Poetry
Hüsrev ü Şirin
Not translated into English
Şeyhî · 1421
Synopsis
The poem tells of the love of Hüsrev, son of Hürmüz, ruler of Ctesiphon, and of Şîrîn, niece of the Armenian queen Mihîn Bânû, according to the Küre, and also gives a place to Ferhâd. According to turkedebiyati.org, the narrative, preceded by a prologue of 775 verses, has eleven chapters and gives the characters a voice in twenty-six ghazals, shared among Hüsrev, Şîrîn and Ferhâd; the Küre adds a prayer by Şîrîn and a poem with a refrain by Ferhâd. The plot is not summarised any further.
Context
Sultan Murad II commissioned the work after his accession in 1421; the author, according to the Küre, worked on it until his death without finishing it, and his nephew Cemâlî added an appendix of one hundred and nine couplets. The whole comprises 6,944 couplets. The Islamisation of Anatolia database sees in it so free an adaptation of the Persian poem that it almost forms a new work, and the first great Turkish love poem; the Küre notes the changes in the order of events and the variety of metres in the introductory parts. More than fifty manuscripts are recorded, and Faruk K. Timurtaş established the text from eight of them.
Who it is for
Nearly seven thousand couplets in Old Anatolian Turkish, with no French translation; the Turkish text exists in a scholarly edition.
Prizes and reception
Britannica regards it as a masterpiece of elegant verse and as the foundation of its author's reputation.
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The pages consulted to check this page.