טקסט ספרותי: ENA 3904.13

טקסט ספרותי ENA 3904.13

מספר מדף: ENA 3904.13

תאריך המסמך: 1172 Hijrī (4 ספטמבר 1758–24 אוגוסט 1759 CE)
שפה עיקרית: Ottoman Turkish

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Fragment of poetry in Ottoman Turkish. Dated: 1172 AH (1758/59 CE). In the introduction to her edition, Jane Hathaway notes: "The document as a whole consists of two poems purportedly by the seventeenth-century Sufi poet known as ʿĀşık ʿÖmer (d. ca. 1119 AH/1707 CE), followed by a poem, possibly written in homage, if not in emulation, by one Yaḥyā Çavuş in 1172 AH/1758 CE. Thus this document may represent a step in Yaḥyā Çavuş’s formation as a poet.... ‘Āşık ʿÖmer is a known figure in Ottoman poetry, although numerous details of his biography are open to debate (Duymaz 2014). The title ʿāşık, literally ‘lover’, refers to a lovelorn poet, though with the additional implication of a lover of God, i.e., a Sufi. ʿĀşık ʿÖmer was unquestionably a mystic, although whether he belonged to a Sufi order is less clear. He had inclinations toward both the Mevlevī and the Bektāshī orders (Ergun 1936, 7, 76, 77; Karasoy and Yavuz 2015, 623; Gülmez 2015). Wandering ʿāşık poets in the Ottoman Empire, Crimea, and Azerbaijan recited their compositions to the accompaniment of the longnecked Turkish stringed instrument known as a saz or bağlama; hence they are often called saz poets, as well. Despite the fame of his poems, ʿĀşık ʿÖmer’s birthdate and provenance are not entirely certain. Various scholars over the past century or so have estimated his birth year as either ca. 1029 AH/1620 CE or ca. 1061 AH/1651 CE, although the earlier date seems to be more widely accepted today (Karasoy and Yavuz 2015, 26, cf. 18, 800; Çavdar 2022, 502). A number of his poems refer to a town called Gezlevi or Gözleve as his birthplace, but confusion arises from the fact that at least two towns of that name existed in the Ottoman Empire and its dependencies: one in the Crimea, known in classical antiquity as Eupatoria (today Yevpatoriya), and one southwest of the central Anatolian city of Konya. Several prominent twentieth-century Turkish scholars believed that ʿĀşık ʿÖmer was a Crimean Tatar—an opinion that still holds in the Crimea today (there is even a statue of him in Yevpatoriya)—or at least that he had been born in the Crimea before settling in the western Anatolian district of Aydın.... In this document, the scribe, possibly Yaḥyā Çavuş himself, has reproduced what purport to be two of ʿĀşık ʿÖmer’s hece poems, both slight variations on the murabbaʿ, or ‘square’, poem comprising multiple quatrains ending in the same word; each example contains four such quatrains. In the first poem, every quatrain ends in the suffix –yuz (‘we are’). In the second poem, each quatrain ends in şimden gerü (‘ever after’ or ‘forevermore’). This is a lovelorn poem in the classic ʿāşık tradition. The object of af- fection is one Meḥmed Shah, who may be a Sufi master but could also be the Ottoman sultan Meḥmed IV (r. 1058–99 AH/1648–87 CE), the first emperor under whom ʿĀşık ʿÖmer saw military service.... In format, this document resembles the genre known in Turkish as cönk, a handwritten, usually anonymous, compilation of poetry by wandering saz poets that never appeared in a formal dīvān. Quite a number of ʿĀşık ʿÖmer’s poems, as well as a number attributed to him, have been discovered in cönks, although I have not been able to find these two poems among any of the known collections of ʿĀşık ʿÖmer’s output. Our document may represent Yaḥyā Çavuş’s attempt at compiling a cönk that, for un- known reasons, he left unfinished. Alternatively, Yaḥyā Çavuş may have been a contributor to a larger cönk that included poems attributed to ʿĀşık ʿÖmer, as well. In that case, the scribe may have been copying down poems recited to him, perhaps from memory, by Yaḥyā Çavuş or some other interlocutor. Such a circumstance could well explain the document’s somewhat unorthodox orthography." (Hathaway, Ottoman-Era Documents from the Cairo Genizah, 391-397)

Collection: Jewish Theological Seminary Library
Historical shelfmarks: ENA 3904, fol. 13; ENA 3904, f. 13
תאריך קלט: In PGP since 2021

How to cite this record:: Jewish Theological Seminary Library, ENA 3904.13. Available online through the Princeton Geniza Project at https://geniza.princeton.edu/documents/33698/ (accessed June 3, 2026).

What's in the PGP

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ENA 3904.13 1

Recto, right column

Recto, left column

Recto, lower right margin, in red ink

Recto, right column

Recto, left column

Recto, lower right margin, in red ink

ENA 3904.13 2

טקסט ספרותי: ENA 3904.13

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ENA 3904.13 1

Recto, right column

Recto, left column

Recto, lower right margin, in red ink

Recto, right column

Recto, left column

Recto, lower right margin, in red ink

ENA 3904.13 2