Photo: Zeynel Cebeci, CC BY-SA 4.0

Manzume 18 — Şunı kim aldı yapdı yıkdı 'Osmân

Amasya05 Editorial Board • Editor: Mevlüt Erdem Öztürk • 01 October 2026 • Updated: 14 October 2026 • 2 min reading

Once the alliance of the tekfurs of Bursa, Adranos, Kestel and Kite is broken and Kite falls, two couplets show Osman as a builder who destroys and rebuilds.

Contents 4

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

Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Şunı kim aldı yapdı yıkdı 'Osmân
Kime kahr u kime lutf bakdı 'Osmân

Harâb idüp 'imâret itmek işi
Bu resme dürlü mi'mâr kopdı 'Osmân

In English

1. Whatever Osman took, he built and pulled down; on some he looked with wrath, on some with grace.

2. To lay waste and to build anew: in this manner Osman arose as a builder of many kinds.

Literary and Historical Commentary

From Koyunhisarı to Ulubat

The tekfurs of Bursa, Adranos, Bidnos, Kestel and Kite join forces in the seventeenth chapter and march on Osman, saying "let us leave this Turk neither name nor fame". Osman meets them at Koyunhisarı and the fighting runs on to Dinboz. Aytoğdı, son of Gündüz and grandson of Osman's brother, falls there as a martyr; the author says his tomb lies at Dinboz on the road to Koyunhisarı, and that in that district a horse suffering from "yankulanmak" is led three times round the tomb and is healed. The tekfurs scatter; the tekfur of Kite flees to Ulubat. Osman halts at the head of the bridge and demands the fugitive from the tekfur of Ulubat. The tekfur proposes a pact: Osman and his descendants will never cross this bridge, and in return the fugitive will be handed over. The author records that down to his day the Ottomans did not cross the Ulubat bridge but crossed the water by boat. The tekfur of Kite is brought and cut to pieces in front of his fortress, and Kite is taken.

Destroyer and Builder

"Kahr" and "lutf", wrath and grace, "harâb" and "'imâret", ruin and building: with these contrasts the two couplets show Osman as one who destroys and builds at once. The image of the builder presents the destruction of a conquered place as the founding of a new order. Before the refrain "'Osmân", verbs in "-dı" rhyme at the line ends: yıkdı, bakdı, kopdı. The verb "kopmak" here means "to arise, to appear", and it is often used in the work to describe the rise of the Ottoman line.