Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefâʿîlün mefâʿîlün feʿûlün; in the first line the last syllable of "Alındı" is read lengthened. The pattern was identified by us.

Alındı Eynegöl kırıldı kâfir
Gâziler mâl u ni'met aldı vâfir
Harâb itdiler ol küfrüñ diyarın
Getürdiler yirine nûr-ı zâhir
Gör imdi 'âleme kim geldi 'Osmân
Neyi kim tutdı âsân itdi Kâdir

In English

1. İnegöl was taken, the infidel crushed; the warriors for the faith (gazi) took goods and bounty in plenty.

2. They laid waste that land of unbelief and brought in its place a manifest light.

3. See now who has come into the world: Osman. Whatever he took in hand, the Almighty (Kâdir) made easy.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Three Couplets for a Conquest

The three couplets give, in order, all the elements of a report of victory: the town has been taken, the enemy crushed, the booty shared out; then the destruction and the light that comes in its place; and finally the name of the victor and the divine power that made it possible. The passive verbs "alındı" and "kırıldı", taken and crushed, following one another in the same line, give the impression of news announced by a herald. The real emphasis falls on the third couplet: "Gör imdi 'âleme kim geldi 'Osmân". This line, addressing the reader or listener directly, presents the conquest of İnegöl less as the capture of a town than as the proclamation of Osman's entry onto the stage.

In the rhyme, "kâfir" and "vâfir" agree fully, while "zâhir" and "Kâdir" agree only in their final sounds. This loose rhyme matches the plain style of the work, close to the spoken language. The contrast of destruction and light in the second couplet is another example of the pairing of unbelief with darkness and Islam with light seen in Âşıkpaşazâde's other verse passages too.

Historical Context

According to Emine Sonnur Özcan, Âşıkpaşazâde records that İnegöl was taken in 699 (1299-1300) and that the conquest of Karacahisar followed in the same year. Özcan sees in these couplets a discourse heralding that Osman was on the verge of independent sovereignty. In her view the mention of booty in the second line also matters: Osman Gazi had now brought the warriors he had gathered, through the unity of lineage and the reflex of survival against the infidel in a foreign land, to the point of "doyum alma", of receiving their share, and the economic basis of his rule was ready. In Âşıkpaşazâde's narrative, after İnegöl the empty houses of Karacahisar are settled with people from Germiyan, churches are turned into mosques, a market is founded, and the people wish to perform the Friday prayer and to ask for a judge. The poem written for the first Friday sermon read at the end of these events is on the page Manzume 4 of this category.

Text and Attribution

Özcan's footnote ties the piece to page 339 of the Yavuz-Saraç edition. In the article two couplets stand in the left column and one in the right, and in ordering them we have gone by the horizontal arrangement. This short poem, running on a single rhyme from beginning to end, may carry the work's own voice, that is, come from Âşıkî's pen; given that some verse passages in the chronicle came from Ahmedî, this remains only a possibility. A list of the historian's other verse passages accompanies his biography, Âşıkî (Âşıkpaşazâde).

Bibliography

Academic studies

Books

  • Âşık Paşazade, Osmanoğulları'nın Tarihi, ed. Kemal Yavuz, M. A. Yekta Saraç, Istanbul: K Kitaplığı, 2003, p. 339 (as quoted by Özcan).

Online sources