Âşık Mustafa is a folk poet represented by a single ghazal in aruz in the Merzifon Cönkü, a manuscript compiled in Merzifon. His name appears only in Metin Hakverdioğlu's article of 2019 introducing the cönk. The title "Âşık" shows that he was a saz poet; Mustafa may be his real name or his pen name. Since many minstrels in folk poetry bore the name Mustafa, there is no evidence that would allow the poet of the cönk to be identified with any of them. No other record has been found of his life, his home or his period.

His Place in the Merzifon Cönkü

The Merzifon Cönkü is a poetry notebook which Metin Hakverdioğlu acquired from a bookseller as coming from Merzifon and keeps in his own library; neither its compiler nor its date is written in it. Hakverdioğlu considers it about a hundred years old; it contains 161 poems by 32 poets, with folk and divan poetry represented in almost equal measure. The poet with the most poems is Tokatlı Nûrî. Hakverdioğlu believes the notebook was put together in the literary circle of Eyüp Sabrî of Merzifon, probably by a local poet using the pen name Fethî. His article publishes only the first stanza or couplet of each poem in the cönk; the full texts remain unpublished in the cönk.

Âşık Mustafa's ghazal is on page 104 of the cönk. There is a small inconsistency in the article: the list of poets reads "Âşık Mustafa 1 syllabic", whereas in the section on the poems the piece is given under the heading "poems written by Âşık Mustafa in aruz (1)" and labelled "Gazel". The four lines quoted are in the form of a ghazal and written in aruz; the "syllabic" entry in the list therefore looks like a typesetting error. Folk poets' composition of ghazals, semais and divanîs in aruz is common in nineteenth-century minstrel poetry, and the Merzifon Cönkü contains dozens of such examples. The only trace linking Âşık Mustafa to Amasya is the presence of his ghazal in this notebook compiled in Merzifon. Hakverdioğlu describes in some detail how Merzifon was a halting place on the roads to Çorum, Kastamonu, Sinop and Samsun, how folk poets passed through it in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and how names such as Dertli, Emrah, Nûrî and Âşık Ömer joined the town's gatherings at the invitation of local poets.

His Poetry

Âşık Mustafa's only poem in the cönk is a ghazal beginning with the line "Çoḳ zamândır intiẓârım ḳaşı yâyı görmedim". The article gives the first two couplets of this ghazal; the whole poem is in the cönk, on page 104. The ghazal has the refrain "görmedim" (I have not seen) and expresses the longing of a lover who has long been waiting for the bow-browed beloved and cannot see her, like a hüma bird of which he does not know whether it is on earth or in the sky. The first line of the second couplet is given in the article with words supplied in parentheses, and its reading is not certain. The ghazal is given on a separate poem page in the poet's category with its original text, a modern rendering and commentary.

The State of the Sources and Discussion

There is no information about Âşık Mustafa beyond the two couplets in the cönk. The Amasya Cönkü published by Şahin Köktürk, which Hakverdioğlu mentions in the same article, also contains poems by a poet named Kul Mustafa; but "Kul Mustafa" and "Âşık Mustafa" are not the same name, and there is no information that would allow the two records to be joined. When the whole ghazal is published, the final couplet containing the pen name may give a clue to the poet's identity. For the present, what is known is the existence of a ghazal recorded under the name Âşık Mustafa in the Merzifon Cönkü.

Bibliography

Online sources