Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Ümîdüm du'âdur ehl-i du'âdan
Du'âdur bize emr olan Hudâ'dan
Mü'essirdür niçe nefes cihânda
Du'âdur evliyâdan enbiyâdan
Didi Hak kim dileñ makbûl ideyin
Bu kavlı umdı cânum ol nidâdan

In English

1. My hope is the prayer of the people of prayer; prayer is what God has commanded us.

2. Many a breath has power in the world; it is the prayer of saints and prophets.

3. God said, "Ask, and I shall accept"; my soul has hoped for this word from that call.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The Poplar

Orhan, in Bursa at the start of the thirty-eighth chapter, asks about the dervishes of the district. He is told of a dervish on Mount Keşiş near İnegöl, a disciple of Baba İlyas of the order of Seyyid Ebu'l-Vefa; Orhan sends a man to him, but the dervish replies, "These dervishes are people of insight; they watch, and they come in their own time, so that their prayer may be accepted." One day he uproots a poplar, brings it on his shoulder to the fortress of Bursa and plants it inside the courtyard gate of the palace. Orhan comes out to look; the dervish speaks before him: "Stand by our blessing as long as it lasts; the prayer of the dervishes is accepted for you and your line." He prays and turns back. The author says that in his day that poplar had grown very large inside the palace gate and that each sultan who came had its dry branches cleared. Orhan wants to give the dervish the district of İnegöl; the dervish says, "This land and wealth belong to God, He gives them to their people. We are not its people," and accepts only the ground up to the little hill opposite as a courtyard for the dervishes.

The Worth of Prayer

The concept at the heart of the story, prayer, comes to the fore in the couplets. In the first couplet prayer is called a command of God, in the second an effective breath that comes from saints and prophets. The third rests on the Quranic verse "Call on Me and I will answer you". According to the introduction of the Yavuz–Saraç edition, Âşıkpaşazâde sees the "receiving of prayer" by the Ottoman sultans as a dynastic tradition; this chapter is one of the most concrete scenes of that idea. The dervish's name is not given in this part; the same man will be named "Giyüklü Baba" in later sections of the work.

Bibliography

  • Âşık Paşazade, Osmanoğulları'nın Tarihi, ed. Kemal Yavuz, M. A. Yekta Saraç, Istanbul: K Kitaplığı, 2003, p. 374 (transliterated text, bâb 38).
  • Kemal Yavuz, M. A. Yekta Saraç, "Önsöz" and "Hayatı ve 'Tarih'iyle Âşık Paşazade", in Âşık Paşazade, Osmanoğulları'nın Tarihi, Istanbul: K Kitaplığı, 2003, pp. 25-48.