Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Fesâda kim sebeb olsa Karaman
O bilmez ne olur dîn ü ya îmân
Fesâd olur hasedden mahlûk içre
Haseddür bil Karaman işi hemân

In English

1. Whoever causes mischief, it is Karaman; he does not know what faith and belief are.

2. Mischief arises among creatures from envy; know that Karaman's whole business is envy.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Riddled Like a Sieve

Murad's answer to the lord of Karaman's deeds comes in the hundred and fifteenth chapter. The lord of Karaman had broken his pact and, through oppressors, had shameful things done to the wives and children of Muslims. Murad goes up to Konya and orders plunder; the land of Karaman is left "elek elek", riddled like a sieve, its villages and towns ruined. The lord of Karaman flees into Taş; the author says that in Karaman that year many children of unknown parentage were born. The lord of Karaman sends his wife, who is Murad's sister, and his vizier Sürûr: "Go, beg your brother to pardon my fault." The envoys plead; the khan asks Sürûr, "From now on, will you trust that lord of yours?" Sürûr says that he had no part in this wrong, that the affair came from the Turgut clan. The khan pardons the fault again. The author closes the chapter with a verdict: "So, dear ones, the cause of these Ottomans' oppression was İbrahim of Karaman; otherwise, to this day, no Ottoman had ever been given to oppressing anyone."

The Root of Envy

Two couplets condense the verdict: the cause of mischief is Karaman, and Karaman's whole business is envy. The link drawn between "fesâd", mischief, and "haset", envy, is the basic pattern of Âşıkpaşazâde's account of the Karamanids: he sees their hostility to the Ottomans less as a political rivalry than as a moral fault. In the last sentence of the prose the author admits that the Ottomans too committed oppression, but ties its cause to Karaman. This is an example of how the work's dynastic loyalty and its critical stance stand side by side. The rhyme rests on "-ân": Karaman, îmân, hemân.

Bibliography

  • Âşık Paşazade, Osmanoğulları'nın Tarihi, ed. Kemal Yavuz, M. A. Yekta Saraç, Istanbul: K Kitaplığı, 2003, pp. 472-473 (transliterated text, bâb 115).