Âşık Ahmet Abacı is a folk minstrel and itinerant destan singer born in 1934 in the village of Sarıyar (formerly Morami), in the central district of Amasya. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he turned events into destans in eleven-syllable quatrains, had them printed, and sold the sheets in crowded cities, singing them to their tunes. Cavit Güzel's study of the destan tradition of the âşık (minstrel) style in Amasya presents Abacı as one of the last living representatives of this destan-selling "in the culture of print", and from an interview with him in 2018 it records a valuable testimony on how the itinerant destan singer worked. His name also appears in lists of the region's minstrels.

How He Became a Minstrel

As Güzel reports, Abacı relates that he lived an ordinary life until he returned from military service, that after coming back "a change came over him" and he fell in love with minstrelsy. He says that following a dream he was summoned to the dervish lodge of Keçeci Baba (Gül Ahi Baba) in the Erbaa district of Tokat, that his tongue was loosened there, and that this was how he took his first step as a minstrel; he adds that, again following a dream, he went to Hacıbektaş, to the tomb of Hacı Bektaş Veli. Becoming a minstrel through a dream is a motif often met in the life stories of Anatolian minstrels, and Abacı's account sits within this frame. He states that after 1955 he regarded himself as a hak âşığı (a minstrel inspired by God), and that in the same years he also worked as an itinerant destan singer. Güzel records that Abacı grew up in the Alevi-Bektashi tradition and was among the minstrels who served as zâkirs in the cem ceremonies.

Destans

The printed destans identified by Güzel are the following:

  • "Toros Dağlarında Ölen Kâmil, Sıddık ve İbrahim Üç Şehitlerin Destanı" (The Destan of the Three Martyrs Kâmil, Sıddık and İbrahim Who Died in the Taurus Mountains), 17 July 1959 (14 quatrains).
  • "Ahiret Sözleri ve Ana Baba Öğütleri" (Words on the Hereafter and Counsel on Mother and Father), 17 July 1959 (16 quatrains; Merzifon: Nurlar Matbaacılık).
  • "Amasya'nın Gümüşhacı Köyü Kazasının Kızılca Köyünden Annesini Keserle Kesen Katilin Destanı" (The Destan of the Murderer from Kızılca Village in the Gümüşhacıköy District of Amasya Who Killed His Mother with an Adze), 1961.

In his interview with Güzel, Abacı also says that he "composed" a destan on Cemal Gürsel's coming to power in 1960 and came with it as far as Sivas; no printed copy of this destan is listed separately in the study.

A Witness to Itinerant Destan-Selling

What Abacı recounts shows from the inside how this trade, conducted between the printing house and the marketplace, actually worked. When news of an event spread, the destan singers would go to the door of the printing house, "compose" a destan there in haste, and wait their turn. The printed sheets were packed into a bag and taken from Ankara to Istanbul, from Antalya to Samsun, as far as Erzurum and Sivas. Abacı says they could not sell them fast enough, and that he hired two boys by the day to hand out the sheets while he sang. He adds that at first they had the bağlama in their hands, and later, when tape recorders appeared, they provided the music with those. He relates that tragic subjects drew more customers, that at first the relatives of the dead were angry with the destan singers, but that later they came wanting to commission destans for money so that a remembrance would remain.

Abacı also describes how he opened his performance in the middle of a crowd: beginning "Çok sevgili, saygılı vatandaşlar, Türkiye, Anadolu, Amasya, Morami Sarıyar Köyü Âşık Ahmet Abacı..." (Most beloved, respected citizens, Turkey, Anatolia, Amasya, Âşık Ahmet Abacı of Morami Sarıyar Village...), this introduction states who the minstrel is, what the destan is about and which cities he has travelled through, and then, with "Merhaba dostlar merhaba" (Greetings, friends, greetings), passes on to the destan. From this testimony Güzel draws the order of the sale: addressing the crowd, introducing oneself, announcing the subject of the destan, naming the other places where it has been sold, an interim greeting, and singing the destan to its tune. Abacı's account is the most detailed first-hand testimony known on itinerant destan-selling in Amasya.

Poetry

Copyright note: The poems of Âşık Ahmet Abacı are under copyright protection. As no published information on the date of his death has been found, the year in which protection ends cannot be calculated. For this reason his poems cannot be published on this site as separate pages, and only two quatrains are quoted below.

All of Abacı's identified destans are built of eleven-syllable quatrains. Alongside his destans on death, "Ahiret Sözleri ve Ana Baba Öğütleri" has a didactic, sententious character. Two quatrains from the passages quoted by Güzel run as follows:

Büyük küçük gelin dinlen sözümü
Namahrem deyimi ama yüzünü
Ölüp elbet yumacaksın gözünü
O zaman sivali soracak Allah
Dutalım oruç kılalım namaz
Babayı döğen cennet bulamaz
Ehlibeyiti seven mahrum olamaz
Bazı insana onları gösterir Allah

The quatrains use a language of counsel addressed directly to the listener ("Young and old, come, listen to my word... One day you will surely die and close your eyes; then God will ask His question"; "Let us keep the fast and perform the prayer; he who beats his father will not find paradise; he who loves the Prophet's Family will not go without"). Forms such as "sivali" (for sual, question) and "dutalım" (for tutalım, let us keep) show that the destan passed into print with the features of the spoken dialect. That both quoted quatrains end with the word "Allah" creates a refrain that stays in the listener's ear when the text is sung. The mention of prayer and fasting in the same breath as love for the Ehl-i Beyt (the Prophet's Family) in the second quatrain also points to the tradition in which the minstrel grew up.

Connection with Amasya

Abacı was born in the village of Sarıyar in the central district of Amasya, and in his years as a destan singer he introduced himself to crowds as "Âşık Ahmet Abacı of Amasya, Morami Sarıyar Village". Âşık Rıza Çulha, from the same village, was also a destan singer. Güzel regards Abacı as one of the last links in the tradition running in Amasya from the janissary saz poets to the destan singers of the twentieth century. This tradition is described in the site's articles on the minstrel tradition in Amasya and Amasya folk songs and long songs.

State of the Sources

The information on Abacı rests on Güzel's study and on the face-to-face interview the researcher held with the minstrel on 27 February 2018. Güzel refers to him as a living destan singer in 2020, the year of publication; no published information on the period after that date has been found. Other studies listing the region's minstrels give only his name. This page confines itself to information on the minstrel's literary life that appears in publicly available publications.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Books

  • Ahmet Abacı, Ahiret Sözleri Ana ve Baba Öğütleri, Merzifon: Nurlar Matbaacılık, 1959 (as quoted in Güzel 2020).

Online sources