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Bu mağara sadece sarkıtlardan ibaret.

Bu mağara sadece sarkıtlardan ibaret.
This cave consists only of stalactites.
From Lesson 439:Composition with nouns (-dan ibaret)·Turkish

Questions & Answers about Bu mağara sadece sarkıtlardan ibaret.

Why does sarkıtlardan have the ablative suffix (-dan)?
The word ibaret means "consisting of" or "made up of," and it always requires the preceding noun or phrase to take the ablative case. You can think of it as meaning "composed from" something.
Where is the verb in this sentence? Why isn't it ibarettir?
The verb is implied. Because ibaret is an adjective, it needs the "to be" copula suffix (-tir) to form a complete predicate in formal Turkish, making it ibarettir. However, in everyday speech and informal writing, this third-person suffix is very often dropped.
Does the noun before ibaret always have to be plural?
No, it depends entirely on what makes up the object. Here, the cave is made of many stalactites, so we use the plural sarkıtlar before the ablative -dan. If a book consisted of just a single introduction, you could use a singular noun like sadece bir girişten ibaret.
How does the position of sadece change the meaning here?
In Turkish, modifiers like sadece (only) usually emphasize the word immediately following them. By placing it right before sarkıtlardan, the sentence means the cave contains only stalactites and nothing else. If you moved it to the very beginning (Sadece bu mağara...), it would instead mean that only this cave has stalactites, while other caves do not.

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