Karacaoğlan
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Karacaoğlan is a 17th century Turkish folk poet and ashik. His exact dates of birth and death are unknown but it is widely accepted that he was born around 1606 and died around 1680. He lived around the city of Mut near Mersin. His poetry gave a vivid picture of nature, and village life, in Anatolia settlements. This kind of folk poetry, as distinct from the poetry of the Ottoman palace, was rediscovered only after the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923 and then became an important influence on modern lyric poetry, with Karacaoğlan being its foremost exponent.
[edit] Biography
There is very little known about his life. Some say he was born near Mount Kozan, near a village called Varsak. Others suggest that he is from the village of the same name, but in modern day Osmaniye. The Barak tribe of Gaziantep as well as the Çavuşlu tribe of Kilis claim he is from their town. Most, however, believe that he was born near Çukurova and lived among the Turkish tribes in that mountainous region of southern Anatolia. Karacaoğlan was his pseudonym. His real name is thought to be Simayil, Halil or Hasan. According to Hodja Hamdi Efendi of Akşehir, he was an orphan. He left town at an early age. In some of his poetry it is indicated that he took two of his sisters all the way to Bursa or Istanbul. He spent most of his life in Çukurova, Maraş, and Gaziantep. Even though not known with certainity, it is believed that he died in modern day Mersin.
He lived in an era when the Ottoman Empire was under economic and political turmoil. The topics of his poetry reflect the nature in which he was embedded, along with the Turkish nomadic culture of the Toros mountains of which he was a part. The main themes of this poetry stemmed out of nature, love, longing for home, and death. As with other Turkish folk poetry of his time in Anatolia, and in contrast to the poetry of the Ottoman palace, his language was expressive, yet unadorned, direct, and simple. With a big heart, he fell in love with women and wrote poetry about them getting water from a fountain, or making bread. His poetry were in the forms of kosma, türkü, mani, varsagi, ücleme, destan, güzelleme and kocaklama. More than five hundred of his poems have survived to this day.
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