Photo: Maarten from Netherlands, CC BY 2.0

Manzume 174 — Yapıldı kal'alar Tuna suyından

Amasya05 Editorial Board • Editor: Mevlüt Erdem Öztürk • 01 October 2026 • Updated: 14 October 2026 • 3 min reading

Three couplets on the gazis' spoils, where Bayezid II, his campaign put off, has the Danube forts his father had razed rebuilt and garrisoned.

Contents 4

1Original Ottoman Turkish Text
2In English
3Literary and Historical Commentary
4Bibliography

Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Yapıldı kal'alar Tuna suyından
Ne soy soylar gāzi kâfir soyından

Soyın soylar o kâfirler kızınuñ
Mukadderdür gāzilerde bu hûdan

Bulurlar mâl u ni'met kul karavaş
Çınarlu ve yüce servi boyından

In English

1. Fortresses were built on the Danube; what lineages the gazi strips from the infidel's lineage.

2. They strip the lineage of those infidels' daughters; this habit is ordained in the gazis.

3. They find wealth and bounty, slaves and slave women; (of those) tall as the plane tree and the lofty cypress.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The Danube Fortresses

Having driven Cem out of the land, Bayezid II first sends his sons to their sancaks in the hundred and sixtieth chapter: Korkud is sent to Saruhan, and Şehinşah to "the throne of Yunan", to Konya. The sovereign leaves Constantinople, comes to Edirne with the intent of holy war, and orders the armies of Anatolia and Rumelia to gather round Edirne. But meanwhile "unseemly acts took place between one of the slaves of the levy and another", and for this reason the campaign is put off. The sovereign orders the two governors-general to rebuild and restore the fortresses on the bank of the Danube that his father had taken from the Hungarians and razed. The governor-general of Anatolia encamps by one fortress, the governor-general of Rumelia by another, each with his troops and his architect; round about the gazis carry on their holy war. The fortresses are completed, their equipment seen to, and stout-hearted gazis placed in them. The author says, "Even now they wage holy war on the infidels." The date is 888 (1483).

Lineage and Stripping

The whole piece rests on a play on words. "Soy" is used both as lineage and as the root of the verb "soymak", to strip or plunder. In the first couplet the fortresses have been built and the gazi strips "what lineages" from the infidel's lineage; that is, he both takes captives lineage by lineage and strips booty. The second couplet keeps up the same play: the gazis strip the lineage of the infidels' daughters, and this habit is ordained in them. The last couplet lists what the spoils are: wealth, bounty, slaves and slave women, those tall as the plane tree and the cypress. This verse plainly shows the economic side of the raids the frontier gazis carried on after the building of the fortresses. The rhyme draws suyından, soyından, hûdan and boyından close to one another in sound.