Âşık Deli is the folk poet represented by a single koşma in a manuscript verse notebook compiled in Merzifon, the Merzifon Cönkü introduced by Metin Hakverdioğlu in 2019. His name occurs only in this cönk; his real name, his homeland and his period are unknown. The first quatrain published in the article expresses the thanks to the Creator and the devotion to Islam of a minstrel who wakes in the morning and sees the mist on the mountain top. This page sets out what is known about Âşık Deli, namely the record in the cönk and the surviving quatrain of his poem, keeping it apart from what is not known.

Life

There is no information about Âşık Deli's life. No minstrel of this name has been found in Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar's Amasya Tarihi or in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü (Dictionary of Names in Turkish Literature). The pen name "Deli" (mad) is not unfamiliar in the minstrel tradition: among minstrels this word, describing a person beside himself with love, heedless of worldly affairs, one who has become "divane", has long been used as a nickname or pen name. The pen name says nothing about the minstrel's character; it only shows that he stood within this tradition. The pen name does not occur in the first quatrain given in the article; in koşmas the pen name is usually spoken in the last quatrain, and that part of the poem has not been published. For this reason the form of the pen name in the cönk, too, is known only from the heading in the article.

The date of the cönk is the only clue for the poet. Hakverdioğlu estimates that the notebook is about a hundred years old; the poets most represented in the cönk are nineteenth-century minstrels such as Tokatlı Nûrî, Erzurumlu Emrah, Dertli and Âşık Ömer. It is likely that Âşık Deli, too, was among the saz poets of that century who passed through Merzifon or composed verse there; this is an inference.

The Merzifon Cönkü and the Connection with Amasya

The Merzifon Cönkü is a 112-page notebook in ta'lik script, which Hakverdioğlu acquired from a second-hand bookseller with the information that it came from Merzifon. It contains 161 poems by thirty-two poets; 63 of them are in syllabic metre, most of them koşmas. In the abstract of his article Hakverdioğlu writes that Merzifon, lying on the roads to Çorum, Kastamonu, Sinop and Samsun, was a "resting inn, a place to catch one's breath" on the route of folk poets, and that the poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries stopped at this halting place; he notes that minstrels such as Dertli, Emrah, Nûrî and Âşık Ömer answered the invitations of Merzifon poets such as Eyüb Sabrî. He thinks the cönk was compiled within this circle, probably by a Merzifon poet named Fethî.

Âşık Deli's only known connection with Amasya is that his koşma entered this Merzifon collection. This shows that his verse was known and recited in Merzifon. Whether the minstrel was from Merzifon or came to Merzifon is, however, unknown.

The State of the Sources

All the information about Âşık Deli rests on two records in Hakverdioğlu's article. The list of the poets of the cönk and the number of their poems says "Aşık Deli 1 hece"; in the poems section the first quatrain of the koşma is quoted from page 80 of the cönk. In the article the name is written "Aşık Deli"; on this page it is given as "Âşık Deli", in the usual spelling of the word "âşık" from the old script. Hakverdioğlu notes that treating the poets of the cönk one by one is a matter for a separate study. Since this minstrel has not been found in any other source, his identity cannot be determined today. Whether "Deli" is a pen name or a nickname given to the minstrel by the scribe of the cönk cannot be said either without seeing the last quatrain of the poem.

Poetry

The only poem recorded under Âşık Deli's name in the cönk is an eleven-syllable koşma. The first quatrain given in the article has a plain diction: the minstrel turns to the gathering with the address "Ey ağalar" (O gentlemen), watches the mist settled on the mountain top as he comes to himself in the morning, and joins this beauty with thanks to the Creator and with faith. The second and fourth lines have the refrain "ne güzel uymuş" (how well it suits). The rest of the poem exists only in the cönk and has not been published. The surviving quatrain is given with its original text, an English rendering and a commentary on the separate page "Koşma 1: Ey aġalar ben bugün pür ayıldım" in this category.

Bibliography

Online sources