"Kâf u nûn hitâbı izhâr olmadan / Biz bu kâinatın ibtidâsıyız": "before the command of Kâf and Nûn was made manifest, we were the beginning of this universe." According to his entry in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, this opening couplet by Edib Harâbî, a Bektashi poet of the late Ottoman period, was known by heart by all Bektashis and recited in their lodges. This nefes by an Istanbul poet passed onto the Ankara State Conservatory's discs on 5 July 1943 from the voices of Âşık Davut Aslan and Mehmet İnan in the village of Zigala (today Aydınca) in Amasya. In the TRT repertoire it carries number 4603, sits in the kırık hava section and has its subject entered as "hymn". The repertoire title writes the first words run together as "Kafu'nun"; the correct form is "Kâf u Nûn".

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: TRT Turkish Folk Music repertoire 4603 (kırık hava section)
  • Region: Amasya; in the conservatory catalogue the place of recording is estimated as Zigala (Aydınca)
  • Source performers: Âşık Davut Aslan and Mehmet İnan, who are also the performers
  • Collected by: Ankara State Conservatory (Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen, Rıza Yetişen)
  • Date of collection: 5 July 1943; in the conservatory catalogue no. 3597, disc 1109/A-4, titled "Mersiye (Garip'ten): Kâf nun kitabi ızhar olmadan"
  • Transcribed by: Altan Demirel
  • Mode: Uşşak scale; final and closing note La
  • Metre: 2/4
  • Range: La to Re, four notes
  • Type: deyiş (Bektashi nefes); subject given in the repertoire as "hymn"
  • Words: Edib Harâbî (1853-1916); the explanatory note to the repertoire score also attributes the words to Harâbî. As the poet died before 1956, the words are not under copyright.
  • Music: anonymous
  • TRT link: as TRT has no open repertoire page for individual works, the data, lyrics and glossary of score no. 4603 can be read on Repertükül.

Lyrics

The text is taken from score no. 4603. The words, written in capitals in the score, have been set in ordinary case, and length marks have been added to help with pronunciation.

Kâf u nûn hitâbı izhâr olmadan
Biz bu kâinatın ibtidâsıyız
Kimseler vâsıl-ı dîdâr olmadan
Biz Kâbe-i kavseynin ev ednâsıyız
Yok iken Âdem'le Havvâ âlemde
Hak ile hak idik sırr-ı müphemde
Bir gececik mihman kaldık Meryem'de
Hazreti İsa'nın öz babasıyız
"Küntü kenz" sırrının olduk âgâhı
Ayn'el-yakîn bildik Cemâlullah'ı
Ey hoca bizdedir sırr-ı ilâhî
Biz Hacı Bektaş'ın fukarasıyız
Bize "peder" dedi tıfl-ı Mesîhâ
"Rabbi ernu" diye çağırdı Musa
"Len terânî" diyen idik biz sana
Biz Tûr-i Sînâ'nın tecellâsıyız
Zâhidâ âşinâmız "innâ fetahnâ"
Harâbî kemteri serseri sanma
Bir kılı kırk yaran kâmiliz ammâ
Pîr Balım Sultan'ın budalasıyız

Each stanza of the nefes builds the same claim from a different starting point: the "we" who speak existed before creation. "Kâf u nûn" are the two Arabic letters of "kün", the command "Be"; they point to God creating by saying "Be". The first stanza reads: before the command "Be" was heard, we were the beginning of this universe; before anyone had attained the sight of God's face, we were at the station of "kâb kavseyn ev ednâ". According to the explanatory note to the repertoire score, this last term alludes to the Prophet drawing near to God during the Ascension "at a distance of two bow-lengths, or nearer still".

The second stanza says that while Adam and Eve did not yet exist, "we" were "with the Truth, as truth", inside an obscure mystery; "we" were a guest in Mary for one night and became "the very father of Jesus". In the third, it is the dervishes of Hacı Bektaş who have grasped the secret of creation recalled by the saying "küntü kenz", "I was a hidden treasure", and who have known the beauty of God with "ayn'el-yakîn", the certainty of sight. The fourth stanza recalls Moses' plea on Mount Sinai: it was again "we" who answered Moses, when he said "My Lord, show Yourself to me", with "You shall never see Me" (len terânî), and "we" are the manifestation on Sinai. In the score the plea is written "Rabbi ernu"; its Qur'anic form is "Rabbi erinî".

In the last stanza the poet addresses the zealot, the pious man bound to outward forms: the verse we know is "innâ fetahnâ" ("We have granted you a clear victory"); do not take us for ruined, worthless vagabonds; we are perfected men who split a hair forty ways, yet we are the "budala" of Pîr Balım Sultan. Here the word "harâbî" enters the line in its sense of "ruined", and it is also the poet's pen name. "Budala" is the plural of "abdal", in Bektashi usage the dervish who has withdrawn from the world; Balım Sultan is regarded as the order's second founder after Hacı Bektaş. Throughout the text "we" is said in place of "I". In Sufi language this "we" can be understood as the perfect human being and those who follow his path; this is a reading the sources themselves do not comment on.

Story

When, and on what occasion, the nefes was written is not known. What is known concerns the poet and the place of the nefes in Bektashi lodges. Harâbî, whose real name was Ahmed Edib, was born in Istanbul; at about seventeen he became a disciple of Mehmed Ali Hilmi Dedebaba, sheikh of the Şahkulu lodge at Merdivenköy, and he worked as a clerk in Çanakkale and Preveze and for many years as a ship's scribe in the navy. Manuscript copies of his divan are held at the Süleymaniye Library and at the Atatürk Library of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. The encyclopedia gives the poet's year of death as 1916; the explanatory note to the repertoire score says 1917.

There is no information on how the nefes reached Amasya. The heading on the collection slip also leaves two questions. The first is the name "mersiye": in the Alevi-Bektashi tradition this word is mostly given to mourning poems recited for Karbala, yet Karbala is not mentioned in the nefes. The second is the note "Garip'ten", "from Garip". It may indicate that the nefes was ascribed to a poet with the pen name Garip; but the same catalogue also contains a piece called "Garip Makamı", taken down a day later in Amasya from Osman Çevikçe, and "Garip" may also be the name of a tune here. Which is meant cannot be told from the slip. The pen name "Harâbî" in the words, however, plainly identifies the author of the text.

Musical Features

In his 2023 study of Alevi-Bektashi elements in Amasya songs, Haluk Yücel publishes and analyses the score of this work. According to him, the motifs that make up the melody use mainly seconds and thirds; at the start there is an instrumental interlude of thirteen bars played by the saz. It is in the Uşşak scale and in 2/4, with no change of mode or metre. The range is four notes, from La to Re. The words consist of five stanzas sung to the same tune.

Nail Demircioğlu also counts the work among Amasya's Uşşak-type songs and gives the same values: final La, metre 2/4, range La to Re. The narrow four-note space allows the long eleven-syllable lines to be heard word by word, syllable by syllable; the tune does not stand in front of the words. The same range is found in "Ben Bir Çakı Bıçağım" and "Değirmen Önünde Bir Böyük Tarla", and all three are counted among the recordings made at Zigala in 1943.

Performers and Recordings

On the same day Âşık Davut Aslan and Mehmet İnan sang for the team, along with pieces such as "Rast Geldi Bir Mahbubu Âlem", "Cemal", "Keklik", "Söyleyim Dinleyim", "Leylü Neha Arz Ederdim" and "Men Aref", the lament made for Molla Mustafa of Sarcalan village and his son; in the repertoire this lament is no. 4599, "Değirmen Önünde Bir Böyük Tarla". The Gönüller Semahı that Davut Aslan sang alone also entered the repertoire as no. 4604 under the title "Yüce Dağ Başında Koyun Güderken". Haluk Yücel's study counts Âşık Davut Aslan and Mehmet İnan among the source performers of Amasya's works with Alevi-Bektashi content in the repertoire. There is no published information on later singers of the nefes to this Amasya tune, or on disc recordings.

Amasya's folk songs, together with its deyiş and semah, are the subject of The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Other sources

Online sources