Excerpt from the book Ottoman Lyric Poetry AN ANTHOLOGY by Walter G. Andrews * Najaat Black * Mehmet Kalpakli University of Washington Press, 2006. The Cosmos and the Earth

Although the Ottomans were quite competent and often innovative geographers and astronomers, the poetic and mystical cosmology remained fixed in ancient forms that provided a coherent and unchanging narrative linking all creation and binding it to both the Divine and the fates of human beings. The earth was surrounded by nine circles, nine crystalline domes or spheres. The outermost sphere, the ninth, is called the "Heaven of Heavens [Sphere of Spheres]," "the Starless Sphere," or "the Throne of God." The eighth heaven contains the fixed stars (as opposed to the planets or "traveling stars") and the constellations, it is "the Sphere [Heaven] of Stars" of "the Sphere of Constellations" or "the Footstool of God." These two spheres are the domain of God's eternal commands and hence of an ultimate destiny separate from the day-to-day turns of fortune that befall earthly beings.

The next seven circles are the spheres of the planets, which include the sun and the moon. From the outside in they are the spheres of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon. In the sublunary sphere, inside the circle of the Moon is the world of "being and place" (where things come into and go out of existence and where they are fixed by location in space and time). This world is also divided into spheres, the outermost being the sphere of fire, hot and dry. The next is that of air, hot and moist, followed by water, cold and moist, and finally by earth, cold and dry.

As the seven planetary spheres revolve they influence the fortune of human beings and can themselves be influenced. So do the poets often curse and implore the spheres, bewailing their misfortunes and begging for better days. The planets themselves are often personified; the Sun is the sultan of the heavens, the Moon is its grand vizier, Jupiter the judge, and Saturn the treasurer. Each planet is also associated with a color or colors: the Moon is green or silver, Mercury blue, Venus white, the Sun yellow or gold, Mars red, Jupiter tan, Saturn black.

Jewels, which are the highest manifestation of the mineral world, are also influenced by the heavens. The ruby, for example, is just a black stone until it is brought from the mine and placed in the light of the Sun, which it absorbs to ignite its eternal flame. The carnelian is a dull rock in the Yemen until it is shined upon by the double star called Süheyl (Argus) and turns crimson. The same is true of all precious minerals: gold is created by the Sun, silver by the Moon, and so on.

The inhabited earth is also divided into seven climes ruled by the seven planets: India (Saturn), China (Jupiter), the Land of the Turks (Mars), Northern Iran (the Sun), Central Asia (Venus), Europe (Mercury), the Land of the Bulgars (the Moon). The seven climes are associated with the seven seas and all are surrounded by the Encompassing Ocean and the circling range of all impassable Kâf Mountains.

This is but a glimpse of the surface of a vastly elaborated cosmology that serves the Ottoman poet as the source of countless allegories, metaphors, and comparisons.