"Geldiğiniz evler dol'olsun nurdan", may the houses you have come to be filled with light: the semah opens with a blessing on the house a guest has entered, then names one by one the figures on which the cem, the Alevi gathering, rests: Şah-ı Merdan, the saints, the Forty, the Twelve Imams, Pir Sultan Abdal. Âşık Musa Aslan of Merzifon sang this deyiş for the collecting team of the Ankara State Conservatory on 7 or 8 July 1943. The team wrote it down as "Kırklar Zamahı", in three sections named ağırlama, yeldirme and "garipler", and added the note "[Dedem Oğlu'ndan]", from Dedem Oğlu, beside the title. Its TRT repertoire number is 4605, and its second name "Kırklar Semahı – Gönüller Semahı".

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: TRT Turkish Folk Music repertoire 4605 (kırık hava section)
  • Region: Amasya, Merzifon
  • Source performer: Âşık Musa Aslan; the performer is also the source
  • Collected by: Ankara State Conservatory (Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen, Rıza Yetişen)
  • Date and place of collection: 7/8 July 1943, Merzifon; conservatory catalogue no. 3659, records 1121/B[-1] and 1122/A-1, titled "Kırklar Zamahı a. Ağırlama b. Yeldirme c. Garipler [Dedem Oğlu'ndan]: Vardığımız evler dolalsın nurdan"
  • Transcribed by: Altan Demirel
  • Mode: Hüseynî scale; final and closing note La
  • Metre: 9/8+4/4 in the repertoire data, with free-metre passages in the notation; only 9/8 in Demircioğlu's table
  • Range: Sol to the upper Sol, eight notes
  • Genre: semah
  • Words: the pen name "Dedemoğlu" appears in the final section, and the conservatory record sheet also gives the words to Dedem Oğlu. The repertoire data have no field for a lyricist.
  • Music: anonymous
  • TRT link: as TRT has no public page for individual repertoire items, the catalogue data, lyrics and three pages of notation of no. 4605 can be seen on Repertükül; the page also carries an audio file of the work.
  • Overview article: The Melody of the Yeşilırmak

Lyrics

The stanzas keep the order of notation no. 4605. In lowering the capitals of the notation, dialect forms such as "dol'olsun", "sofrayu" and "kokuladım" were preserved. Lines marked "Serbest" in the notation, sung without a fixed metre, are shown on a separate line in italics.

Geldiğiniz evler dol'olsun nurdan
Biz de böyle gördük uludan pirden
Yardımcımız olsun ol Şah-ı Merdan
(Serbest) Gelsin hizmet ehli semah eylesin
Erenler önünde uyuyup yattım
Güher dünyasında deryaya battım
Kırkların önünde bir semah tuttum
(Serbest) On iki imam Şah-ı Merdan önünde
Ben de bilir idim kendi halimi
Şükür kokuladım cennet gülünü
Serdiler sofrayu sundum elimi
On iki imam Şah-ı Merdan önünde
Semah eyleyenler haslar hasıdır
Semah eylemeyen Hakk'ın nesidir
Abdal Pir Sultan'ım er nefesidir
(Serbest) Gelsin hizmet ehli semah eylesin
Ya Muhammed Mustafa
Ya Aliyyel Murtaza
Hasan Hüseyin aşkına
Yardım eyle düşküne
Zeynel Abidin aşkına
Ger derdime derman eyle
Gel Hakk'tan dilek dile
Mehdi Sahib-i Zaman gele
Dedemoğlu secde kıla
Ger derdime derman eyle

The first quatrain is a greeting: may the houses you have come to be filled with light; this is how we saw the path, from the elders and from the pir; may Şah-ı Merdan, "king of the brave", the name by which Ali is called, be our helper. The "hizmet ehli" are those who hold an office in the cem; in the definition Yücel quotes, the semah is one of the twelve services of the cem and counts as a form of worship. The last line of the quatrain therefore reads as a summons: let those who hold the services come forward and turn the semah.

In the second and third quatrains the voice passes to the first person. The singer lay down to sleep before the saints, sank into a sea in the world of "güher", that is of the jewel, and stood up for a semah before the Forty; he knew his own state, thank God he smelled the rose of paradise, and when the cloth was spread he reached out his hand. All of this happens before the Twelve Imams and Şah-ı Merdan. The mention of the Forty side by side with the spread cloth recalls the account of the Prophet's ascension (miraj) and the Assembly of the Forty, regarded in Alevism as the origin of the cem and the semah; one of the studies Yücel draws on is devoted to exactly this subject. The deyiş does not tell that story outright; it only borrows its words.

The fourth quatrain counts those who turn the semah as the chosen of the chosen and asks of the one who does not, "what is he to God?". The line that follows, "Abdal Pir Sultan'ım er nefesidir", ties the words of the semah to the breath, the nefes, of Pir Sultan Abdal. The final section in seven-syllable lines is a supplication: it calls on Muhammad Mustafa and Ali al-Murtaza, asks help for the fallen for the love of Hasan and Hüseyin and a cure for sorrow for the love of Zeynel Abidin; it prays to God for the coming of the Mahdi, the Lord of the Age, and the singer names himself with "Dedemoğlu secde kıla", let Dedemoğlu bow down. "Ger" here seems less the conjunction "if" than a filler that lends the words weight.

In the notation the pen name appears only in this last section; the four eleven-syllable quatrains name no poet, and the fourth rests its words on Pir Sultan. The conservatory's note "from Dedem Oğlu" is attached to the piece as a whole, but the record sheet does not reveal whether the earlier sections belong to the same poet. Yunus Koçak, who presents Dedemoğlu as an Alevi bard of eighteenth-century Central Anatolia, publishes from the registers of the Hasan Dede lodge a nefes by him whose lines "Hasan Hüseyin aşkına", "Gel Hak'tan dileğin dile" and "Dedemoğlu secde kıla" make it largely the same as this final section. That in 1943 the team ascribed the words by name to a poet other than the minstrel who sang them suggests that they were already regarded as the work of an older poet; for this reason the text is given in full, as it stands in the repertoire.

Story

The Kırklar Zamahı did not fit on one record side and ran over from side B of record 1121 to side A of 1122. The team worked in Merzifon on 7 and 8 July and took down a series of deyiş, semahs and songs from Musa Aslan over those two days; the catalogue enters two more of his semahs on 1122/A-2, "Alaçam Zamahı", and 1122/B-1, "Yalel Samah". From the spellings "zamah" and "samah" in the catalogue one can tell that the word went onto paper as it struck the team's ears, in the local pronunciation. No printed tradition, on the other hand, tells who composed the semah or on what occasion.

The name of the Forty turns up in three different places in the 1943 Amasya collection. In Zigala Âşık Davut Aslan sang a "Kırklar Semahı (Ağırlama ve Yeldirme)", and on 9 July in Gümüşhacıköy Bektaş Yıldız recorded a "Gırklar Zamahı" and Kazım Aygül a "Kırklar Zamahı" with different words. Of these, the only one to enter the repertoire under that name is the one Musa Aslan sang. The "Gönüller Semahı" in the repertoire title, on the other hand, does not occur in Musa Aslan's entry in the conservatory list; that name was given to Davut Aslan's semah, which entered the repertoire as no. 4604.

Musical Features

The semah opens with a four-bar instrumental passage in 9/8. This comes from Haluk Yücel, who analyses the work in two separate studies; his 2021 article on Musa Aslan's nine works adds that the melody frequently makes room for free-metre passages and lively transitions. The scale is Hüseynî; 9/8, 4/4 and free metres are used together, and the mode does not change. Seconds and thirds are heard most in its motifs. Yücel's 2023 study repeats the same findings and gives the four opening bars, played by the saz, the name "bağlantı", a linking passage.

The range runs eight notes, from the lower Sol to the upper Sol, with both the final and the closing note on La. In both studies Yücel writes that the words consist of four stanzas sung to the same tune; how the seven-syllable final section of the notation fits this count is not explained. On metre the sources part ways: the repertoire data give 9/8+4/4, while Nail Demircioğlu's table has only 9/8. Demircioğlu lists the work as "Geldiğiniz Evler Dolu Olsun Nurdan", attached to Merzifon and in Hüseynî.

Performers and Recordings

The repertoire data enter the source performer in the "performed by" field, and the documented performance is likewise the record Musa Aslan made in Merzifon. It is not stated to which recording the audio file playable in the online archive where the notation is published belongs. Haluk Yücel states that the data of his 2023 study were drawn from the TRT Turkish Folk Music archive and from the "Amasya Türküleri" CD prepared by the TRT Music Department; the article does not list which works appear on the CD, or in whose voices. No later interpreter of the semah is named in the sources.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Other sources

Online sources