Photo: Dosseman, CC BY-SA 4.0

Manzume 40 — Okundı hutbe-i Orhan-ı Gāzi

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

Four couplets praising the sermon read in Orhan Gazi's name in İznik, where he made a church a mosque and opened the soup kitchen himself, naming Âşık Paşa.

Contents 4

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

Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Okundı hutbe-i Orhan-ı Gāzi
O 'Osmân bin Toñrul nesli gāzi

Şerî'at gögine gül bunlar oldı
Çü togdı şems-i tâb Orhan-ı Gāzi

Gazâ-y-ıçun ki ak börk ol geyüpdür
Yüzi ag işi sag Orhan-ı Gāzi

Ne geyse yaraşur Orhan-ı Gāzi
Âşık Paşa zamanındaydı gāzi

In English

1. The sermon was read in the name of Orhan Gazi; he is a gazi, son of Osman, of the line of Toñrul (Ertuğrul).

2. These became a rose in the sky of the sacred law; for Orhan Gazi rose like the shining sun.

3. For gazâ he has put on that white cap; white of face, sound of deed is Orhan Gazi.

4. Whatever Orhan Gazi wears becomes him; the gazi lived in the time of Âşık Paşa.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The First Soup Kitchen in İznik

Orhan, in the thirty-third chapter, turns a great church in İznik into a Friday mosque and a monastery into a medrese, and founds an imaret, a soup kitchen, outside the Yenişehir gate. The post of sheikh of the imaret is given to Hacı Hasan, a disciple of Edebali; the author says his descendants still hold it in his day. When the doors of the imaret open, Orhan distributes the cooked food with his own hands and lights its lamp himself on the first night. The medrese is given first to Mevlânâ Dâvud-ı Kayserî, then to Tâceddîn-i Kürdî, a student of Sirâceddin-i Urmevî in Konya; the office of preacher goes to Karahoca. Orhan makes İznik his seat.

A Sermon and a Name

The first couplet recalls the first sermon read in Osman's name at Karacahisar in Manzume 4: now the sermon is read in Orhan's name, and the couplet links the chain of descent from Osman to Toñrul (Ertuğrul). The third couplet returns to the white cap described in the thirty-first chapter; the idiom "yüzi ag", white of face, that is honourable, creates a double meaning between the colour of the cap and Orhan's good name. In the final couplet the author says that Orhan lived in the time of Âşık Paşa. In an earlier piece it was stated that Âşık Paşa prayed for Orhan. Since Âşık Paşa died in 733 (1332-33), he was contemporary with Orhan's early years; the author's mention of his own ancestor in the scene of Orhan's reign at İznik is part of his effort to add a family testimony to the founding of the Ottoman state. Every couplet closes on the refrain "gāzi".