Ayntâblı Hüsnî is one of the representative poets of classical Turkish literature in the 19th century. Biographical sources of the century did not include him. The information we have about Hüsnî is limited to sources related to Ayntâb (Antep). The poet’s only identified independent work is his 465-couplet mathnawi called Hâb-ı Hayâl, which was printed at the Mekteb-i Sanayi Matbaası in Istanbul in 1291/1874-1875 by self. At the beginning of the work, there is a kıta that the poet wrote in order to date his mathnawi, and at the end there are two takrîz and a history couplet, one in kıta and the other nazm, written by Hakkî Bey and Şeyh Remzî Efendi. In the second of the takrîz, the date of the work was dropped. Hâb-ı Hayâl is a narrative based on reality. This quality of the work is emphasized within the text and with the historical poetry that the poet wrote in the work. The originality of Hüsnî’s mathnawi should be sought in his evaluations about poetry and the poet. Mathnawi is basically based on the story of a poet. Hüsnî wrote a story in verse based on the poet he described and the dream this poet had, and after the story, he suggested solutions to the weaknesses in the poet he described. In this article, Ayntâblı Hüsnî’s Hâb-ı Hayâl was evaluated through the poet’s dream section, which is the main theme of the mesnevi, and the evaluations about the poem and the poet in the text were examined. At the end of the article, a transcription based on the printed copy of the masnavi was made.
Ayntâblı Hüsnî, Hâb-ı Hayâl, mathnawi, poet and poetry, 19th century classical Turkish poetry.