Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Budur gazâ-yı evvel 'Osmân añla
Diyem ikincisin işid ü tañla
Gelür yurdına ider çok niyâzı
Ki gayret şevkını cânuma bagla
Dir iy ma'bûd ki İslâm kuvvetin vir
Özine dir ki miskîn 'Osmân agla

In English

1. This is Osman's first gazâ, understand it; let me tell you the second, listen and marvel.

2. He comes home and prays much: "Bind the ardour of zeal to my soul," he says.

3. "O God whom we worship, give me the strength of Islam," he says; and to himself he says, "Weep, poor Osman."

Literary and Historical Commentary

The First Gazâ

Osman Gazi's first raids, "now and then, by night and by day, in every direction", are the subject of the third chapter. When he moved to the summer pastures he left his goods in the keeping of the tekfur of Bilecik, while Aya Nikola of Eynegöl (İnegöl) harassed his migration. One day he set out from İrmeni Beli with seventy men to fall on İnegöl by night. The infidels had a spy who carried the news, and an ambush was laid; Osman's martaloz Aratun reported where it lay. The gazis, all on foot, marched straight on the ambush, a great fight followed, and Bay Hoca, son of Osman's brother Saru Yatı, fell as a martyr. The author adds that his shrine and a ruined caravanserai stand where İrmeni Beli ends, near the village of Hamza Beg. The couplets are spoken on the heels of this first attempt.

A Poem of Prayer, Not of Victory

The couplets contain no booty and no conquest; what they describe is the prayer of a bey coming home. The first line is built on the narrator turning to the reader: "işid ü tañla", listen and marvel. This voice reflects the menâkıbnâme narrator addressing his listeners in an assembly, and it recurs often in the work. In the last line Osman calls himself "miskîn 'Osmân", poor Osman; weeping after a raid that won nothing prepares for the dream told in the following pages. The first sentence of the fourth chapter says exactly this: Osman prayed, wept for a while, sleep overcame him, and on a night when he was a guest of Edebali he saw his famous dream. Without a refrain, the couplets are held together by the sound "-ğla" (añla, tañla, bagla, agla); at the line ends it is "añla" and "agla" that echo each other most.

Bibliography

  • Âşık Paşazade, Osmanoğulları'nın Tarihi, ed. Kemal Yavuz, M. A. Yekta Saraç, Istanbul: K Kitaplığı, 2003, p. 325 (transliterated text, bâb 3).