BOOK I
CHAPTER I.
A long road lies before us. We are about to trace the rise and development of poetry among the Ottoman Turks, a people whose literary history began six hundred years ago and is still in progress. We shall first have to try to catch some glimpse of the earliest efforts of this poetry in the far off days of the founders of the Empire; then we shall have to watch it feeling its way, now in this direction, now in that, while the Ottoman power itself is being gradually evolved; next we shall see it spreading its wings in surer flight as prosperity and security bring increase of culture; then we shall trace its brilliant course through the seventeenth century, when of a truth it held the gorgeous East in fee; after which we shall pursue its devious track through the years that follow, look upon its struggles and its failures, till at length we see it in these latest days burst forth once again in strong fresh life, more vigorous, more buoyant, more hopeful than ever it had been in the days of the Suleymáns or the Ahmeds.
But before setting out on our journey through the ages, it will be well to equip ourselves for the road by getting some idea as to what have been the aims and tendencies of Ottoman poetry, what the conditions under which it has been developed, and what the forms of verse in which it has found expression. We shall therefore first of all try to learn something of the general characteristics of this poetry and of the circumstances which have influenced these; after which we shall look at its outward structure.
Ottoman poetry falls into two great divisions which we may call the Old or Asiatic School and the New or European School. The first of these rules unchallenged from the very outset down to the middle of the nineteenth century, when the second makes its appearance and in the course of a very few years wholly supersedes its worn-out rival. This second school differs so widely not merely in the outward form of its verse, but in its whole bent and purpose from all that goes before, that it will be better to leave it to be treated apart later on, and to confine ourselves for the present to the consideration of the Old or Asiatic School.
The Old School of Ottoman poetry covers a period of five and a half centuries; and although during this long time it naturally passed through many stages and underwent many modifications, its unity was never broken; what its form and purpose were in the fourteenth century, that in all essential points they were in the nineteenth.
The five and a half centuries occupied by this School may be conveniently divided into Four Periods. The First of these will cover the century and a half which extends between A. D. 1300, when the Empire was established, and A. D. 1450; during this Period, which might be called the Formative Age, the Western branch of the Turkish language1 was being fitted to become a literary medium. The Second Period, which will embrace the hundred and fifty years between 1450 and 1600, marks the time when, the initial difficulties with the language having been overcome, the poets were able to give their chief attention to the study and reproduction of the methods of the contemporary Persian school, that school at whose head stood the illustrious Jámi. The Third Period will cover the seventeenth century; it is marked by the yet further Persianisation of Ottoman poetry, and by the supersession of Jámí by ῾Urfí, and later by Sá᾽ib, as literary model. The Fourth Period, which will embrace the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, differs from the others in being an age of uncertainty. At first many of the poets follow the Persian Shevket; then there comes a reaction against Persianism1 and an unsuccessful attempt to give a more Turkish character to poetry; this again is followed by a time in which all guiding principle seems to be lost and poetry to be drifting helplessly back to an effete and colourless Persianism. And it is upon this moribund and hopeless age that the sun of the new culture, the culture of the West, arises, bringing fresh life where lay the shadow of death, and bright with happy promise for the future.
Of course the dates mentioned in connection with those Four Periods must not be considered as hard and fast boundary-lines, a thing so subtle as a literary tendency does not admit of being mapped out with any such definiteness. But looked at broadly, these divisions will be found to correspond to as many distinct movements; and they will, moreover, prove of considerable assistance in a systematic study of the development of this poetry.
That great race to which the Ottomans belong, that race which includes not only the Turks both Western and Eastern, but all the so-called Tartars and Turkmans as well as the Mongols, has never produced any religion, philosophy or literature which bears the stamp of its individual genius. This is because the true genius of that race lies in action, not in speculation. The Turks and their kinsfolk are before all things soldiers. The societies which they formed in early times, before the introduction of Islam into Central Asia, were almost exclusively for military purposes. When the expedition was at an end, the several clans, families or individuals who had banded together for a common purpose most often dispersed, very soon to become members of some new and equally impermanent combination. Had there been nothing else, the unceasing restlessness of this mode of life would have been enough to prevent these people from elaborating any profound theory of the universe or developing anything in the way of literature beyond a mere folk-poetry.
The distinguishing qualities of the Turkish race have ever been the essentially military virtues of courage and loyalty. Of their courage it is needless to speak; all the world knows how from the beginning down to the present hour courage has been the birthright of every true Turk. Their loyalty has been no less persistent, and has manifested itself in many directions. It forms the basis of what is perhaps the most striking characteristic of Ottoman literature. It is well exemplified in the relation of the race to Islam. The Turks are not naturally a people of strong religious feeling. While left to themselves, they had no definite religion; in ancient times, before foreign missionaries came among them, such religious notions as they had were confined to a vague nature-worship. By and by some among them became, under outside influence, Buddhists or Christians; afterwards the great majority of the race accepted Islam, not because that religion was peculiarly in harmony with their native genius, but as a result of the circumstances in which they found themselves. Yet from that day to this the Turks have with unflinching courage and unfaltering loyalty defended the religion to which they thus tendered their allegiance. They have not argued much about it, neither have they sought to force it upon other nations; but whenever it has been attacked they have been the foremost of its defenders. In like manner have the Turks carried the military spirit of their race into all the relationships they have formed; as faithful soldiers, when they receive an order, do not discuss but obey it, so this people, when they accept a system, do not criticise but stand by it. This unquestioning loyalty to principles once accepted lies at the root of the Turkish character. We shall see how it has acted upon their literature.
Though unable to originate any literature which should give expression to the true genius of their race, the Turkish peoples were very far from despising, or even undervaluing, culture. Consequently, when they were brought into close connection with the Persians, although they despised the latter as men, looking upon them as braggarts and cowards, they at once recognised their superiority in learning and culture. And so the Turks forthwith appropriated the entire Persian literary system down to its minutest detail, and that in the same unquestioning and whole-hearted fashion in which they had already accepted Islam. Here again they did not pause to consider whether this Persian culture were really in harmony with their own genius, they did not even attempt to modify it to suit that genius; on the contrary, they sought to adapt the latter to it, and to force themselves to think upon Persian lines and to look upon things through Persian eyes. Their loyalty to the system thus accepted explains the secret of the long duration of the Old School of Ottoman poetry; and indeed this fidelity of five and a half centuries to a single tradition is the most truly Turkish characteristic which that poetry has to show.
From the very beginning then of their literature the Ottomans made it their practice to select and incorporate into their language such Persian and Persianised Arabic words and terms as were felt to be necessary to fill up the deficiencies in their native Tartar dialect. These new-comers, while each retained its original form unchanged, were all, so to speak naturalised, being subjected in every point to the rules of Turkish speech; they were woven into the Turanian ground-work of the language, and thus the Persian was Turkicised, not the Turkish Persianised. As time went on more and more of such additions were made; Persian ideas and canons of taste were adopted and incorporated; so that the language of the Second and later Periods comes to have the effect of an elaborate mosaic.
It is not too much to say that during the whole of the five and a half centuries covered by the Old School, though more especially during the Third Period, every Persian and every Arabic word was a possible Ottoman word. In thus borrowing material from the two classical languages a writer was quite unrestricted save by his own taste and the limit of his knowledge; all that was required was that in case of need he should give to the foreign words a Turkish grammatical form. Since the rise of the New School this license has been greatly curtailed. While the tendency has grown to drop such of these words as have failed to naturalise themselves, it has become the practice to confine this borrowing to really necessary terms — chiefly scientific or technical expressions — which are often introduced under forms or in combinations unknown in the original language, precisely as we employ Greek or Latin terms for similar purposes.
But the principle has not changed; what was formerly done with Persian and Arabic is being repeated, though with far more discretion, in these days with French. Western words and Western idioms, necessary to give expression to new ideas born of a new civilisation, are driving the old Asian phraseology from its time-honoured throne and becoming part and parcel of the living language of to-day. So far as the mere language is concerned, the effect obtained by reading successively three poems, one of the Second Period, one of the Fourth, and one of the present day, might be compared to that produced by the shifting combinations seen in a kaleidoscope, a succession of brilliant devices, alike in general character, but differing in detail, with each individual member standing out distinct and clear.
This system of assimilation was of course not restricted merely to words and phrases; it extended to everything connected with letters. We shall find that the tone and spirit of Ottoman poetry have been profoundly affected by those foreign literatures which have been accepted as models; while it is still more indebted to them for its imagery, subjects and verse-forms. In the case of the Old School the literature thus accepted was, as we know, that of Persia, and before proceeding to examine Turkish poetry itself, let us see whether we can discover what were the circumstances which created Persia the literary instructor of the Ottoman people1.
A mere tribe of rude and unlettered nomads was the little Turkish clan which in the thirteenth century of our era, flying before the terrible armies of Jengíz Khan, left its home in Central Asia and followed Suleymán Sháh into Anatolia. On their arrival in that land these new-comers, who by and by were to form the nucleus of the Ottoman power, found established there another Turkish people, the Seljúqs, who had by this time attained a very considerable degree of culture, thanks entirely to Persian tutorage. For these Seljúqs had been originally, like the forefathers of the Ottomans, a barbarous Tartar clan. About the middle of the eleventh century they had overrun Persia, when, as has so often happened, the barbarian conquerors adopted the culture of their civilised subjects. Rapidly the Seljúq Turks pushed their conquests westward, ever carrying with them Persian culture, till towards the end of the eleventh century they founded the famous Seljúq Turkish Empire of Rúm or Asia Minor, with Qonya, the ancient Iconium, as its capital. So when some hundred and fifty years later, Suleymán’s son Er-Toghrul and his clansmen penetrated into Asia Minor they found that although Seljúq Turkish was the everyday speech of the people, Persian was the language of the court, while Persian literature and Persian culture reigned supreme.
Er-Toghrul at once acknowledged himself the vassal of the Seljúq Sultan, a step in which he was followed by his son cOsmán who is reckoned the first monarch of the Empire which takes from him its name of cOsmánli or Ottoman. The feeble Seljúq court, perceiving the courage and hardihood of cOsmán and his sturdy followers, entrusted to them as a feudal domain a district in the north-west of the Empire, bordering on the Byzantine territory. Hardly were cOsmán and his clansmen settled in their new home before the Seljúq Empire fell to pieces, shattered by the irresistible onslaught of the Mongol hosts. The western portion of the Empire then split up into ten petty kingdoms, each under an independent Turkish chieftain, by whose name it continued to be known so long as it enjoyed a separate existence. These little kingdoms, which together formed what has been called the West-Turkish Decarchy, were gradually merged in that of Orkhan and his successors, whereupon the inhabitants, Turks themselves like the Ottomans, readily amalgamated with these latter, whence it comes that by far the greater portion of the people known to the world as Ottoman Turks have, almost from the outset, been in reality Seljúqs who have adopted the Ottoman name.
It is to the Seljúqs with whom they were thus fused that the Ottomans, strictly so called, owe their literary education; this therefore was of necessity Persian as the Seljúqs knew no other. Moreover, as from the very beginning of the Empire the name of Ottoman was, as we have just seen, extended to all men of Turkish race as they passed under the sceptre of the cOsmánli Sultan1, a great deal of what we call Ottoman poetry is the work of men who were Ottomans in a political sense alone. But this makes little practical difference, as these writers were all alike, whether originally Ottomans or not, Turks who had been educated on exclusively Persian lines.
What the Ottoman did when he succeeded to the heritage of the Seljúq was to create Turkish literature. Up till then there had been no Turkish literature worthy of the name. When a Turk had wished to write he had, with a few rare and, from a literary point of view, unimportant exceptions, made use of the Persian language. Henceforth, decreed the Ottoman, let the Turk who would address the world speak in his own tongue. But how to evoke a literary language from that chaos of rude tribal and local dialects? The first thing needful was surely some guide to show how thought should be expressed, some standard by which to determine the kind of phraseology to be used. As to this guide and standard there could be no hesitation, for there was no choice. The Turks knew but one literature, that of Persia on which they had been reared. And thus this brilliant literature became, not by selection, but by force of circumstances, the model after which the Turks should fashion that they were about to found.
This acceptance of Persian guidance was immensely facilitated by the fact that the native Turkish verse — as it found expression in the folk-songs and popular ballads — had already much in common with the Persian system. Metres and verse-forms, somewhat vague and rough-hewn it is true, but very similar in lilt and shape to certain Persian varieties, were in existence among the Turks as products of genuine home-growth. Consequently when the question arose of elaborating a vehicle for literary poetry, it was not altogether met by a mere wholesale borrowing from outside, but to a certain extent by the working up of already existing materials to more perfect conformity with the accepted standard. In this way a good many points in the technique of Turkish verse, though now identical with their counterparts in the Persian system, are in their origin not, as superficially appears, loans from that system, but genuine native elements that have been artificially brought into complete conformity with it. This, however, is a matter of historical interest only, as every distinctively Turkish characteristic has been carefully pruned away, and the conformity brought about is so perfect that for all that appears on the surface, these elements might, like the rest, have been taken over directly from the Persians.
As we have already seen, the Turks were not content with learning from the Persians how to express thought; they went to them to learn what to think and in what way to think. In practical matters, in the affairs of everyday life and in the business of government, they preferred their own ideas; but in the spheres of science, philosophy and literature they acknowledged only too freely their deficiency; and there they went to school with the Persian, intent not merely on acquiring his methods, but on entering into his spirit, thinking his thoughts and feeling his feelings. And in this school they continued so long as there was a master to teach them; for the step thus taken at the outset developed into a practice, it became the rule with the Turkish poets to look ever Persia-ward for guidance and to follow whatever fashion might prevail there. Thus it comes about that for centuries Ottoman poetry continued to reflect as in a glass the several phases through which that of Persia passed. So much for Turkish loyalty.
It behoves us therefore at this point to learn something of the character of this Persian poetry which has so profoundly affected that we are about to study. In so doing we shall of course pass over those sides of this poetry, such as the epic, which have had no influence in moulding Turkish verse, and confine ourselves to these that have inspired and directed the Ottoman poets. And the matters at which we are now about to look have the greater claim on our attention in that they were so thoroughly assimilated by the Turkish poets that although originally Persian, they are every whit as characteristic of the poetry of the Ottomans as of that from which they were borrowed.
Long before the time that the Ottoman determined to create a Turkish literature the Persian genius had recovered from the eclipse brought about by the Arab conquest, and the Persian poetic system was fully developed and securely established. The first period of Persian poetry, that robuster and more virile period which had produced the great national epic, was past and gone, and for a century and a half poetry had been in the hands of mystics who deliberately turned away from the things of earth and sang in the language of love, borrowed from their predecessors, of the passionate yearning of the soul for God. And so by this time the Persian mystic-philosophic system was, like the Persian poetic system, completely elaborated and organised. The Turks thus found these two systems — the poetic and the mystic-philosophic — both fully evolved, and they accepted both in their entirety. They found moreover that the two systems were in close alliance; the poet was most often a mystic, and the mystic most often a poet. This too they accepted as part of the order of nature; and for ages afterwards the phraseology of the mystics continued to form no small portion of the Ottoman poet’s stock in trade.
It would be interesting to enquire into the origin and development of these two systems, of which the one is as the body and the other as the soul of old Ottoman poetry. But the study would take us too far afield; so we must be content to follow the example of the Turks themselves and accept the two as ready made, restricting our attention to what they were when our story opens, and letting pass the question how they came to be such. The first, the poetic system, we shall consider in detail in another chapter; but of the second, the mystic-philosophic system, we may here say a few words that will be helpful to us when studying the writings of the Ottoman poets.
This mystic-philosophic system, which the Persians and Turks call ῾Ilm-i Tasavvuf, a term usually rendered as ‘Súfíism,’ has been well described as an idealistic pantheism. It has two sides; the one philosophic, the other mystic. These are closely interwoven, in reality they are but two aspects of a single whole; but like those iridescent shells which show one or another tint according to the light in which they are viewed, Súfíism presents its one or other aspect according to the standpoint from which it is regarded. The poets, unless they are avowed teachers of the system, regard it almost wholly from the mystic side, and leave the philosophic comparatively unnoticed. We may therefore pass by the latter till we come to consider the various philosophies current among the Turks, and for the present confine our attention to the former, which is the real source of inspiration of well nigh all Persian and Ottoman poetry.
Of the many who have sought to present the transcendental aspect of the Súfí system none has been more successful than the great Persian poet Jámí. In a magnificent canto in the Introduction to his beautiful poem on the story of Joseph and Zelíkhá1 he tells how and why the universe arose; and the account he gives, which may be taken as the Eastern poets’ Confession of Faith, is in substance as follows.
God, whom Súfís and poets generally speak of as ‘The Truth,’ is at once Absolute Being, the only Real Existence that ever has been or ever can be, therefore necessarily comprising within Himself all apparent existences whatsoever; and Absolute Good, therefore necessarily Absolute Beauty, Beauty being one side or aspect of Good. Such is the Divine Nature; and having learned this, we may perceive how the phenomenal universe came into existence; for this, unlike the Absolute, is temporal, not eternal.
Ere yet time was, God dwelt alone in unrevealed loveliness and glory; alone in solitary radiance shone Absolute Beauty; no eye was there to gaze enraptured on Its unspeakable fairness, no heart to thrill in ecstasy at Its all-perfect harmony. None was there to see It, none to love It:
‘To Its own self It sang of loveliness,
‘With Its own self It cast the die of love.
Now, as we all know, a marked characteristic of Beauty, whatever be the form it may assume, is an innate desire of self-manifestation. Thus a beautiful face is impatient of concealment and ever desires to be seen; similarly, when a beautiful thought or conception occurs to the mind, it is not content to be buried away out of sight, but seeks expression through language or through art, as the case may be. This is so because the desire of self-expression is an essential attribute of the Absolute Beauty whereof these phenomenal forms are so many partial manifestations. The phenomenal universe then results from this desire of self-manifestation on the part of Absolute Beauty. This is very clearly expressed in a famous Hadís or ‘Apostolic Tradition,’ continually on the lips of the poets, in which God, in answer to a question of David as to why He had created man, replies, ‘I was a Hidden Treasure, therefore was I fain to be known, and so I created creation in order that I should be known.’1
But how was this manifestation thus demanded by the Divine Nature to be brought about? It is an axiom that things can be known only through their opposites or negations.2 Thus it would be impossible for us to form the conception of light, were we ignorant of its opposite or negation, notlight, that is, darkness. Now the opposite or negation of Absolute Being, which is one and the same with Absolute Beauty and Absolute Good, is necessarily Not-Being, Not-Beauty, Not-Good. But such can have no real existence, for all real existence is of necessity comprised in Absolute Being, of which this is the negation. Not-Being is then only a phantasm evoked for a season and for a special purpose. Again, in that it is the antithesis of the Divine Nature, Not-Being is also Not-Good, or, as we should say, is Evil. Here then we have the Eastern mystic’s explanation of the Mystery of Evil comprised in his explanation of the Mystery of Creation. As Absolute Being could be known only through Its negation Not-Being, so Absolute Good could be known only through Its negation Not-Good; and as Absolute Being and Absolute Good are one, so also are Not-Being and Not-Good. Evil has therefore no real existence; there is no Absolute Evil as there is Absolute Good; by its very nature Evil is temporary and limited, it is but an illusion which the conditions of manifestation have rendered necessary for a while.
The process of manifestation was accomplished thus. When Not-Being became opposed to Being there appeared on the former, as in a mirror, a reflection or shadow of the latter.1 This reflection, which partakes of the nature of both Being and Not-Being, is called Contingent Being, and is none else than the phenomenal universe in which during this life we find ourselves and of which we form part. The phenomenal universe has thus no real objective existence; it is but the reflection of Absolute Being cast on the mirror Not-Being. This has been well illustrated by the reflection cast by the sun on a pool.1 This reflection owes such existence as it has entirely to the sun; the moment the sun withdraws itself the reflection ceases to exist, and while the reflection is thus wholly dependent on the sun, the sun is absolutely independent of it, can indeed renew it an infinity of times without sustaining the slightest loss thereby. The pool is thus the mirror of the sun, as Not-Being is the mirror of Being, and the reflection cast on the water typifies the phenomenal universe. As the universe is thus the image of Absolute Being, that is of God, reflected in the mirror Not-Being, so, they continue, is man the eye in that image, and as when we look in a mirror, we perceive a small image of ourselves reflected in the pupil, so is the image of God reflected in this eye which is man. Thus is God revealed unto Himself and unto man, and thus moreover does man contain in himself the image of God.2
Man, like the phenomenal universe in which he finds himself, and of which he presents an epitome, is double-natured, partaking at once of Being and Not-Being, of Good and Evil, of Reality and Unreality. But as that side of him which derives from Being, and which therefore alone has a real and eternal existence, is necessarily an emanation of Divinity, he is, so far, ultimately and essentially one with God. This Divine particle in man, this spark of Pure Being, is ever seeking, consciously or unconsciously, to be reunited to its source; but so long as the phenomenal state lasts, the presence of the element of Not-Being holds it back. Man’s business then is to eliminate, so far as may be, this element of Not-Being, and to attain to that union with God, that absorption into the Divine, which, though to be fully achieved only after the death of the body, is possible in a certain measure even in this present life.
But how is one to overcome the element of Not-Being By conquering self; for self, which seems so real, is in truth the supreme illusion as it is the cause of all our woe. For what are we to talk of self? We have no self; whatever we have of Real Being is God’s, not ours; the rest is mere nothingness, the negation of Being, the negation of Good, to hug which can bring only sorrow.
And how is self to be conquered? By Love. By Love, and by Love alone, can the dark shadow of Not-Being be done away; by Love, and by Love alone, can the soul of man win back to its Divine source and find its ultimate goal in reunion with The Truth. And the first lessons of this Love, which is the keynote of Súffism and of all the literature it has inspired, may be, nay, must be learned through a merely human passion. Than true love ‘there is no subtler master under heaven.’ In the poem already quoted, Jámí tells of a would-be disciple who came craving instruction from a master of the mystic lore, when the master, having ascertained that this youth had never loved, bade him go back into the world, learn what to love means, and theJ1 return.
But this human love, good and helpful though it is, is not itself the end, it is but the means to the end; it is the ‘Bridge’ across which the pilgrim of The Truth must pass. It is called the ‘Typal’ Love in contradistinction to the ‘Real,’ which is the Divine Love; and no watchword of the mystics is more often quoted by the poets than this pregnant phrase ‘the Typal is the Bridge to the Real.’1 But fair as the Bridge may be, the pilgrim must beware of lingering thereon, lest haply he should fail to reach his journey’s end. Once across, his eyes are opened, his heart is made clairvoyant through Divine Love; wherever he turn his gaze he sees the Face of God; God shines down on him from every star in the sky, God looks up at him from every flower in the field, God smiles on him in every fair face, God speaks to him in every sweet sound; all around him there is God, nothing but God. If he turn his eyes inward and look into his own heart, there he can read letter by letter the very heart of God. For he has now become one with God, knowing and feeling that there is naught beside God; and he can cry out with Mansúr ‘I am The Truth!’2 and exclaim with Báyezíd of Bistám ‘There is none other than God within my cloak!’3
On such lines proceeds the mystic philosophy which the Turks learned from the Persians, Clud of which the echo, if not the living voice, rings for centuries in their poetry. In the language of the mystic poets God is ‘the Beloved,’ man ‘the lover.’ Under the figure of the lover’s anguish at separation from his loved one they show forth the yearning of the soul of man for the Divine Soul whence it came; by the symbol of the cruel self-sufficiency of the beloved, frenzying the distracted lovers by half-revealed glimpses of a beauty no words may tell, they picture those momentary flashes which from time to time light up the soul, bringing it for an instant face to face with Reality, and vanishing ere their presence is realised. The poets see the presence of God immanent in all beautiful things, but manifested most clearly and most fully in fair humanity. Therefore is it good to love and to admire such, for through this is revealed most perfectly the Beauty of the Godhead. And even as it is God who is mirrored in the fair face, it is God, the poet feels, who looks through the lover’s eyes; God beholds and loves God, and the supreme miracle of Divine self-manifestion is accomplished.
Bound up with this mystic side of Súfíism is the famous allegory of the ‘Primal Compact.’ In a somewhat obscure passage of the Koran, God is represented as having, before the creation of the world, summoned into His presence the as yet unembodied souls of all who were to dwell on earth, and as having put to each one individually the question: E-lestu bi-rabbikum? ‘Am not I your Lord?’ to which each soul replied: Belá! ‘Yea!’1 The poets are fond of imagining that it is the echo of this never quite forgotten oath of fealty, sworn before time was, which, ringing through the soul, impels it to that quest of The Truth where alone it is in harmony with its true being; and when they would tell of it in ecstatic trance, rapt and beside itself at some glimpse of the Divine Beauty, they picture it as ‘drunken’ with the ‘Wine of E-lest’ quaffed in eternity at the ‘Primal Feast.’
The early Súfí poets had taken the current phraseology of the contemporary singers of love and wine, and by imparting a mystic signification to the terms thus adopted, they had constructed a species of symbolic language in which, for example, ‘wine’ represents the mystic love, ‘the vintner’ the teacher thereof, ‘the tavern’ the place where it is taught, just as the ‘Beloved’ stands for God, and the ‘lover’ for man. According to certain commentators this vocabulary was carried to an extreme point of elaboration, every object mentioned by the poet being typal of some philosophic or mystic conception; thus the ‘cheek’ of the Beloved represents the cosmos, the ‘tresses’ the mystery of the Godhead, and so on. Commentaries have been written on Háfiz in which the whole of that poet’s works are interpreted in this ‘spiritual’ fashion; but it is extremely doubtful whether he or any other poet ever systematically wrote upon such lines. None the less the shadow of this symbolism never entirely passes away; it lingers as a vague reminiscence all through Turkish poetry.
According as mysticism or materialism is predominant in the poet’s temperament, will the symbolic or the literal predominate in his work. As a rule both elements are present, subtly and inextricably blended, now the one and now the other advancing into the foreground and sinking into the rear. This poetry thus floats between the sensuous and the supersensuous; Love and Beauty are presented in their fairest and most seductive garb, but so deft is the presentation that the reader finds himself free to interpret as he pleases; and so, as has been said, the same poem which delights the libertine will raise the saint to ecstasy.
There are again many poets who are primarily artists in words; these take such things for what they are worth as decorative adjuncts, and work them into their verses to produce some desired æsthetical effect. For it must be borne in mind that while many among the Turkish poets were truly Súfís, and some even devoted their whole strength to the exposition and elucidation of their doctrine, others, and they are perhaps the majority, merely play with Súfí ideas and Súfí phrases. When the Turks took over the Persian poetic system they found these ideas and phrases ready to hand, and these became, along with many other things similarly acquired, so many ‘studio properties’ for the poet, to be introduced into his works as occasion might suggest.
At first sight it may appear strange that doctrines such as we have been considering should flourish side by side with the absolute monotheism of Islam. As a matter of fact, however, Islam is much less rigid than is generally supposed, and there are many passages in both the Koran and the Hadís which readily lend themselves to a mystic interpretation,1 and with these the Súfís, who have almost invariably made profession of Islam, have strongly fortified their position. But to properly understand this point, as well as many another seeming puzzle that will come under our observation, it is necessary to know, something of the true nature of the Persian genius. As has been well said by a thoughtful writer2 who has seen deep into the Asian mind, we must ever keep before us the fact that while the European seeks almost unconsciously to impart a homogeneity to his conceptions by rejecting whatever is incompatible with the beliefs he holds or embraces, the Eastern, for whom exactitude has no such charm, is more concerned to preserve from loss or oblivion every minutest idea which the mind of man has conceived. The exactitude so dear to the European is distressful to the Asiatic in that it tends to circumscribe the flight of his imagination. He does not seek to make diverse theories and conceptions square with one another, nor does he perceive what would be the utility of such an operation; these diverse theories and ideas are for him so many different windows opening upon different aspects of the infinite; but he will brook no limitations in his dealings with the limitless. From the earliest ages Western Asia has been a hotbed of all manner of religious theories, not one of which has ever been wholly forgotten. More or less modified or disguised, these appear and reappear again and again; and during the course of the centuries they have given birth to numberless religious and philosophic systems all of which live on in one form or another. So in the mind of the Eastern thinker, intent to learn and retain all he can concerning spiritual things, there generally exist side by side fragments of many such systems often contrary one to the other as well as incompatible with some among the tenets of his avowed religion.
Though natural co the Persian, such an intellectual state as this is really quite foreign to the Turk who, as we have seen, is properly a man of action, not a speculator or dreamer. None the less the condition of mind just described is that which is most frequently mirrored in Ottoman poetry, and this simply because the Turkish poets here as elsewhere deliberately set to work to assimilate their thought to that of the Persians.
The dervish orders, which are very numerous in Turkey and Persia, and which bear a certain resemblance to the monastic orders of medieval Europe, are all more or less connected with Súfíism. Each order traces its origin to some eminent Súfí sage or saint, whose name it usually bears; but although the members have always called themselves Súfís, in many cases they have paid but scant attention to their patron’s teaching.
This last circumstance gave an additional impetus to a curious practice of the Persian and Turkish poets, namely, that of bitterly denouncing ‘the Súfí’ while themselves Súfís of the purest water. This seemingly paradoxical attitude of the poets arose in the first instance from the fact that the learning and piety of the early Súfís having gained for them a great reputation and attracted to them numerous disciples, there sprang up on every hand unscrupulous adventurers who gave themselves out as Súfís, and collected around them bands of dissolute and hypocritical fanatics. These the illiterate multitude taking at their own value, called by their unjustly usurped title of Súfí; and when the poets rail against ‘the Súfí,’ it is pretenders of this class, the ‘Súfís’ of the ignorant masses, that they have in view.1
Turning now to the external aspect of this poetry, we find that although at the outset Turkish verse was simple even to baldness, no sooner is the influence of Persia securely established than we are in the midst of a wilderness of ornament. Persian rhetoric is the counterpart of Persian art; and that, as everyone knows, is essentially decorative. Its merits, and they are great, lie exclusively in the beauty of its detail; the principle of the subordination of the parts to the whole is unknown. In like manner is Persian poetry enveloped in a mass of incongruous and unconnected ornament. Metaphors and similes, homonyms and anagrams, and a host of other rhetorical embellishments, for many of which we have no names in English, crowd on one another’s heels, and seem to jostle each other in their eagerness to amaze the reader. Individually these figures may be, and very often are, both graceful and ingenious, but they are thrown together without so much as a thought being given to their effect as a whole. The result is certainly brilliant, sometimes dazzling, but the dignity which comes of restraint and orderly procession is not there.
In this again Persian poetry faithfully mirrors the Oriental genius. As we have just learned, the Eastern is far more alive to the details of a subject than he is to the subject taken as a whole. This mental attitude is maintained in the presence of all phenomena, psychical and material alike; the true Oriental is ever in the position of the man who cannot see the wood on account of the trees. We have seen one result of this in the medley of fragments of heterogeneous systems that makes up his philosophy, we have here another in the chaos of promiscuous ornament that forms the decorative element in his poetry. Be it said in passing that through this mental habit, whereby so many aspects of a subject are simultaneously perceived, there arises a certain vacillation of judgment which in practical affairs has led to many disasters; for it is through this, as the author already quoted1 has pointed out, that the Easterns, both as individuals and as nations, have, for all their courage and intelligence, been so often the victims of Europeans in many respects inferior to themselves, but possessed of a decision and resolution to which they are strangers.
A poetry which wantons, as does the Persian, in every kind of ambiguity of expression and far-fetched conceit must inevitably be extremely artificial; and artificiality is in fact one of the most prominent characteristics of this poetry. But this by no means necessarily implies lack of sincerity: for there have been in many literatures periods when it was natural to seek out subtleties of fancy and curiosities of language.1
The poetry of Persia is moreover intensely subjective, especially in those two branches, the lyric and the romantic, which have been most largely reproduced in Turkish. The poet rarely deals with external objects exclusively on their own merits. When he sings, as he constantly does, of wine and beauties, of roses and nightingales, it is not to tell of these as they are in themselves. What seems to strike him first and with greatest force is, not the effect which these produce upon his senses, but the suggestions they evoke in his mind. This is perhaps only what we should expect in the lyric poetry, but in the romantic we might have looked for a more objective treatment. To a limited extent we find such, more especially in early times; but the story — there are some dozen or so stories told and retold by poet after poet — is the least important part of a Persian romantic poem; it is but the excuse which the writer makes for the exposition of his doctrine, or may be merely for the display of his literary skill; and more often than not it is finally explained away altogether as an allegory.
Similarly, this poetry is highly conventional. It is replete with what are called stock epithets; the ‘moon-face,’ the ‘cypress-form,’ the ‘ruby-lip,’ occur with wearisome reiteration right through from the very beginning. In the same way, what we may term stock associations abound; when the ‘nightingale’ is mentioned we may be sure the ‘rose’ is not far away, and if we read of the ‘moth’ in one line we may feel safe about meeting the ‘taper’ in the next. But for all this, Persian poetry shows, within certain limits, extraordinary fertility of imagination, and not unfrequently an almost supergracefulness both of thought and expression.
Such then is the nature of the poetry which Persia offered to the Turks, and which they, knowing of no other, accepted in its entirety, although it was in many respects out of harmony with the genius of their race. So the first Ottoman poets — and their successors through many a generation — strove with all their strength to write what is little else than Persian poetry in Turkish words. But such was not consciously their aim ; of national feeling in poetry they dreamed not; poetry was to them one and indivisible, the language in which it was written merely an unimportant accident.
I have said that the spirit of Persian poetry is in many ways foreign to the Turkish genius; in some the two are directly opposed. The Turkish nature is simple, the Persian subtle. The objectivity of the Turkish popular songs is not less extreme than the subjectivity of Persian literary verse. Although from time to time it would strive to utter a feeble cry, for nearly four hundred years the Turkish spirit remained practically dumb in Turkish poetry, paralyzed in presence of the overmastering genius of Persia. But about the beginning of the eighteenth century the voice of the national spirit begins to be heard more clearly and persistently in the pages of the poets. A more objective note is struck, and the poet finds a manifest pleasure in singing of the things he actually sees and feels, not merely of those he has read about in some Persian book. A blithe and happy tone pervades his lines, and a frank honest delight in life and the joys of life. The simple, pleasure-loving, happy-go-lucky Turkish spirit is at last allowed, not indeed to speak, but to whisper in Turkish poetry. But Turkish poetry was still far from being that which but for Persian teaching it might have been; there yet marred it many a fleck and many a flaw never wholly washed away till the reformers of our own day swept every vestige of Persian tradition into the limbo of forgotten things.
And so, helpful and beneficial as it in many ways undoubtedly was, guiding their timorous footsteps into the worlds of thought and art, Persian culture was yet upon the whole an ill-starred dower to the Turks. For with all the beauty and nobleness that invest it, Persian poetry seems to possess the Gorgon power of paralyzing the national spirit in the literature of every people that looks up to it. The poetry of Afghan, of Tartar, of Urdu-writing Indian is all, equally with that of the earlier Ottomans, just so much Persian poetry writ in other tongues; in every case the national spirit is silent, the spirit that speaks is that of Persia.
Moreover, just about the time that Ottoman poetry was definitively taking shape, the creative genius of Persia was stricken with a sterility from which it has never since recovered. What Persian poetry was in the fifteenth century, that to all intents and purposes it is to-day. During the intervening period it has indeed passed through several phases, but these have been marked merely by modifications in manner and diction; there has been no radical change from witkin, no infusion of fresh life from without. What the poets said in the days of Jámí they have gone on saying, varying from time to time the expressions and the metaphors, but never altering the substance or adding to the themes.
And thus for centuries Turkish poetry was, thanks to Persian precept and example, employed, not in interpreting the Turkish genius, not in conquering new realms of thought, but in achieving within one narrow circle ever more brilliant and more subtle masterpieces of rhetoric. It is true that from the rugged Tartar dialect with which they started, the Persianising poets evolved a marvellous literary language so brilliant and so harmonious that the study of it is an æsthetic delight. But this beautiful language is so artificial, so far removed from everyday speech, that it has at all times been incomprehensible to ordinary men.
Thus Ottoman literary poetry has always been a closed book to the mass of the people. Without a special education no man could hope to understand it. The poets therefore wrote either for themselves or for the court; of the people they took no heed. To be a poet when Persian culture was at its height must obviously have demanded a more than ordinary education; and so we find that during that long period when poetry was valued in proportion as the learning was recondite and the rhetoric pretentious that adorned it, by far the greater number of its practitioners were members of the ῾Ulemá.1
To point out the defects of such a poetry as this, — its artificiality, its obscurity, its exclusiveness, — is easy; to indicate its merits is less so. And this is because this poetry is before all things an art; and, to be appreciated, the merits of art-work of every kind must be felt rather than described. The old poets are in the first place stylists, and any attempt to explain beauties and subtleties of style to those ignorant of the poets’ language were manifestly hopeless. With these poets manner comes before matter; what they say interests them comparatively little, the great point is how to say it. A score of themes sufficed them for centuries; these they present again and again, arrayed in ever increasing beauty of language and begemmed with ever subtler ingenuities of fancy, till their work comes to display a harmony of sound, a brilliancy of wit, and a deftness of manipulation capable of affording a keen æsthetic pleasure to those who by taste and education are fitted to receive it.
This was the goal of the Persianising poets, and they reached it.
1 The Turkish language extends through Central and Western Asia from the frontier of China to the shores of the Mediterranean. Those dialects that are spoken between China and Persia are grouped together under the name of East-Turkish, those that prevail between Persia and the Mediterranean under that of West-Turkish.
1 By the term ‘Persianism’ I mean here and elsewhere, not a Persian idiom, but Persian culture as adopted by the Ottomans, and more especially, as applied by them to matters connected with literature.
1 Some authorities would have it that Ottoman literature is modelled rather on Arabic than on Persian. But such is not the case, except perhaps in theological and legal writings; in belles lettres, and especially in poetry, Persian alone is followed. No Ottoman poet ever modelled his style on that of an Arab poet; whereas every Ottoman poet sought to reproduce something of the manner of one or other of the Persian masters.
1 The name Ottoman is a corruption of the Turkish cOsmánli which properly means a follower of cOsmán, and would be exactly rendered by the term cOsmanite’. It was originally applied to those Turks, whether his own clansmen or other, who were subject to cOsmán the first Sultan. But as the Empire of his successors increased, the name was extended to embrace all Turks included within it. Thus it frequently happened in those early times that men who were not cOttomans’ one year, found themselves such the following. Nowadays the name is still further extended to include all the subjects of the Sultan whether Turkish or non-Turkish.
1 The whole canto has been admirably translated by Mr. E. G. Browne in his excellent article on Súfíism which appears in the volume entitled ‘Religious Systems of the World’ (Swan, Sonnenschein & Co., 1892). This translation is reprinted in the same scholar’s ‘Year amongst the Persians’ (Black, 1893), a work which cannot be too highly recommended; the student will learn more concerning the real life and thought of modern Persia from this one book than from all the other records of travel that have yet been published.
1 
A Hadís is a traditional saying of the Prophet Muhammed handed down from one or more of his Companions. There is a great number of such, and the well-authenticated among them rank in authority second to the Koran. When, as in the above, the true speaker is God, and the Prophet is but the voice, the Tradition is called a Hadís-i Qudsí or ‘Divine Tradition;’ when on the other hand the Prophet is at once speaker and voice, it is a Hadís-i Sheríf or ‘Blessed Tradition.’
2 This forms a text for Jelál-ud-Dín in the fifth story of the first book of the Mesneví, where he says:
‘The Truth hath created pain and sorrow for this reason
‘That through these opposites joyousness may become known.
‘Thus hidden things become manifest through their opposites.
‘Since The Truth hath no opposite He remaineth concealed.
‘Thus by the opposite of light hast thou known light.
‘Opposite showeth opposite ill all things.’
A very good idea of the nature and scope of the Mesneví can be obtained from Mr. E. H. Whinfield’s abridged translation, ‘Masnavi i Ma῾navi, The Spiritual Couplets of Mauláná Jalálu-’d-Dín i Rúmí,’ Trübner & Co., 1887.
1 In Mahmúd-i Shebisterí’s Gulshen-i Ráz, or ‘Mystic Rose-bower,’ one of the text-books of Súfíism, we read:
‘Not-Being is the mirror, Being is the Absolute
‘Wherefrom is manifested the reflection of the effulgence of The Truth.
‘When Not-Being became opposed to (was set opposite) Being
‘A reflection was straightway produced thereon.’
See Mr. Whinfield’s scholarly edition and translation of the Gulshen-i Ráz (Trübner, 1880).
1 See Mr. Browne’s article on Súfíism, p. 330.
2 In the Gulshen-i Ráz we read:
‘Not-Being is the mirror, the universe is the reflection, and man
‘Is like the eye in the reflection, (an eye) wherein is a hidden image (i. e. the image of God reflected in the pupil.)
‘Thou art the eye in the reflection, and He (God) is the Light of the eye;
‘With the (human) eye, the eye (i. e. man) eyeth that Eya (i. e. God who seeth all things.)’
1 The Arabic runs: 
For ‘typal’ we might equally read ‘allegoric,’ ‘the Allegoric is the Bridge to the True.’
2 Huseyn Mansúr-i Halláj, that is, Huseyn Mansúr the Wool Carder, is, so to speak, the patron saint of the Súfís, and his name is of frequent occurrence in the pages of the poets, who always mention him in terms of love and veneration. In A. H. 310 (A. D. 923) he was put to a cruel death by the doctors of Baghdad on a charge of blasphemy for having exclaimed while in a state of mystic ecstasy 
‘I am The Truth!’ i. e. ‘I am God!’ When the poets mention Mansúr it is usually in association with this famous phrase.
3 Báyezíd of Bistám was a very famous saint of early times; he is said to have been born in A. H. 160 (A. D. 776–7) and to have lived to be nearly a hundred years of age.
1 The actual words of the Koran (vii, 171) are: And when thy Lord took from the children of Adam out of their loins their seed, and made them bear witness against themselves, ‘Am not I your Lord?’ They said, ‘Yea, we do bear witness.’
1 Mr. Browne quotes several in the article already mentioned.
2 The Conte de Gobineau in ‘Les Religions et les Philosophies dans l’Asie Centrale,’ Paris 1865.
1 In order to avoid confusion I shall in this work employ the term ‘Súfí exclusively in its true sense of ‘mystic;’ although it is more often used by the Turkish poets in its second and degraded sense, in which case it is commonly pronounced Sofu. The poets, when speaking of the true mystics, sometimes wished to avoid the now dubious title of Súfí; they then generally employed some such term as ‘Lovers’ (῾Ushsháq), ‘Followers of Súfíism’ (Ehl-i Tasavvuf), ‘Followers of the Esoteric’ (Ehl-i Bátin), or ‘Sheykhs’ (Meshá’ikh).
1 Conte de Gobineau.
1 For example, the poetry of the Troubadours, and that of the so-called ‘metaphysical’ poets in England.
1 The word ῾Ulemá means literally ‘learned men.’ It is the collective title of the body of doctors of the canon law of Islam, who form the legal councillors of the state. In old times its members were par excellence the learned class, and naturally many among them played a great part in the history of Ottoman poetry. The organisation of the corps, which was at first simple, gradually became very complicated; but as some idea of it is necessary to a satisfactory understanding of the lives of many of the poets of the Second and later Periods, a sketch of it will be given in another volume.