Abdî Efendi: Author of the Lost Tezkire of Amasya's Poets

Among the learned circles of seventeenth-century Amasya there was a madrasa teacher who took it upon himself to gather the poets of his own city into a single book: Abdî Efendi, professor (müderris) of the Abdullah Paşa madrasa. Ottoman literature is well known for its great biographical dictionaries of poets (tezkire), most of them centred on Istanbul; a provincial city's tezkire, written solely to record the poets it had raised and their verse, is a far rarer thing. Abdî Efendi's Tezkiretü'ş-Şu'arâ brought together short biographies and poems of the poets who had flourished in Amasya between 1000 and 1081 (1591-1671), and in its margins it noted the earthquakes and "strange" events that befell the city.

The work no longer survives. Almost everything we know about it comes from the Amasya Tarihi (History of Amasya) of Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar, who found an incomplete copy in Amasya and used it for years. After nearly every poet he quotes from the tezkire, Hüsameddin adds the same rueful note: "Alas, it burned." Abdî Efendi's life, like his book, can only be pieced together from such indirect testimony. His date of birth is unknown; his death, his family, his teachers, his posts and his pupils, however, can be traced through entries scattered across the different volumes of the Amasya Tarihi.

The contents of the tezkire, the poets named in it and the poems quoted by Hüsameddin are treated separately in Abdî Efendi: The Lost Tezkire of Amasya's Poets and Its Poems.

Family and Education

Abdî Efendi was the son of Mustafa Ağa, one of the sipahi cavalrymen of Amasya; his grandfather was named Halil Ağa. Although he came from a military family, he chose the path of learning. His brother Abdülvehhâb Efendi rose by another road: after studying in Amasya he went to Istanbul during the grand vizierate of Köprülü Mehmed Paşa, entered the palace school (Enderun), advanced to the post of secretary to the chief black eunuch (dârüssaâde ağası), and in 1088 (1677-78) is recorded as intendant of the city of Istanbul (şehremini). Of the two brothers, one lived as a professor and judge in the provinces, the other as a palace secretary in the capital.

Abdî Efendi received his first lessons from Hocazâde Abdullah Efendi and completed his studies under Şeyh Ya'kûb Efendizâde Mustafa Efendi. After also benefiting from Fâzıl Hasan Efendi, imam of the Sultan Bayezid Mosque, he became a ders-i âm, a teacher licensed to grant certificates (icazet) and to lecture. Hüsameddin describes him as "learned, accomplished, a poet, a perfect man, a calligrapher of fine ta'lik script, a stylist of prose, and well versed in belles-lettres and history," and explicitly gives him the title "historian of Amasya." Each of these descriptions fits the character of his book: a poet at home with verse, a lover of history who liked to record events, and a scribe with a fine hand.

His marriage tied him to one of the city's old families of seyyids, descendants of the Prophet. His father-in-law was Alevîzâde es-Seyyid eş-Şeyh Ahmed Efendi, who had served as deputy head of the seyyids (nakîbüleşraf kaymakamı) and then retired as sheikh of the Ahî Darbhâneci dervish lodge; Ahmed Efendi died in Zilhicce 1082 (April 1672). In Abdî Efendi's own entry Hüsameddin calls this father-in-law "Kadı es-Seyyid Ahmed Efendi"; the difference in title between the two entries probably reflects different offices held by the same man, but nothing can be said with certainty. Abdî Efendi's son by this marriage, es-Seyyid eş-Şeyh Ali Efendi, was linked through his mother to the seyyid lineage and would later, like his maternal grandfather, become sheikh of the Ahî Darbhâneci lodge.

Years as Professor and Deputy Judge

After receiving his licence, Abdî Efendi taught in turn at the madrasas of Amasya. The most frequently mentioned stage of his career is the professorship of the Abdullah Paşa madrasa, a title that is almost always placed before his name. The Abdullah Paşa Mosque in the Sofular quarter had been built as a mosque and school of hadith (dârülhadis) by Hacısinanbeyzâde Abdullah Paşa, one of the beylerbeys (governors-general) of the reign of Bayezid II; its endowment deed was drawn up in 907 (1501-1502). With its small cells ranged on either side of a covered courtyard and its prayer hall that also served as a lecture room, the building was a place where hadith scholars taught throughout the Ottoman period. Among the learned men who taught hadith there, Hüsameddin names Şermîzâde Takiyyeddin Osman Efendi together with "the celebrated professor Abdî Efendi."

For a time Abdî Efendi also taught at the Kameriyye madrasa in Tokat, and from there passed to judgeships of small towns (kasabat). For much of his life, however, he served in Amasya as deputy judge (naib); Hüsameddin notes that he held this office "repeatedly." His last post was the judgeship of Karahisâr-ı Şarkî (present-day Şebinkarahisar), from which he retired.

The dates of two of his deputyships appear clearly in the chronicle of events in the Amasya Tarihi. In 1065 (1655) a clash in Amasya between the Janissary commander (serdar) and the sipahis grew into bloody disorder and then into a fire; the city's judge vanished and many houses were looted. When Haseki Musa Ağa arrived from Istanbul with an imperial decree to investigate, Kadı Mahmud Efendi emerged from hiding, feigned illness, and appointed Abdî Efendi, then the fetva secretary (emînü'l-fetvâ), as deputy judge of Amasya. Beneath this line Hüsameddin adds a note so that the reader will not confuse him with anyone else: "This Abdî Efendi is the author of the tezkire who wrote of the poets and events of Amasya." The following year, in Şaban 1066 (May-June 1656), "the former deputy judge Abdî Efendi, professor of Abdullah Paşa" again became deputy judge of Amasya. It is also recorded that Handan Ağazâde Ahmed Çelebi, who wrote under the pen name Çâkerî, served as his clerk during his deputyship.

Witness to the Hızır Efendi Affair

That Abdî Efendi did not merely collect poems but also wrote down what happened to his city is shown by the fact that Hüsameddin relies on him in recounting one of the most striking episodes of the period. Around 1070 (1659-60) the mufti of Amasya, Fâzıl Hızır Efendi, was put on trial on the charge of having taken eight hundred purses of akçe from the inhabitants of two districts and from various individuals. In a crowded court one witness after another testified; Hızır Efendi defended himself by saying that these sums had been collected by the officials (ehl-i örf) under the names of "extraordinary levies and fines," and that he himself had taken none of it. The court nevertheless found the testimony sufficient and ruled that the money be recovered from him. The mufti's goods, his property and his library of rare books were sold at auction, and he was exiled to Cyprus together with his sons and his son-in-law.

When Hüsameddin relates that the proceeds of the sale were said, according to rumour, to have ended up in the pocket of Mumcuoğlu, one of the city's men of influence, he names his source in a footnote: "Abdî Efendi writes thus." In the same place he adds that the harsh words used of Hızır Efendi in the decree hardly suited a scholar regarded in his own age as "the master of all." Abdî Efendi's account allows this affair to be seen from inside the city, through the eyes of a man of learning who followed events at close range. The detail also shows how wide a field the tezkire covered: alongside the biographies of poets, Abdî Efendi had also recorded the political upheavals of his town.

Tezkiretü'ş-Şu'arâ

Listing his sources at the beginning of the Amasya Tarihi, Hüsameddin introduces the work as follows: "Tezkire-i Abdî: a literary work compiled by the celebrated professor of Abdullah Paşa, Abdî Efendi of Amasya, containing the poems and very brief biographies of the poets who appeared in Amasya from 1000 to 1081. In its margins he also recorded the earthquakes and strange events that occurred in Amasya. This work was found in Amasya in a very defective state." By this description the tezkire covered roughly three quarters of a century, gave short biographies and samples of verse for each poet, and kept in its margins a kind of city diary of earthquakes and unusual events.

What we know of its contents can be gathered from Hüsameddin's quotations. Among the poets explicitly said to appear in it are clerks, judges, professors and sons of sipahis who lived in the first half of the seventeenth century. One of them is Âzerî İbrahim Efendi, chief clerk of the Amasya court, several times deputy judge of Amasya, who died around 1025 (1616). Abdî Efendi had included in his tezkire Âzerî's exchange of boasts and banter with the poet Âbî. Playing on his pen name Âzerî ("of fire"), he says:
"Dünyâ temeli benim özümdür / Bu kadrimi bilmeyen oğuzdur." (The world's foundation is my essence; whoever does not know my worth is a boor.)
Âbî ("of water") turns the same game around in reply:
"Ne kadar keskin olursa Âzer / Şiddetimle söyünür yakmaz olur." (However fierce the fire may be, under my force it dies out and burns no more.)

Other poets named in the tezkire include Temennâyî Bayram Efendi, who taught Baydawi's Qur'an commentary at the Fethiye Mosque; a Çelebi writing under the pen name Sîmî; Tâlibî, imam of the Hızır Paşa Mosque, known as "Hâfız Bahar"; Mustafa Türâbî Efendi; and Oruçoğlu Siyâmî Ali Efendi. Abdî Efendi's assessments are brief and descriptive: of Temennâyî he says "skilled in the rational and transmitted sciences, a jurist, observant of the law, learned, cultivated, a man of standing," and of Tâlibî "skilled in Arabic and Persian letters, refined, a poet, cheerful, an adornment of gatherings, a man in whom it was always spring." At the end of many entries Hüsameddin notes that he took this information from Abdî, and records with regret that the poems burned with the tezkire. A sentence in the entry on Siyâmî Ali Efendi conveys the scale of the loss: "In Abdî Efendi's Tezkire there was a detailed biography and his poems. Alas, it burned. This much is all that remained in my memory."

The tezkire's value as history was not confined to literature. Sultan Murad IV, returning from the Revan (Yerevan) campaign, came to Amasya by way of Tokat in Cemaziyelahir 1045 (December 1635), spent the night in the mansion of Hoca Ahmed Paşa and toured the city in disguise. On the details and route of this visit, the Sefernâme kept by the palace pages and the Cihâdnâme in the Lâleli Library did not agree. Hüsameddin writes that he preferred the account of the Sefernâme because it was "in accord with the record in Abdî Efendi's Tezkire." When one considers that great chronicles such as those of Vecîhî, Hasanbeyzâde, Kâtip Çelebi's Fezleke and Naîmâ say nothing at all of Murad's stop in Amasya, the value of the records Abdî Efendi kept from within the city becomes all the clearer.

In some places Hüsameddin also mentions a work called the "Mecmua of Abdî Efendi," noting that "a good many poems" of a certain poet were found there and that it too burned. Whether this was the tezkire itself or a separate anthology of poems compiled by Abdî Efendi cannot be determined from the source.

Pupils and Literary Circle

Abdî Efendi's teaching formed the generation of clerks and poets who came after him in Amasya. Most of his pupils, like their teacher, were men who lived by the pen and occupied themselves with verse. Yeniçerizâde Berkî Hasan Çelebi learned literature from him; he became clerk of the Amasya treasury (beytülmal), then divan secretary to Serdarzâde Halil Paşa and divan efendi of the sanjak of Amasya, and lost his life in the disorder of 1099. He is remembered as a musician who played the oud and graced social gatherings. Resîm Ahmed Efendi, son of Mumcu Bâlî, learned Arabic and Persian letters from "Abdî Efendi, professor of Abdullah Paşa, who wrote the tezkire of the poets of Amasya," and calligraphy from Fazlullah Efendi; as divan secretary to Deli Emir Mehmed Paşa he travelled from province to province, and he died in 1112 (1700) as clerk of the endowments of Sultan Bayezid.

One of Resîm's ghazals was preserved in his teacher's tezkire, and Hüsameddin was able to save it. These lines, carrying the voice of a clerk cast into exile, show that Abdî Efendi gave a place in his tezkire to the verse of his own pupil as well:
"İdüb azm-i sefer cânâ esîr-i mihnet oldum ben / Cüdâ düşdüm vatandan mübtelâ-yı firkat oldum ben." (Setting out on a journey, beloved, I became a captive of sorrow; parted from my homeland, I fell prey to separation.)

Zanbak Dedezâde Rûhî İsa Çelebi likewise "acquired manners and learning in the teaching circle of the tezkire's author, the professor Abdî Efendi"; he served as clerk of the market inspectorate and of the sanjak divan, and died around 1112. Yazıcı Civânî Çelebi, in Hüsameddin's words, was "one of the poets of the time of the professor Abdî Efendi," and he too died in the events of 1099. That Hüsameddin says of many poets "he is among the men of the professor Abdî Efendi's tezkire" shows that Amasya's seventeenth-century poets were known as a generation through this book.

Death and Descendants

Abdî Efendi died in Zilhicce 1087 (February 1677), after retiring from the judgeship of Karahisâr-ı Şarkî. The location of his grave is not recorded in the sources. His sons were Mustafa and Halil Efendi, and es-Seyyid el-Hâc Ali Efendi, born of the daughter of Alevîzâde Ahmed Efendi. According to Hüsameddin, the descendants of the first two sons were called the "Müderris Abdîzâdes," and Ali Efendi's line the "Şeyh Alizâdes." This second branch continued to live in Amasya down to Hüsameddin's own day, and members of the family long held the imamates of the Bâlî Bey Mosque in the Acem Ali quarter and of the Abdullah Paşa Mosque.

His son Ali Efendi, following in the footsteps of his maternal grandfather, rose to be deputy head of the seyyids, sheikh of the Ahî Darbhâneci lodge and preacher of the Pervâne Bey Mosque; he died in 1127 (1715). Hüsameddin states that he wrote a collection entitled Sergüzeşt-i Amasya as a continuation (zeyl) of his father's tezkire, and that it was through this collection that the fire and massacre which ravaged Amasya in 1099 (1688) became famous among the people of the city. In that event, caused by Mumcuzâde Seyyid Ahmed Paşa, commander of the seyyids, and those around him, many lives were lost and mansions and inns burned. If one recalls that Berkî, a pupil of Abdî Efendi, and Civânî, his contemporary, both died in this event, it may be said that the son's continuation also recorded the end of the generation found in his father's tezkire.

The Grandson's Continuation

The one who truly carried the tezkire forward was Abdî Efendi's grandson, Şeyh Alizâde es-Seyyid el-Hâc Ahmed Rüşdü Efendi. The son of Ali Efendi, Ahmed Rüşdü obtained his licence and in 1112 (1700), on his father's withdrawal, became Qur'an reciter (cüzhan) of the Abdullah Paşa Mosque and then clerk of the Hüseyin Ağa endowment. When his father died in 1127 he succeeded to the sheikhdom of the Ahî Darbhâneci lodge and the preachership of the Pervâne Bey Mosque, was repeatedly a member of the councils of merchants and notables, and died on the eighteenth of Safer 1159 (March 1746). Hüsameddin describes him as "learned, a preacher, good-natured, of delicate disposition, a poet, a man of composure."

Hüsameddin's most important note is this: Ahmed Rüşdü "continued his grandfather's tezkire of poets, collecting and writing down the poets and events of his own age. This work was found among the books and papers he left." Thus, through the pens of grandfather and grandson, the poets of Amasya were recorded in an unbroken chain from the end of the sixteenth century to the middle of the eighteenth. Hüsameddin says that he learned that Zanbak Dedezâde Rûhî was good company and fond of learned and literary conversation "from the record of Şeyh Alizâde Ahmed Rüşdü Efendi," which shows that the continuation also filled out the lives of poets found in the grandfather's book.

The Loss of the Works

No copy of Abdî Efendi's tezkire is known today. Hüsameddin found it in Amasya as a "very defective," badly incomplete copy, while Ahmed Rüşdü's continuation came to light among the family's books and papers. Hüsameddin used both works for many years, yet throughout the volumes of the Amasya Tarihi he was obliged to write again and again, "alas, it burned." In one entry he says that a ghazal he had seen in Abdî's tezkire "escaped the fire" because he had copied it onto a separate leaf and placed it beside the poet's biography; this note shows that the loss occurred in a fire that also consumed Hüsameddin's own papers.

A large part of Hüsameddin's handwritten notes and collected documents burned in the Taş Musluk fire of 1331 (1912-13), and the author was forced to rewrite the portion of the Amasya Tarihi after the eleventh volume. It is highly probable that the tezkire was lost in this same fire, although Hüsameddin's text does not say explicitly in which fire it burned. Metin Hakverdioğlu, who has studied the Amasya Tarihi as a dictionary of poets, stresses that Hüsameddin took much of his information and many of his verse samples from these two works, and that if either were ever found, the poems of many poets said to have "burned" could be recovered.

Other Men Named Abdî

The name and pen name "Abdî" is extremely common in the history of Amasya, and the tezkire's author must not be confused with the others who bore it. The most important of them is Mevlânâ Abdî Çelebi, who lived in the fifteenth century. This scholar, whose real name was Abdullah, son of Şeyhîzâde Abdülganî Çelebi and known as "Mevlânâ Abdî-i Amâsî," was professor at the Halfet Gazi madrasa, three times mufti of Amasya and the first administrator of Bayezid II's endowments in Amasya, and he died in Ramazan 907 (March 1502). It is this Abdî whom Hüsameddin calls the "master who perfected" Kemalpaşazâde and counts as the teacher of many scholars; he lived roughly two centuries before the author of the tezkire. Kemalpaşazâde therefore cannot be counted among the pupils of Abdî Efendi the tezkire writer.

A second namesake is Şeyhzâde Abdî Efendi, son of İzzeddin Hasan Efendi, sheikh of the Ya'kûb Paşa lodge. This Abdî, who entered into a long dispute with Hüsameddin Efendi over the sheikhdom of the lodge, became professor of Ya'kûb Paşa once the lodge was reclassified as a madrasa, and presented a eulogy to Murad IV, died in 1055 (1645); his poems too appeared in the tezkire. Abdullah Abdî Çelebi of the Müeyyedzâde family (d. 961/1554) and the poet Abdî Efendi of Merzifon, grandfather of Iydî Bayram Efendi, are also different people. The Istanbul Sufi poet Himmetzâde Abdî (1640-1710), for his part, has no connection with Amasya.

Chronology

1045 (1635): Murad IV stops in Amasya on his return from the Revan campaign; the event is recorded in Abdî Efendi's tezkire.

1065 (1655): After the clash and fire in Amasya, Kadı Mahmud Efendi appoints the fetva secretary Abdî Efendi deputy judge of Amasya.

1066 (1656): In Şaban he again becomes deputy judge of Amasya, as professor of Abdullah Paşa.

1070 (1659-60): Trial and exile of the mufti Hızır Efendi; Hüsameddin relates the details of the affair from Abdî Efendi.

1081 (1670-71): Last year of the period covered by the Tezkiretü'ş-Şu'arâ.

1087 (1677): His death in Zilhicce, in retirement from the judgeship of Karahisâr-ı Şarkî.

1099 (1688): The great fire and massacre in Amasya, described in his son Ali Efendi's continuation Sergüzeşt-i Amasya.

1127 (1715): Death of his son es-Seyyid eş-Şeyh Ali Efendi.

1159 (1746): Death of his grandson Şeyh Alizâde Ahmed Rüşdü Efendi, who wrote a continuation of the tezkire.

1331 (1912-13): The Taş Musluk fire that destroyed Hüsameddin's papers.

Bibliography

The following sources were used for this article:

• Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar, Amasya Tarihi, vols. 1-4 and Bakiyye, ed. editorial board, published by Amasya Municipality and Amasya University, 2022 (description of Tezkire-i Abdî; the events of 1045, 1065-1066, 1070 and 1099; the Abdullah Paşa madrasa). amasya.edu.tr
• Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar, Amasya Tarihi, vols. 6-8, published by Amasya Municipality and Amasya University, 2022 (entries on Alevîzâde Ahmed Efendi, Âzerî, Berkî, Civânî, Temennâyî and Tâlibî).
• Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar, Amasya Tarihi, vols. 9-12, published by Amasya Municipality and Amasya University, 2022 (vol. 12 entries "Abdî Efendi-Müderris", "Abdî Çelebi-Mevlânâ Abdullah" and "Abdî Efendi-Şeyhzâde"; entries on Rüşdü Ahmed Efendi, Resîm, Rûhî and Abdülvehhâb Efendi).
• Metin Hakverdioğlu, "Amasya Tarihi'nin Şairler Tezkiresi Yönü", Sosyal Bilimler Araştırmaları 11, Amasya University, 2024.
• M. Baha Tanman, "Dârülhadis Camii", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
• Şerafettin Turan et al., "Kemalpaşazâde", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
• "Abdî, Himmetzâde", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr