Translating text and date on a Ottoman dagger

[Drabant1701]

Originally Posted by kwiatek

These verses are a variant of ones found on an earlier, 16th-century piece in the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest. The person who read them for you has tried to make sense of them as Persian, whereas in fact they are in Turkish and read as follows:


Hatt değildür hanceri üzre görünen aşikâr

Katline ‘uşşakının içün hüccet çıkarmış ol nigâr

In English:

“What is visible on his dagger is not writing/the down on a cheek,

It is rather proof that the beautiful-faced one has produced for the murder of his beloveds.”

It’s hard to translate because it makes use of wordplay and belongs to the world of classical Turkish poetry that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if you’re not familiar with the imagery. The dagger is compared to the beautiful face of the beautiful but cruel and indifferent beloved. In classical Persian and Turkish poetry the beloved’s face typically has a fine down on it, which is a sign that the beloved is in the bloom of youth and beauty. There is a wordplay in that the word for “down” is a also the word for “writing” (hatt). The poet says that in fact that what you see on the dagger/face is not down/writing, it is proof of the beloved’s murder of all of his lovers.

For the dagger in Budapest see the following link

https://collections.imm.hu/gyujtemen...emenyebol/1120

Thank you Kwiatek for clearing that up! I knew that the translator had a hard time making sense of it, but he gets an A for effort

And thank you Kronckew for flipping my photo!