Poetry
Beng ü Badə
Not translated into English
Fuzuli · 1510
Synopsis
An allegorical poem of about four hundred and forty couplets, in which drinks and dishes take on human form. Wine, young, ardent and always in motion, and Beng, old, calm and given to contemplation, dispute first place and the dominion of the world. At a banquet, Wine grows angry with his cupbearer, who praises his rival, and suspects him of secret obedience; date wine drives him to violence, arak preaches moderation, and the quarrel turns into war. Critics read in it an allegory of the rivalry between Shah Ismail and the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II.
Context
The poem is one of its author's earliest works and his first attempt at the masnavi form, dedicated to Shah Ismail I, whom one section praises directly. Its date is debated: after the victory over Muhammad Shaybani in 1510 and before the defeat at Chaldiran in 1514 for Ali Yıldırım, before 1524, the end of the shah's reign, for others, some even proposing 1508. Beng is variously opium and hashish in it. Other readers see in it a conflict between the shah and the Mushasha'i ruler Ali ibn Muhsin, a satire of the pride of lords, or a Sufi text. The poem appeared in Baku in 1949 in the author's Works, then in Russian in 1958.
Who it is for
A masnavi in Old Turkish, to be read in an annotated edition; the characters are drinks, and the political satire can be read beneath the allegory.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the first known work by its author in Azeri, dedicated to the founder of the Safavid dynasty.
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