Kerem is a pen name with a single koşma recorded in the Merzifon Cönkü. The article Metin Hakverdioğlu published in 2019 gives this poem under the heading "Kerem's poems written in syllabic metre", but does not state which Kerem is meant. In Turkish folk literature the name recalls above all the lover-hero of the story of Kerem and Aslı; on the other hand, there are also other minstrels who used the same pen name. This page brings together the poem in the cönk and the possibilities concerning its author's identity.

The Poem in the Merzifon Cönkü

The koşma on page 106 of the cönk begins with the line "Elâ gözlerine kurbân olduğum" (you whose hazel eyes I would die for) and proceeds with the refrain "ağlarım" (I weep): the lover says he burns and weeps with the beloved's sorrow, that he wants to tell his state to the roses, but weeps again when he sees the roses in the beloved's hand or beside strangers. The opening line is a form of address used by many minstrels in folk poetry and is not enough by itself to distinguish the poet. The refrain "ağlarım" suits the plaintive mood of the songs attributed to Kerem. The article published only the first quatrain of the poem; this quatrain is given on a separate page in this category, with its original text, a modern Turkish rendering and commentary.

Connection with Amasya

The poem's connection with Amasya is that it appears in this cönk, which is thought to have been compiled in Merzifon. When introducing another cönk of the Amasya region, the Amasya Cönkü published by Şahin Köktürk in 2007, Hakverdioğlu also notes that this work contains Âşık Kerem's story of Kerem and Aslı. The appearance of the name Kerem in both Amasya cönks shows that the Kerem and Aslı tradition was loved in this region and recorded in cönks.

State of the Sources and Discussion

According to Fikret Türkmen's entry in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, Kerem and Aslı is the Turkish folk story with the largest number of manuscript and printed copies, and cönks mostly contain verse pieces belonging to this story. The story is thought not to go back earlier than the sixteenth century and most probably to have taken shape in Azerbaijan and Eastern Anatolia. The poems in the story are spoken by the hero, and each is tied to an episode; a koşma with the pen name Kerem may therefore belong not to a historical poet but to the tradition of the story. Whether the koşma in the cönk is found in the known variants of this story could not be determined.

The Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, on the other hand, mentions an Âşık Kerem born in 1885 in the village of Toklumen in Kırşehir and died in 1940, a son of the minstrel Âşık Said of Kırşehir; it records that only one poem and one exchange of verses with his father survive from this minstrel, and that in his poem he plays on the Arabic letters. Since Hakverdioğlu estimates the cönk to be about a hundred years old, it is not impossible in terms of time for this Kerem's poem to have entered the cönk, but there is no information showing that the two poems are the same. The authorship of the koşma in the cönk is thus uncertain; the strongest possibility is that it is a song belonging to the Kerem and Aslı tradition.

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