Âşık İsa Gedik was a folk poet from Gümüşhacıköy who had destans printed and sold them in the second half of the twentieth century. All that remains of him today is a single printed destan dated 17 July 1969 and the short signature written beneath it: "Amasya'nın Gümüşhacı Köyünden Halk Şairi İsa Gedik" (Folk Poet İsa Gedik of Gümüşhacıköy, Amasya). In his study of the destan tradition of the âşık (minstrel) style in Amasya, Cavit Güzel counts him, together with Halil İbrahim Alkaç, Ahmet Abacı and Rıza Çulha, among the city's destan singers of the age of print, and states plainly that he could find no information on the minstrel's life. This page brings together what the sources say about Gedik.

Life

İsa Gedik's dates of birth and death, his occupation and how he became a minstrel are unknown. The signature on his destan shows that he presented himself as a "folk poet" and that he came from the Gümüşhacıköy district of Amasya. In older usage the district's name was also written "Gümüşhacı Köyü"; the same spelling appears in the title of a 1961 destan by Ahmet Abacı. That Gedik was printing and selling destans in 1969 shows that he was active in the last phase of the itinerant destan-selling that spread across Anatolia after the 1940s and faded away after the 1980s. The information on the Alevi-Bektashi tradition and service as zâkir that Güzel gives for Alkaç, Abacı and Çulha is not given for Gedik.

The Keşli Destan

The only work Güzel was able to identify is "Amasya'nın Keşli Köyünde Kocasını Uyurken Öldüren Katil Gelinin Acıklı Destanı" (The Sorrowful Destan of the Murderous Bride Who Killed Her Husband in His Sleep in the Village of Keşli, Amasya), dated 17 July 1969. The destan consists of fifteen quatrains, is built in the eleven-syllable metre, and was printed at the Yüceer Press in Samsun. Its subject is the killing of a man in the village of Keşli in Amasya, shot with a rifle by his wife while he slept. The story is told largely in the voice of the murdered man; this is the destan technique, which Güzel also observes in Alkaç's destans, of making the person concerned speak and tell of his own suffering. The turning of a local murder into a printed destan fits the tendency Güzel notes among itinerant destan singers to choose events that moved society deeply.

Poetry

Copyright note: Âşık İsa Gedik's identified destan was published in 1969, and as the date of the poet's death is unknown it is under copyright protection; 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.

Of the passages quoted by Güzel, the first quatrain of the destan and the last, in which the minstrel names himself, run as follows:

Yeni bir cinayet Amasya ilinde
Söylensin destanım halkın dilinde
Söyleyin böyle midir yeni gelin de
Bakın kocasına kıydı bu gelin
Yeter âşık İsa bu kadar yeter
Yazmış olduğum destan burada biter
Yirmibeş kuruşa adam mı batar
Nasıl kıydın tatlı canıma

The first quatrain gives the place of the event and its character as news at once ("A new murder in the province of Amasya; let my destan be spoken on the people's tongues"); the line "Söylensin destanım halkın dilinde" says outright that the destan singer saw his text as news that would pass from mouth to mouth. The last quatrain, in keeping with the folk-poetry convention of the signature (mahlas), opens with the name "âşık İsa" and announces that the destan is over ("Enough, âşık İsa, enough; the destan I have written ends here"). Whether the phrase "yirmibeş kuruş" (twenty-five kuruş) in the third line refers to the selling price of the destan sheet or to some detail of the event cannot be made out from the quoted passage; the line is given here in the form found in the source. The last line ("How could you take my sweet life") seems to be spoken once again by the murdered man; if this reading is right, the minstrel's voice and that of the person concerned are interwoven within the same quatrain.

Connection with Amasya

According to the signature under his destan, Gedik was from Gümüşhacıköy, and his identified destan tells of an event that took place in Amasya. Güzel presents him last among the destan-singing minstrels of Amasya. His name also appears as Âşık İsa Gedik in another list of the region's minstrels. The minstrel tradition of Amasya is described in the site's articles on the minstrel tradition in Amasya and Amasya folk songs and long songs.

State of the Sources

Everything known about İsa Gedik rests on a single printed destan and on Güzel's study of it. The researcher writes that he could find no information on the minstrel's life; other studies listing the region's minstrels give only his name. Whether he wrote other destans, when he died, or whether he is still living, is not known. As the full text of the destan has not been published in any collection, the quatrains on this page are taken from the passages quoted by Güzel.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Books

  • İsa Gedik, Amasya'nın Keşli Köyünde Kocasını Uyurken Öldüren Katil Gelinin Acıklı Destanı, Samsun: Yüceer Matbaası, 1969 (as quoted in Güzel 2020).

Online sources