Sezai Karakoç, who is one of the important figures of contemporary Turkish literature, is a person who has come to the fore with his thought that aims to rise again in all areas of life and expresses this aim with the concept of “resurrection”. The fall of man and civilization has a special meaning in Karakoç’s world of thought, as the resurrection evokes the opposite of phenomena such as decline and collapse. The collapse of the Andalusian civilization, which is considered one of the bright pages of Islamic history, is one of the main issues that is constantly on the agenda of the thinker, as one of the striking examples of the decline. One of the concrete examples of his interest in the region and its collapse is the translation of the Andalusian elegy (Ratha al-Andalus poem) by Abu al-Baqa al-Rundi, one of the famous poets of the thirteenth century, into Turkish in verse with the title of Lament for Andalusia. In this article, Karakoç’s translation is discussed in comparison with the Arabic text of the eulogy, and it is evaluated in terms of scientific and literary terms. Our study aims both to determine where the translation stands against other translations of the eulogy and to shed light on the question of whether a poem translation written by a poet will have different characteristics from the texts put forward by translators who do not have this qualification.

Sezai Karakoç, Abu al-Baqa al-Rundi, Ratha al-Andalus poem