Âşıkî, Manzume 83: Karaman'da bulınmaz togru bir yâr

Manzume 83 — Karaman'da bulınmaz togru bir yâr

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

A seven-couplet satire on Karaman: Mehmed Çelebi captures its lord and his son on the plain of Konya and makes peace, only for the lord to declare his enmity eternal.

Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Karaman'da bulınmaz togru bir yâr
Velîler çok bile kolmâş u ayyâr

İder kavl ü karâr u 'ahd ü peymân
İçer andlar yalan çok ider inkâr

Begi vü kādîsı şeyh ü müderris
Hîledür işleri hep câru mekkâr

Kazana koysa kaynatsañ bizümle
İligi yaga dir karışma zînhâr

Diyesin mü'min-iseñ dôst olalum
Cevâbıdur benem mü'mîne gaddâr

Hâsa kim Âl-i 'Osmân'dan olasın
Dahı ziyâde olur sıfatı cebbâr

Tekebbür ü fuzûldur bil Karaman
Anuñçun kahr idüpdür anı Kahhâr

In English

1. In Karaman an honest friend is not to be found; even their saints are mostly tricksters and rogues.

2. They give their word, make agreements, pledge and swear; they take false oaths and deny much.

3. Their lord and their kadı, sheikh and teacher: all their work is trickery, (all) are notorious cheats.

4. Were you to put them in one cauldron with us and boil, their marrow would tell the fat, "do not mix."

5. Were you to say "if you are a believer let us be friends", the answer would be "I am treacherous to believers."

6. Above all if you are of the House of Osman, his nature becomes still more tyrannical.

7. Know that Karaman is arrogance and insolence; for this the Subduer has crushed him.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The Plain of Konya

Mehmed Çelebi leaves Bursa with a great army in the seventy-third chapter; Akşehir surrenders first, and then the march turns towards Konya. The lord of Karaman meets them, battle is joined on the plain of Konya, and Mehmed Beg of Karaman and his eldest son Mustafa are captured. Peace is made: Akşehir, Seydişehir, Okluk, Kırşehir, Beyşehir, Sivrihisar, Çamardı and Niğde are left to the Ottomans. Mehmed Çelebi robes the lord of Karaman, gives him a banner, bestows horses, mules and camels and sends him off. But as soon as the lord reaches the far end of the camp he seizes the horses that the grooms were grazing and says: "My enmity with the son of Osman lasts until Doomsday."

A Satire

The work's longest and harshest satire on Karaman runs to seven couplets. In Karaman there is no honest friend; even its saint is a cheat. Lord, kadı, sheikh, teacher, all deal in trickery. The fourth couplet uses an image from common speech: even boiled in one cauldron, Karaman's marrow says to the Ottoman fat "do not mix"; that is, the two sides will under no condition come together. The fifth and sixth couplets turn Karaman's enmity first against believers, then especially against the Ottomans. In the seventh couplet Karaman's arrogance and insolence are punished by God in His attribute "Kahhâr", the Subduer. These couplets widen the breach of pact told in the prose into a claim about a people's character. In such generalisations it is the Ottoman-Karamanid rivalry of the time that speaks, more than any personal hostility. "-âr" is the rhyming sound: yâr, ayyâr, inkâr, mekkâr, zînhâr, gaddâr, cebbâr, Kahhâr.