Photo: Wentiu, CC BY-SA 4.0

Manzume 7 — Şular kim ni'meti Hak'dan alupdur

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

Where Osman Gazi takes Karacahisar and gives its houses to the gazis, three couplets speak of blessings from God, of eating and feeding others, and of each man's portion.

Contents 4

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

Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Şular kim ni'meti Hak'dan alupdur
O ni'met ehline ni'met tolupdur

Yi yidür ni'meti iy merd-i kâmil
Ne itseñ bil senüñlen ol kalupdur

Cihâna her gelen kısmet-ilendür
Yiten ü hem biten kim er olupdur

In English

1. Those who have received blessings from God: blessings have filled to the brim for the people of blessing.

2. O perfect man, eat and give others to eat of the blessing; know that whatever you do is what remains with you.

3. Everyone who comes into the world comes with his portion; both he who perishes and he who grows to fullness has become a man.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The Sack of the Fortress

Hearing that the tekfur of Karacahisar had marched against Osman and killed Saru Yatı, the Seljuk sultan Alâeddin came before the fortress with a great army, as the sixth chapter relates. Osman joined the fighting from one side. After a few days news came that Bayıncar Tatar had taken and burned Ereğli; the sultan summoned Osman, left him the weapons he had brought for the siege, blessed him with the words "you bear many signs of good fortune", and went back to his own lands. Osman waited a few days, then had the fortress sacked; he seized the tekfur, made the gazis rich, gave the houses of the town to the gazis and to others, and "made it a city of Islam". The author dates the conquest to the year 687 of the Hijra (1288).

Bounty and Portion

With the plunder barely over, the poet turns from conquest to counsel and recalls the source of bounty: it comes from God and fills "the people of blessing". "Yi yidür" in the second couplet, eat and feed others, is the virtue Âşıkpaşazâde praises most when he describes the Ottomans: laying a table, distributing food, sharing out booty. The same idea returns in the eighth chapter where the custom of the nevbet is explained; the Ottomans are men of "the table" and of "the spread cloth", who feed the people of the world. "Kısmet" in the third couplet stands both for a gazi's share of the fortress and for a person's lot in the world. The pairing "yiten ü hem biten", he who perishes and he who grows to fullness, brings together the dead and the living; after the battle in which Saru Yatı fell, the phrase shows loss and gain within the same fate. The ending "-updur" carries the refrain (alupdur, tolupdur, kalupdur, olupdur).