The praise of the Prophet that Mehmet Hulusi Er sang in Zigala on 5 July 1943 did not fit into a single section of the disc. The catalogue gives it two disc numbers, 1109/A-1 and 1109/A-2; of the four pieces Er sang that day, it is the only one spread over two sections. The title on the card also sets the names of two genres side by side: "medhiye", meaning praise, and, in brackets, "mersiye", usually used in the sense of an elegy. Nothing beyond the first line has been published, and the melody has stayed outside the TRT repertoire.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not found under the Amasya region in the TRT repertoire
  • Source person: Mehmet Hulusi Er; farmer, year of birth on the card Rumi 1320, from the village of Uygur in the Ezine subdistrict of central Amasya; "saz" in square brackets in the instrument column
  • Place and date of collection: the village of Zigala (today Aydınca), Amasya; place name in square brackets in the catalogue, date 5 July 1943
  • Collected by: Halil Bedii Yönetken and Muzaffer Sarısözen of the Ankara State Conservatory, with the technician Rıza Yetişen
  • Published source: Celal Volkan Kaya, Ankara Devlet Konservatuvarı'nın Halk Müziği Alan Araştırmaları Kataloğu, İTÜ, 2014; recording list no. 3594
  • Location in the archive: Folklore Archive, disc 1109/A-1 and 1109/A-2
  • Genre: mersiye; praise of the Prophet Muhammad
  • Mode, rhythm: not on the card
  • Lyrics and music: recorded as anonymous; no poet's name appears in the title
  • Source link: there is no TRT entry; Kaya's thesis (İTÜ open access)

Lyrics

From the card, the catalogue gives only the opening line:

Cemi dertlere derman Muhammet

"Cemi", of Arabic origin, means "all, every"; the line ("Muhammad, the cure for all troubles") names the Prophet as the remedy for every ill. This agrees with the description "medhiye" in the title. Why the word "mersiye" was added in brackets, however, is not explained on the card. The rest of the medhiye appears in no printed edition; the sound recording spread over two sections is on disc 1109 in the Folklore Archive handed over to Hacettepe. The card data of the Zigala recordings are known from the copies kept at TRT; Kaya states that the original cards of several provinces, Amasya among them, could not be consulted, and that the information for these provinces was taken from photocopies of cards prepared at a later date.

Story

The collecting team is known to have spent the whole of 5 July in Zigala: after working in Amasya on 4 July the team went out to the village, and returned to the town on 6 July. From whom Er learned the medhiye, and on which days or at which gatherings it was sung in the village, is mentioned in no publication. Er's home is written on the card as the village of Uygur; according to the subdistrict information added by Kaya, this village, like Girap, the village of Davut Aslan and Mehmet İnan, belongs to the Ezine subdistrict.

Musical Features

The length of the recording is not given in the catalogue; what we have are the two section numbers. The number 1109/A-2 appears in the catalogue once more: the folk song "Bayburt", which Er sang immediately afterwards, is also entered in the same section, but with a question mark; Kaya places a question mark beside information whose accuracy he doubts. There is no note on the card about the scale, rhythm or range. The word "saz" in Er's instrument column is in square brackets, and whether the medhiye was sung with the saz or with the voice alone is not stated separately.

Performers and Recordings

In Zigala, Er gave the recordings "Merhaba: Perişan göynümü sen inşad ettin", "Kızılırmak: Allah Allah dedik bindirdik ata", this medhiye and "Bayburt", in that order. The song recorded under the name Kızılırmak entered the TRT repertoire as no. 1893 and is described on the page Allah Allah Dedik Ata Bindirdik; Bayburt is also treated on its own page. At the end of the same side of the disc comes the deyiş sung by Davut Aslan and Mehmet İnan, entered on the card as "Mersiye (Garip'ten)"; it too passed into the repertoire, as Kaf u Nun Hitabı İzhar Olmadan. The same side of the disc thus holds two separate recordings bearing the name "mersiye". No singer of the medhiye other than Er has entered the records. Amasya's melodic repertoire, reaching from the villages to the town, is treated as a whole in The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources