Muhammed Fuzuli (1498-1556)

Muhammed Fuzuli (1498-1556)
Turkmen poet
http://www.turkmeninstitute.org/Fuzuli_main/BIOGRAPHY.htm

BIOGRAPHY
Fuzuli is one of the greatest Azeri-Turkish poets. His real name is Muhammed Suleiman oglu (poet’s name and patronymic). We know almost nothing of the childhood and early youth of Fuzuli. It is generally considered that he was born app. in 1498 in Kerbela (in the area presently known as Iraq).

Fuzuli belonged to the Turkic tribe of Bayat, one of the Turkoman tribes that was scattered in all over the Middle East, Anatolia and the Caucasus from X-XI cc. and which stands in the roots of the Azerbaijanian people. Although Fuzuli’s ancestors were of nomadic origin, Fuzuli’s family had long been town-dwellers. At that time the area where Fuzuli lived was a part of the Azerbaijanian Safavid State headed by the leader of the Turkoman Shiites Shah Ismayil Safavi. When young Fuzuli devoted a poem to Shah Ismayil named Bang-u-Badeh, where he praised his reigning.

Fuzuli was a versatile and learned man, and was both ambitious to possess these qualities, and proud in possessing them. He wrote: "…I am master of all the arts in discussing beauty of expression and in disputing agreeableness of style with those who are masters of one art only. Well, all this demonstrates the total "presumption" ("fuzuli" in Arabic), but also the perfection of Fuzuli". Thus, the poet explains his nom de plume, which literally means presumptuous, but which also brings to mind fuzul, the plural of fazl meaning "virtue". He chose this pseudonym in order not to be confused with others and be "unique". He was sure that because of its unpleasant meaning nobody else would adopt it.

Fuzuli had left us writings in Azeri (Turkish), Persian and Arabic. This trilingualism was not rare among the Turkic writers of the medieval period and is explainable by their cultural formulation, which was based, in fact, on Arabic religious and scientific tradition and on Persian literary tradition. In Fuzuli’s case the use of the three languages was conditioned also by his particular environment, because all three tongues were in use in Iraq, which as known from history was in XVI c. first a part of the Safavid State and later in 1534 became a part of the Ottoman Empire.

The ability to write in more than one language was one of the things of which Fuzuli was most proud and one of his favorite habits was to use two or three languages alternately in same of his poetry or prose. Fuzuli wrote in Azeri Turkish not only by the fact that it was his mother tongue but also by political circumstances.

Shah Ismayil Safavi, who conquered Baghdad in 1508, has left us a divan in Azeri Turkish. After the Ottoman conquest of Baghdad Turkish literature acquired even greater importance in this region. Fuzuli expressed Turkish prestige in words, which at that time was not exaggerated, "the high ranking of Turks constitute a large part of world order and a numerous category of the human species…".

Nevertheless, he complains that to write "delicate" verse in Turkish rather than in Persian is difficult because the Turkish language is hard to be put in lines, since the words are mostly without connection and lacking harmony. Therefore, the language of the Fuzuli’s poems are extremely persianized. Today a Turk in Azerbaijan or in Turkey could not read many of his works without the help of dictionary. However, Fuzuli’s fame rests mainly on his work in Azeri-Turkish and his masterpiece world-wide famous poem "Leili and Mejnun" is written in Azeri-Turkish too.

Fuzuli lived in constant need, which we know from his numerous poetic complaints. The great poet died of cholera in Kerbela in 1556.

FUZULI, Muhammad bin Suleyman

Please see NY Turkmen Institute:

http://www.turkmeninstitute.org/

According to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuz%C3%BBl%C3%AE



Fużūlī (فضولی) was the pen name of the poet Muhammad bin Suleyman (محمد بن سليمان) (c. 1483 – 1556). Often considered one of the greatest contributors to the Dîvân tradition of Turkish literature,[1] Fuzûlî in fact wrote his collected poems (dîvân) in three different languages: Azerbaijani Turkish, Persian, and Arabic. Although his Turkish works are written in Azerbaijani, he was well-versed in both the Ottoman and the Chagatai Turkish literary traditions as well. He was also well versed in mathematics and astronomy[2].



Fuzûlî is generally believed to have been born around 1483 in what is now Iraq, when the area was under Ak Koyunlu Turkmen rule; he was probably born in either Karbalā’ or an-Najaf.[3] His family was a part of the Bayat tribe, one of the Turkic Oghuz tribes who were related to the Ottoman Kayı clan and were scattered throughout the Middle East, Anatolia, and the Caucasus at the time. Though Fuzûlî's ancestors had been of nomadic origin, the family had long since settled in towns.

Fuzûlî appears to have received a good education, first under his father—who was a mufti in the city of Al Hillah—and then under a teacher named Rahmetullah.[4] It was during this time that he learned the Persian and Arabic languages in addition to his native Azerbaijani. Fuzûlî showed poetic promise early in life, composing sometime around his twentieth year the important mesnevî entitled Beng ü Bâde (بنگ و باده; "Hashish and Wine"), in which he compared the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II to hashish and the Safavid shah Ismail I to wine, much to the advantage of the latter.

One of the few things that is known of Fuzûlî's life during this time is how he arrived at his pen name. In the introduction to his collected Persian poems, he says: "In the early days when I was just beginning to write poetry, every few days I would set my heart on a particular pen name and then after a time change it for another because someone showed up who shared the same name".[5] Eventually, he decided upon the Arabic word fuzûlî—which literally means "impertinent, improper, unnecessary"—because he "knew that this title would not be acceptable to anyone else".[6] Despite the name's pejorative meaning, however, it contains a double meaning—what is called tevriyye (توريه) in Ottoman Divan poetry—as Fuzûlî himself explains: "I was possessed of all the arts and sciences and found a pen name that also implies this sense since in the dictionary fuzûl (ﻓﻀﻮل) is given as a plural of fazl (ﻓﻀﻞ; 'learning') and has the same rhythm as ‘ulûm (ﻋﻠﻮم; 'sciences') and fünûn (ﻓﻨﻮن; 'arts')".[7]

In 1534, the Ottoman sultan Süleymân I conquered the region of Baghdad, where Fuzûlî lived, from the Safavid Empire. Fuzûlî now had the chance to become a court poet under the Ottoman patronage system, and he composed a number of kasîdes, or panegyric poems, in praise of the sultan and members of his retinue, and as a result, he was granted a stipend. However, owing to the complexities of the Ottoman bureaucracy, this stipend never materialized. In one of his best-known works, the letter Şikâyetnâme (شکايت نامه; "Complaint"), Fuzûlî spoke out against such bureaucracy and its attendant corruption:

سلام وردم رشوت دگلدر ديو آلمادىلر
Selâm verdim rüşvet değildir deyü almadılar.[8]
I said hello, but they didn't accept as it wasn't a bribe.

Though his poetry flourished during his time among the Ottomans, the loss of his stipend meant that, materially speaking, Fuzûlî never became secure. In fact, most of his life was spent attending upon the Shi`ite Tomb of `Alî in the city of an-Najaf, south of Baghdad.[9] He died during a plague outbreak in 1556, in Karbalā’, either of the plague itself or of cholera.

Fuzûlî has always been known, first and foremost, as a poet of love. It was, in fact, a characterization that he seems to have agreed with:
مندن فضولی ايستمه اشعار مدح و ذم
من عاشقام هميشه سوزم عاشقانه در
Menden Fuzûlî isteme eş'âr-ı medh ü zem
Men âşıkam hemîşe sözüm âşıkânedür[10]

Don't ask Fuzûlî for poems of praise or rebuke
I am a lover and speak only of love

Fuzûlî's notion of love, however, has more in common with the Sufi idea of love as a projection of the essence of God—though Fuzûlî himself seems to have belonged to no particular Sufi order—than it does with the Western idea of romantic love. This can be seen in the following lines from another poem:
عاشق ايمش هر ن وار ﻋﺎﻝﻢ
ﻋلم بر قيل و قال ايمش آنجق
‘Aşk imiş her ne var ‘âlem
‘İlm bir kîl ü kâl imiş ancak[11]

All that is in the world is love
And knowledge is nothing but gossip

The first of these lines, especially, relates to the idea of wahdat al-wujūd (وحدة الوجود), or "unity of being", which was first formulated by Ibn al-‘Arabī and which states that nothing apart from various manifestations of God exists. Here, Fuzûlî uses the word "love" (عاشق ‘aşk) rather than God in the formula, but the effect is the same.

In Fuzûlî's œuvre, his most extended treatment of this idea of love is in the long poem Dâstân-ı Leylî vü Mecnun (داستان ليلى و مجنون), a mesnevî which takes as its subject the classical Middle Eastern love story of Layla and Majnun. In his version of the story, Fuzûlî concentrates upon the pain of the mad lover Majnun's separation from his beloved Layla, and comes to see this pain as being of the essence of love:

یا رب بلا عاشق ايله قيل آشنا منى
بر دم بلا عاشقدن ايتمه جدا منى
آز ايلمه عنایتونى اهل دردن
يعنى كه چوح بلالره قيل مبتلا منى
Yâ Rab belâ-yı ‘aşk ile kıl âşinâ meni
Bir dem belâ-yı ‘aşkdan etme cüdâ meni
Az eyleme ‘inâyetüni ehl-i derdden
Ya‘ni ki çoh belâlara kıl mübtelâ meni[12]

Oh God, let me know the pain of love
Do not for even a moment separate me from it
Do not lessen your aid to the afflicted
But rather, make lovesick me one among them

The ultimate value of the suffering of love, in Fuzûlî's work, lies in that it helps one to approach closer to "the Real" (al-Haqq الحق), which is one of the 99 names of God in Islamic tradition.

• Dîvân ("Collected Poems")
• Beng ü Bâde (بنگ و باده; "Hashish and Wine")
• Hadîkat üs-Süedâ (حديقت السعداء; "Garden of Pleasures")
• Dâstân-ı Leylî vü Mecnûn (داستان ليلى و مجنون; "The Epic of Layla and Majnun")
• Risâle-i Muammeyât (رسال ﻤﻌﻤيات; "Treatise on Riddles")
• Şikâyetnâme (شکايت نامه; "Complaint")
[edit] Works in Persian
• Dîvân ("Collected Poems")
• Anîs ol-qalb (انیس القلب; "Friend of the Heart")
• Haft Jâm (هفت جام; "Seven Goblets")
• Rend va Zâhed (رند و زاهد; "Hedonist and Ascetic")
• Resâle-e Muammeyât (رسال ﻤﻌﻤيات; "Treatise on Riddles")
• Sehhat o Ma'ruz (صحت و معروض; "Health and Sickness")
[edit] Works in Arabic
• Dîvân ("Collected Poems")
• Matla' ul-İ'tiqâd (مطلع الاﻋﺘﻘﺎد; "The Birth of Faith")

According to the Encyclopedia Iranica:

“ Fuzuli is credited with some fifteen works in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, both in verse and prose. Although his greatest significance is undoubtedly as a Turkish poet, he is also of importance to Persian literature thanks to his original works in that language (indeed, Persian was the language he preferred for his Shi'ite religious poetry); his Turkish adaptations or translations of Persian works; and the inspiration he derived from Persian models for his Turkish works.

... The fundamental gesture of Fozuli's poetry is inclusiveness. It links Azeri, Turkmen and Ottoman (Rumi) poetry, east and west; it also bridges the religious divide between Shiism and Sunnism. Generations of Ottoman poets admired and wrote responses to his poetry; no contemporary canon can bypass him. ”
References
Primary
• Fuzulî. Fuzulî Divanı: Gazel, Musammat, Mukatta' ve Ruba'î kısmı. Ed. Ali Nihad Tarlan. İstanbul: Üçler Basımevi, 1950.
• Fuzulî. Leylâ ve Mecnun. Ed. Muhammet Nur Doğan. ISBN 975-08-0198-9.
Secondary
• Andrews, Walter G. "Fuzûlî" in Ottoman Lyric Poetry: An Anthology. pp. 235–237. ISBN 0-292-70472-0.
• "Fozule, Mohammad b. Solayman". Encyclopedia Iranica. Retrieved 25 August 2006.
• "Fuzuli, Mehmed bin Süleyman." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. 23 Aug. 2006 .
• Kudret, Cevdet. Fuzuli. ISBN 9751020166.
• Şentürk, Ahmet Atillâ. "Fuzûlî" in Osmanlı Şiiri Antolojisi. pp. 280–324. ISBN 975-08-0163-6.
Notes
1. ^ "Fuzuli, Mehmed bin Süleyman" in Encyclopædia Britannica
2. ^ "Fozule, Mohammad b. Solayman" in Encyclopaedia Iranica
3. ^ "Fozule, Mohammad b. Solayman" in Encyclopaedia Iranica
4. ^ Şentürk 281
5. ^ Quoted in Andrews, 236.
6. ^ Ibid.
7. ^ Ibid.
8. ^ Kudret 189
9. ^ Andrews 237
10. ^ Tarlan 47
11. ^ Kudret 20
12. ^ Leylâ ve Mecnun 216