Bayezid II governed Amasya as a prince from 1454-55 until he came to the throne in 1481. During these years he gathered scholars, calligraphers and poets around him at his palace in the city; the calligrapher Şeyh Hamdullah and his treasurer Tâcî Bey are the best-known members of this circle. Bayezid himself wrote poetry in Turkish and Persian under the pen name Adlî. As sultan he kept his ties with Amasya, and his mosque complex on the bank of the Yeşilırmak and the kasides Mihrî Hatun sent to him are traces of that bond.
Adlî's poems are published one by one in this section on the basis of the edition of the Adlî Dîvânı prepared by Yavuz Bayram and issued by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The poems published include religious pieces such as the tevhid, münâcât and na't, together with ghazals. The tevhid and münâcât treat the unity of God and the supplication of the helpless servant, the na't the poet's love for the Prophet. Love, separation and Sufi themes predominate in the ghazals, where the familiar images of divan poetry, the rose and the nightingale, the prayer niche and the cross, the assembly of pre-eternity and the wine cup, are reworked by the poet-sultan.
Each article contains the original text of the poem, a couplet-by-couplet rendering and a literary and historical commentary. The commentary explains the metre and rhyme scheme, the figures of speech and the concepts in the poem, and notes significant differences between the manuscripts. The sultan's life and his years in Amasya are described in the Princes section, and his mosque complex in the city in the Places to Visit section.
