Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefâʿîlün mefâʿîlün feʿûlün (in the first line "Dir oglum" is read with liaison; the identification of the pattern is ours).

Dir oglum nusret ü fursat senüñdür
Hidâyet menzili ni'met senüñdür
Saña virildi baht düşmesün taht
Ezeli tâ ebed devlet senüñdür
Senüñ neslüñde 'âlem râhat ola
Du'âlar neslüñe erden senüñdür
Yana çıraklaruñuz 'âlem içre
Döşene sofralar da'vet senüñdür
İki cihânda hayırla añılmak
Nesâb u nesl-ile bürhân senüñdür
Çü Hak'dan irdi saña baht u devlet
Cihân içre olan devrân senüñdür
Süleymân-ı zamânuñ menba'ısın
Ki ins ü cinne hem fermân senüñdür

In English

1. He says: My son, victory and opportunity are yours; the station of right guidance and bounty are yours.

2. Fortune has been given to you, may your throne never fall; from pre-eternity to eternity sovereignty is yours.

3. May the world find ease in your line; the prayers of the saints (eren) for your descendants are yours.

4. May your lamps burn throughout the world, may tables be spread; the invitation to the feast is yours.

5. To be remembered with good in both worlds, the proof that comes through lineage and descent, is yours.

6. Since fortune and sovereignty have reached you from God, the turning of the age in the world is yours.

7. You are the source of the Solomon of the age; command over men and jinn alike is yours.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Good Tidings after a Dream

Behind this poem lies one of the best-known scenes in Âşıkpaşazâde's chronicle, Osman Gazi's dream. According to Özcan's summary, Osman, in the days when he was carrying on his raids in that region, one night dreamed that a moon rose from the bosom of Şeyh Edebâlî, whom he visited from time to time, and entered his own bosom, and that as soon as it entered, a tree grew from his belly whose shade covered the whole world. In the morning he told his dream to the sheikh. Edebâlî interpreted it as the good tidings that God had granted sovereignty to Osman and his line, and gave him his daughter Malhun. In the prose passage Özcan quotes, the sheikh begins with the words "Ogul 'Osman Gâzi, saña muştılık olsun", my son Osman Gazi, good tidings to you. That the poem opens with "Dir oglum", he says, my son, suggests that the words are again addressed to Osman by Edebâlî; this is a reading drawn from the text, and the intermediary source does not name the speaker.

The Refrain "Senüñdür"

All seven couplets end with the refrain (redif) "senüñdür", is yours, and each couplet counts something that belongs to Osman: victory, opportunity, bounty, sovereignty from pre-eternity to eternity, prayers, the invitation, good remembrance, the turning of the age, and finally command passing to men and jinn. The insistence of the refrain makes the piece resemble a title deed more than a message of good tidings: the owner of world dominion is entered in the register item by item. Özcan says that in these couplets the chosenness of the House of Osman is presented as a grace of God, and that the comparison with Solomon in the last couplet, recalling the prophet Solomon's rule over men and jinn, carries the sense of world dominion.

The fourth couplet turns this abstract dominion into an everyday picture: lamps will burn, tables will be spread. The burning lamp and the spread table are images shared by a dervish lodge and a dynasty; this is where the good tidings heard by dervishes from their sheikh turn into the founding legend of a ruling house. The word "erden" in the third couplet has been read as "from the saints (erenler)"; this reading suits the role of Edebâlî and his dervish circle in the narrative, though another cannot be ruled out.

Attribution and Text

The Ottoman history section of Ahmedî's İskendernâme is a mesnevi, in which each couplet rhymes within itself. Âşıkpaşazâde did borrow verse passages from that work, but this piece, running on one refrain from beginning to end, does not fit the mould. The difference of form seems to rule Ahmedî out; a firm verdict would need the edition itself. The text we have comes not from the edition itself but from Özcan's article; Özcan cites page 326 of the edition and sets the couplets in two columns. We have followed them across, from left to right; read column by column, the order of the couplets would change. The author's life and his other verse passages are gathered in Âşıkî (Âşıkpaşazâde).

Bibliography

Academic studies

Books

  • Âşık Paşazade, Osmanoğulları'nın Tarihi, ed. Kemal Yavuz, M. A. Yekta Saraç, Istanbul: K Kitaplığı, 2003, pp. 325-326 (as quoted by Özcan).

Online sources