Mihri Hatun

Mihri Hatun (also known as Lady Mihri and Mihri Khatun, Ottoman Turkish: مهری خاتون; "sun/light"; c.1460 - c.1506), was an Ottoman poet. She was the daughter of a kadi (an Ottoman judge) and according to sources she spent most of her life in and near Amasya, in Anatolia.^[1] Documentation places her as a member of the literary circle of Şehzade Ahmed, the son of Sultan Bayezid II.^[2] She is referred to as the "Sappho of the Ottomans".^[3]

Poetry

Lady Mihri's poems reveal an artist grounded in both Turkish and Persian literature, writing in such forms as the Gazel, as well as the recipient of a deep literary education.^[1] Modern critics, such as Bernard Lewis describe her style as “retaining remarkable freshness and simplicity.”^[2]

One of her more popular lines goes as follows:^[4]

“At one glance

I love you

With a thousand hearts

Let the zealots think

Loving is sinful

Never mind

Let me burn in the hellfire

Of that sin.”

Another is:^[5]

“My heart burns in flames of sorrow

Sparks and smoke rise turning to the sky

Within me the heart has taken fire like a candle

My body, whirling, is a lighthouse illuminated by your image.”

References

Sources

• Damrosch and April Alliston. The Longman Anthology of World Literature: The 17th and 18th Centuries, the 19th Century, and the 20th Century: V. II (D, E, F) Longman, Inc. ISBN 0-321-20237-6
• Halman, Talât Sait and Jayne L. Warner. Nightingales & pleasure gardens: Turkish love poems. Syracuse University Press (2005) ISBN 0-8156-0835-7.
• Havlioğlu, Didem. “On the Margins and between the Lines: Ottoman Women Poets from the Fifteenth to the Twentieth Centuries.” Turkish Historical Review 1, no. 1 (n.d.): 25–54. https://www.academia.edu/806853/On_the_margins_and_between_the_lines_Ottoman_women_poets_from_the_fifteenth_to_the_twentieth_centuries
• Havlioglu, Didem. Poetic Voice En/Gendered: Mihri Hatun’s Resistance to ‘Femininity'. The Center for Middle Eastern Studies: Sohbet-i Osmani Series (2010).
• Lewis, Bernard. Music of a Distant Drum: Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew Poems. Princeton University Press; Ltr ptg edition. (2001). ISBN 0-691-08928-0

External links

• Medieval Women, Poetry and Mihri Hatun by Associate Prof. Dr. Huriye Reis, Hacettepe University, Department of English Language and Literature (in English and Turkish)
• Short Biography and One Gazel
• On the margins and between the lines: Ottoman women poets from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries by Didem Havlioglu of the University of Utah