Palpitation in Diwan Poetry in the Light of Ottoman Medical Texts

Various organs in the human body work to keep people healthy. The heart, a crucial organ, mainly circulates clean blood throughout the body. It is also seen as the source of many emotions unique to humans. Just as diseases can affect different organs, the same applies to the heart. One common issue is heart palpitations. In a healthy person, the normal heart rate usually ranges from 60 to 100 beats per minute. If it exceeds 100, it can indicate a condition called “tachycardia.” In Ottoman medical texts and divan poetry, this condition is often called “Hafakân” or “yürek oynaması” (heart palpitations) in modern Turkish. Divan poets, who transformed real life into poetic fiction within the aesthetic framework of divan poetry, also portrayed heart problems like hafakân. They created various images that reflected different aspects of this condition. This study, which aimed to explore how poets used hafakân in divan poetry, examined 340 divans and classified the data according to historical medical texts. By exploring hafakân’s role in the aesthetics of divan poetry, the study aims to support future research on classical Turkish poetry and Ottoman medicine.