
 if they are descended from Muhammad through his 
 daughter Fatima, and sometimes for black, if they 
 belong to certain dervish orders. 
 
 Sha'ban is the eighth, Kamazan the ninth lunar 
 month of the canonical year of Islam. During the 
 latter, a strict fast is observed every day from the 
 beginning of the " True Dawn " until sunset. To 
 partake of food, to drink one drop of water, to 
 smoke, take snuff, or even smell at a flower, within 
 the prescribed hours, is sinful, save in cases of travel 
 or sickness. The "False Dawn," which becomes 
 visible before the " True Dawn," is the Zodiacal 
 Light, and must not be heeded for worship -time or 
 fasting. 
 
 In all countries of the East, courtesy and etiquette 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 57 
 
 compel the strictest attention to the place one occu- 
 pies in sitting down in an assembly. The seat of 
 honour is generally one of the two corners, some- 
 times the middle, of that end of the room most 
 remote from the entrance door. This custom is 
 alluded to in Luke xiv, 10 : " Friend, go up higher : 
 then shalt thou have worship in the presence of 
 them that sit at meat with thee." The etiquette is 
 not observed " at meat " alone, but on all occasions ; 
 when even two persons sit down together in a room. 
 " Rustem " is the Hercules or Roland of Persian 
 mythology. Like " Jack the Giant-killer," he per- 
 formed wonderful feats in the good old days of 
 Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes, as is detailed in the 
 " Book of Kings " by Firdawsi. Arnaut means 
 Albanian ; and Albanian fire-arms are, as a rule, 
 beautifully inlaid or overlaid with gold or silver 
 work. The Rufa/I dervishes are those so irreverently 
 mentioned by English travellers as the " Howling 
 Dervishes," from their rite of sitting in circles to 
 
 ejaculate the name of Jehovah, Allah Hu, ^ ^\ a 
 great number of times ; for which see Lane's 
 " Modern Egyptians." 17 
 
 This is my last selection from the poetry of the 
 Vice-Chancellor on the present occasion. I proceed, 
 therefore, to the impromptu of his son, Fu ad Pasha, 
 addressed to Her Royal Highness the Princess of 
 Wales. 
 
 XII. Impromptu ; by Fuad Pasha. 
 (Written in the album of H.R.H. the Princess of 
 Wales.) 
 
 ,T Fifth Edition, Murray, London, I860, p. 456. 
 
& ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 s* /<*. C y y x-O G-*G- O * / C- ^ C -* 
 
 If *;^r u l *JuT ^1 cX3le-1 (^o- 
 
 Thy countenance a radiant mirror is, wherein 
 The fairest beauties of the mind resplendent glow. 
 Could artist's pencil truly paint thy crowning worth, 
 No other semblance would the charming picture show. 
 
 Comment is needless, as to the sense. But an 
 agreeable play is made upon the word which I have 
 rendered by " countenance " and " semblance/' liter- 
 ally meaning form. A lady's form or figure, and a 
 lawyer's form for a will, &c, might be made into a 
 similar pun by a competent artist. 
 
 XIII. To a Lady, with the writer's photograph. 
 
 C G^ O <J 
 
 +*jj ijTW (^'^.r^ 3 ' fc****& c;>^l 
 
 With mortal pang I tore myself that morn from thee, 
 Corporeally ; my willing heart remain'd behind. 
 This effigy, inanimate, memento-wise, 
 Accept thou now ; me shall it serve to keep in mind. 
 
 This, and the following piece, No. 14, the last of 
 my present collection, were lately given me by a 
 friend, their respective authors being unknown to 
 him. In the second hemistich above, an ingenious 
 little verbal artifice is carried through, that is quite 
 lost in my paraphrase. By the peculiar arrangement 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 59 
 
 selected for the original words that signify re- 
 spectively, " effigy" " body" and " inanimate" the 
 poet has managed, not really saying so, to make it 
 appear that his body had become lifeless, the " in- 
 animate" thing being, of course, the photograph. 
 The suggestion so cleverly made is, " Away from 
 thee I am dead ; therefore I now send an effigy of 
 my lifeless corpse." 
 
 XIV. Epitaph on an Officer killed in battle. 
 
 y i^y y y y i^y O O y y O O 
 
 ^ja\j JjJLj &J*y. (*J^ <^-rls 
 
 -j -* o o y - y yL, y y y 
 
 y y I y y V y 
 
 y y y y y y(s *> o y c * y(^y OO y 
 
 My proud name I've recorded in blood 
 
 Upon History's scroll of the brave ; 
 
 In the cause of my country my life, 
 
 As a martyr I gloriously gave. 
 
 Though my corse, deck'd with wounds as its flow'rs, 
 
 Lies now mouldering 'neath the green sward, 
 
 All my comrades' firm hearts are consol'd, 
 
 For they know I've gain'd Heav'n as reward. 
 
 Having thus concluded my self-imposed task of 
 combating the notion that the Turks " have never 
 had poets," I have only to beg permission to call the 
 attention of my readers to the fact that a para- 
 phrase is not a translation. In the foregoing pieces 
 I have given the spirit rather than the letter of the 
 originals, whenever the matter, or the metre, or the 
 rhyme, appeared to me so to require. In thus acting, 
 my trust is that I have not irretrievably damaged, 
 
60 ON THE HISTORY, SYSTEM, AND 
 
 to English minds, the beautiful productions of 
 Eastern genius which I have endeavoured to make 
 intelligible to my countrymen. 
 
 P.S. Since penning the foregoing remarks, an 
 instance has occurred which seems to demonstrate 
 the common good sense of, I hope, the generality of 
 Englishmen, in presupposing the existence of Turkish 
 poetry. It has taken, however, the rather hazardous 
 form of further preopining that a foreigner can put 
 an English epigram into a presentable form of 
 Turkish verse. At our public schools it is custom- 
 ary, as is well known, to exercise boys in making 
 Latin and Greek verses. Could the old Romans 
 and Athenians look over these productions, smiles 
 would probably be observable on their features. 
 This practice, however, presumably led my corres- 
 pondent to propose the task to me. It gratified me 
 more than the total denial of the " learned and 
 talented Lord " had surprised me. I did my best, 
 therefore, to meet the wish ; and thence has resulted 
 the following, my first, as it probably will be my 
 last, attempt at Turkish versification. I will not 
 guarantee the correctness of the metre, but the 
 sense I will answer for. Itoets will, peradventure, 
 overlook my shortcoming out of regard for my 
 motive. 
 
VARIETIES OF TURKISH POETRY. 61 
 
 On the Accession of Pope Leo XIII. 
 (An Epigram after S. Malachi.) 
 
 Through the Cross on Cross of Pius, 
 As through Mary's Dolours Seven, 
 Lo! from Death what Life emerges, 
 Joy from Anguish, Light from Heaven. 
 
 X /-CO/- v oxox o o x 
 
 Ox Ox O Ox s s "+ ' O 
 
 O O/O xx x xOx COx O x O ^ - 
 
 ^jJu>- ^J'L^ *3 *L>! jv '\gy&*J$ 
 
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 Ox Ov ox OxOxO O V X x O x-x j 
 
 J. W. KEDHOUSE. 
 London, December, 1878. 
 
 Harrison $ Sons, Printers in Ordinary to Her Majesty, St. Martin's Lane. 
 
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