Photo: Dosseman, CC BY-SA 4.0

Manzume 68 — Ne fi'l ider bu dem bu çarh-ı gerdân

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

Karaman and Silifke in tears: four couplets from the chapter where Bayezid takes Taraklı Borlu and Kastamonu, leaving İsfendiyar only the district of Sinop.

Contents 4

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

Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Ne fi'l ider bu dem bu çarh-ı gerdân
Karaman kara taşda sergerdân

Bâyezîd aldı ilin virdi kula
Âvâre oldı sipâhî vü merdân

Silifke siyle vardı göz yaşından
Cigerler kana gark mahv oldı gamdan

Ne vardur bunda varlık bir nefesdür
Bu varlıguñ ki seni itdi giryân

In English

1. What is this turning wheel doing now: Karaman wanders lost upon the black rock.

2. Bayezid took his land and gave it to a slave; cavalrymen and champions became vagrants.

3. Silifke became a flood of tears; hearts drowned in blood and perished of grief.

4. What is there here: being is but a breath; so too this being of yours that made you weep.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Kastamonu

The taking of Kastamonu fills only a few sentences of the short sixty-fourth chapter. One day Bayezid leaves Bursa, takes Taraklı Borlu and marches on Kastamonu. İsfendiyar flees to Sinop and sends an envoy to Bayezid: his hope was that the khan would accept him into his service; but let him graciously leave him, as alms, this little place where he sits. Bayezid accepts; the land below Kıvrım Yol is fixed as the border and given to İsfendiyar, and Bayezid takes possession of the rest of the province. The date is given as between 797 and 798 (1395-96).

The Black Rock

Set in a chapter about Kastamonu, the four couplets turn unexpectedly to Karaman. The land of "Taş", the Rock, where the lord of Karaman took refuge after losing Konya and its district in the previous chapter, is named "kara taş", the black rock, in the first couplet; in the edition the word "kara" is in italics, that is, added from the S manuscript. The sound relation between "Karaman" and "kara taş" comes close to a pun. The second couplet tells of Bayezid giving the lands he took to his slaves, and of the cavalrymen and champions of the former lords left vagrant. In the third couplet Silifke, one of the last refuges of the house of Karaman, becomes a flood of tears. By the fourth couplet the grief has opened out into a general thought of transience: being is but a breath, and what makes man weep is that very being. Âşıkpaşazâde, harsh towards Karaman elsewhere, could here also see the pain of the defeated lords.