Original Ottoman Turkish Text

'Adû kim gelse gitse olsa magbûn
Ola hâli, olma şâdî olma mahzûn
Anuñ bahtı karalıgı yiter pes
Senüñ tâli'üñi Hak itdi meymûn
Yüzi göñli Karaman'uñ karadur
Karañulukda kaldı zâr u mecnûn

In English

1. Let the enemy come or go, may he be deceived; whatever his state, neither rejoice nor grieve.

2. The blackness of his fortune is enough for him; God has made your fortune auspicious.

3. Karaman's face and heart are black; he was left wailing and frenzied in the darkness.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The Siege of Bursa

While Mehmed is busy with Musa in Rumelia, the lord of Karaman seizes the chance and comes against Bursa; the seventieth chapter tells of the siege. Hacı İvaz Paşa, subaşı of Bursa, gathers the people before the enemy arrives: let whoever has arms for the fortress enter it, and whoever has none not be shut up in it but look to himself. The lord of Karaman burns the town and attacks the fortress. To drain the pond that the Pınarbaşı stream forms outside the fortress, he has a tunnel dug outside the Prison Gate; Hacı İvaz Paşa discovers it and cuts down the sappers. They fight for thirty-one days; from time to time the defenders sally out, seize men and hang them by the neck in full view of the lord of Karaman. One day Musa's body arrives at the bath imaret; when the lord of Karaman sees it, he flees that night "with his tail between his legs". The date is given as 819 (1416). Later the Karamanid military judge Karamürsel proposes peace, but the lord refuses: "I will not make peace."

Black and Auspicious

Opening "'Adû kim gelse gitse", the three couplets counsel composure towards the enemy. Let the enemy come and go, he will remain deceived; there is no need either to rejoice or to grieve at his state. In the second couplet two fortunes are compared: the enemy's fortune is black, while the Ottoman fortune has been made "meymûn", auspicious, by God. In the third couplet the word "kara", black, meets the name Karaman: Karaman's face and heart are black and he is left in darkness. This play on words is a mockery of Karaman resorted to again and again in the work. The couplets rhyme on "-ûn": magbûn, mahzûn, meymûn, mecnûn.

Bibliography

  • Âşık Paşazade, Osmanoğulları'nın Tarihi, ed. Kemal Yavuz, M. A. Yekta Saraç, Istanbul: K Kitaplığı, 2003, p. 419 (transliterated text, bâb 70).