Ẓiyā'ī Ḥasan Čalabī al-Mostārī

Abstract

This article deais with an important Bosnian-Herzegovinian poet of the 16th century, Ẓiyā'ī Ḥasan Čalabī al-Mostārī (d. 992/1584/5), who wrote in Turkish, Persian, and Arabic.

In addition to a complete divan of poems, which is already known Ẓiyā'ī also wrote two longer poems (meṣnevī) hitherto unknown, namely - “Qiṣṣa-i šayḫ 'Abd ur-Razzāḳ«, which represents a poetic version of an old story whose hero is šayḫ 'Abd ur-Razzāḳ, also called šayḫ Ṣan'ān, and “Verkāh-u Gülšāh”, also a love poem.

Ẓiyā'ī is an outstanding lyric who sings of love, although unhappy, and about woman and her beauty. As an ideal subject of poets, woman is fulI of virtue and purity and the poet always keeps her at a respectable distance. Ẓiyā'ī is a poet of strong feelings, whose lyrical nature is particularly expressed in the gazel, which can be noted in the several poems that we have presented in this article, both in the original and in translation.