Âşık Ömer was a minstrel poet of the seventeenth century, counted with Gevherî and Karacaoğlan among the leading names of Turkish saz poetry, who wrote in both syllabic metre and aruz and left more than two thousand poems. His birthplace and the dates of his birth and death are disputed; the sources give the village of Gezlevi (Gözleve) in the Hadim district of Konya, the town of Gözleve in the Crimea, and Aydın. His only known link with Amasya is the Merzifon Cönkü: ten poems are recorded under the name Ömer in this manuscript poetry notebook introduced by Metin Hakverdioğlu in 2019, and Hakverdioğlu identifies their author with the great minstrel of the seventeenth century by referring to Şükrü Elçin's book Âşık Ömer.

There is no document showing that Âşık Ömer came to Amasya or Merzifon. His page has therefore been opened among the poets whose link with Amasya is disputed; below, what each source says is shown separately.

Life

According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi article, the most plausible of the traditions about his birthplace and date is that he was born in 1651 in the village of Gezlevi in the Hadim district of Konya. The article in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, however, states that this date arose from a misreading of the year 1061 (1651), which Fuad Köprülü gave as the date of composition of a poem; Crimean researchers present the poet as born in 1621 in the Crimean town of Gözleve, the son of a family of furriers. Sadettin Nüzhet Ergun also accepted Gözleve in the Crimea, while Köprülü first considered Gözleve or Aydın and later adopted Gözleve in Konya. Şükrü Elçin regards the Crimean Gözleve as highly probable.

Whether he received a regular madrasa education is disputed. The TDV article writes that he was self-taught, while the TEİS article says that his poems show he studied in a madrasa. Both sources state that he took lessons from a poet named Şerîfî and knew enough Persian to read the classical poets, above all Fuzûlî, the divan of Hâfız and the works of Sa'dî. It is surmised that he joined the army, served in frontier fortresses and took part in some campaigns; he has poems on Mehmed IV's Çehrin campaign of 1678 and on campaigns of the reigns of Ahmed II and Mustafa II. His poems show that he travelled to places such as Istanbul, Bursa, Varna, Chios, Sinop and Baghdad. At first he used the pen name Adlî, then adopted the pen name Ömer; the pen names Derviş Nihânî and Vehbî are also attributed to him.

The date of his death is generally given as 1119 (1707). This date rests on a chronogram couplet on the first page of the divan copy made by Hâfız Hüseyin of Ayvansaray. Elçin points out that an event mentioned in one of the poet's elegies took place in 1711 and says that his death must be sought after 1707. For his grave there are traditions placing it at Yemiş İskelesi in Istanbul and at Kalentir Burnu in the Crimea.

Hakverdioğlu writes that Merzifon was a staging post on the roads and that important names such as Dertli, Erzurumlu Emrah, Tokatlı Nûrî and Âşık Ömer accepted the invitation of Merzifon poets like Eyüp Sabrî. For Âşık Ömer this sentence is chronologically impossible. Eyüb Sabrî was born in 1843 and died in 1866, whereas Âşık Ömer died at the beginning of the eighteenth century. More than a century and a half lies between them. Hakverdioğlu's sentence should be read as a general assessment describing Merzifon as a town that hosted minstrels; we found no information showing that Âşık Ömer visited Merzifon. This assessment is ours.

Âşık Ömer's real link with Amasya is that his poems were read and written down in the region. Hakverdioğlu notes that poems by Âşık Ömer are also found in Cönklerden Bir Cönk: Amasya Cönkü, published by Şahin Köktürk in 2007. Since the Merzifon Cönkü is thought to have been compiled in the nineteenth century, the poet's words were still being recited in Merzifon gatherings about a century and a half after his death.

Poetry

According to the TDV assessment, Âşık Ömer was embraced by wide sections of the people; many minstrels after him wrote nazires (response poems) to him, his poems set to music were sung in gatherings, and his Sufi poems were chanted like hymns in dervish lodges. He was greatly influenced by classical poetry and, especially in the divans he wrote in aruz, gave ample room to the images and imaginative world of divan poetry. Both TDV and TEİS state that he was more successful in the poems he composed in syllabic metre. The most important manuscripts of his divan are the Ayvansarâyî copy in the Mevlânâ Museum in Konya and the Yahyâ Efendi Lodge copy in the Süleymaniye Library; his poems were published by Sadettin Nüzhet Ergun in 1936.

Hakverdioğlu counts the poems recorded under the name Ömer in the Merzifon Cönkü as one in syllabic metre and nine in aruz; in the poem section of the article, however, one koşma and eight poems in aruz are seen. These are the koşma "Dinle hasb-i hâlim benim efendim", the gazel "Yâ İlâhî sen beni insâna muhtâc eyleme" and the divans beginning with the lines "Bir güzeller şâhı gördüm", "Ey gönül deryâ-yı aşka dalmaga şüphen mi var", "Acıyın dostlar benim gül yüzlü yârim aldılar", "Ben sana mübtelâ oldum", "Ben sana gönül vireli", "Çün güzelim zülfi dâlım" and "Cân u dilden mâil oldum". Since the article gives only the first quatrain or the first lines of each poem, each of these nine pieces has been published on our site as a separate article in this category, with its original text, an English rendering and a commentary.

State of the Sources

The attribution of the poems in the cönk to the seventeenth-century Âşık Ömer rests on the pen-name record in the cönk and on Hakverdioğlu's reference to Elçin. The TEİS article records that Âşık Ömer's poems have become mixed with those of other poets using the pen name Ömer and that Köprülü identified a separate poet called Âşık Ömerî of Aydın. Since we could not compare the poems with the editions of Ergun and Elçin, we cannot say which of them are among the poet's known poems. The fact that the ninth poem in aruz counted by Hakverdioğlu does not appear in the article must be a difference of counting or printing.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Official sources

  • Şükrü Elçin, Âşık Ömer, Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı Yayınları, 1987 (as cited by Hakverdioğlu 2019 and Duymaz 2014).

Books

  • Ali Duymaz, "Âşık Ömer", Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, 09.11.2014 (updated 05.12.2020). https://teis.yesevi.edu.tr/madde-detay/asik-omer
  • Şahin Köktürk, Cönklerden Bir Cönk: Amasya Cönkü, 2007 (as cited by Hakverdioğlu 2019).

Online sources