Nedür ol kurs-ı müşebbek-endâm
Zann ider anı gören bedr-i temam
Zerd-rû itmiş anı pûte-i kâl
Regleri olmış anuñ halka-misâl
Katre-i ter iken ol sîm-ı mûzâb
Görinür sûziş-i ğamdan pür-tâb
Çıksa bâzâra ger ol puhte-dimâğ
Sürh u rengîn ider anı sabbâğ
Bedr iken olsa şikeste fi’l-hâl
Yerine hâsıl olur niçe hilâl
What is that round thing, lattice-patterned,
But it looks – one would say – like a full moon?
The smelter forged for it a golden face,
And its strands took the form circular.
As that molten silver distils into a drop of sweat,
Its burning sorrow overflows with light.
If that hot brain dish appears at the bazaar,
The master dyer will turn it incarnadine.
Should the full moon suddenly shatter,
Plentiful crescents would scatter in its stead.
ZEKERIYYA SÜKKERÎ EL-BOSNAVÎ (Sarajevo, early 17th c. – Istanbul,1686?) was an Ottoman poet from Bosnia who wrote in Turkish and Persian. Not much is known about him. After being educated in Istanbul from a young age, he was taken into the entourage of Köprülüzade Ahmed-pasha. Sükkerî worked at the Imperial Council (Dîvân-ı Hümâyûn) as a secretary until his death. He was famed for his skill in stylistics and calligraphy. An almost complete divan of his survives in one manuscript copy now kept at the Mevlâna Museum Library in Konya. (The biographical information comes from Amina Šiljak-Jesenković and Madžida Mašić’s monograph, Sarajevski pjesnik Zekerija Sukerija [Sarajevo: Orijentalni institut, 2024].)
The Ottoman Turkish original in Roman transliteration comes from the source Sükkerî: Hayatı, Edebî Kişiliği ve Divanı [Sükkerî: His Life, Literary Personality, and Divan] written and edited by Erdoğan Erol (Ankara: Atatürk Kültür Merkezi, 1994), 277.
The poem belongs to the genre of riddles called lugaz in the Ottoman and related traditions. Sükkerî’s divan contains fifteen of them (two in Persian and the rest in Turkish). Jalebi is a fried, syrup-drenched snack popular in South Asia, Iran, and the Arab world. The English term, borrowed from Hindi-Urdu, and the Ottoman zülbiye (helvası/tatlısı), are related.
DENIS FERHATOVIĆ is a Bosnian-American scholar and writer. His translations from Old English, BCMS, Gorani, Judeo-Spanish (Ladino), and other Balkan and Eastern European languages have appeared in The Riddle Ages, Turkoslavia, The Trinity Journal of Literary Translation, DoubleSpeak, Ellipse Magazine, and Los Angeles Review. His reviews of translations have been published in Asymptote, Reading in Translation, and Hopscotch Translation. Ferhatović’s scholarly work appears in various journals and essay collections. His monograph Borrowed Objects and the Art of Poetry: Spolia in Old English Verse (2019) came out in paperback in the spring of 2024.
