Abdîzâde Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar · İKİNCİ BÂB · BİRİNCİ FASIL
Encyclopedia · History of Amasya, Volume 6, p. 118–119 • Edited by: Doç. Dr. Recep Orhan ÖZEL - Doç. Dr. Metin HAKVERDİOĞLU
Çelebi Sultân Mehmed Hân bin Yıldırım Sultân Bâyezîd Hân bin Sultân Murâd-ı Hünkâr bin Sultân Orhân bin Sultân Osmân Şehzâdesi olup 809’da Amasya sarayında doğdu. Birâderi Sultân Murâd-ı Sânî cülûsunda Amasya sarayında ikâmet etdi.
Diğer birâderi Şehzâde Küçük Mustafa Çelebi’nin hurûç ve kıyâmında Amasya kalesinde kâin saraya kaldırıldı. Alâ rivâyetin Bursa’ya celb ve habs edildi. 833’de mat’ûnen vefât etdi. Boğulduğu da mervîdir.
He was a prince, a son of Çelebi Sultan Mehmed Han, son of Sultan Bâyezîd Han the Thunderbolt, son of Sultan Murâd-ı Hünkâr, son of Sultan Orhan, son of Sultan Osman. He was born in 809 [1406-07] in the palace of Amasya. When his brother Sultan Murad II ascended the throne, he was living in the palace of Amasya.
When his other brother, Prince Küçük Mustafa Çelebi, rose up and appeared, he was moved to the palace inside the fortress of Amasya. According to one account, he was brought to Bursa and imprisoned. He died of the plague in 833 [1429-30]. It is also related that he was strangled.
Besides Murad II, Çelebi Mehmed is known to have had four sons: Mustafa, Ahmed, Yûsuf and Mahmud. In Halil İnalcık's article on Murad II, after these four brothers are listed, a short note is added about Ahmed: Ahmed had died in his father's lifetime. When Çelebi Mehmed died in 824 [1421], Murad was seventeen, Mustafa twelve, Yûsuf eight and Mahmud seven. Ahmed's name does not appear in this list of ages. In some studies compiling dynastic genealogies, too, only the information "died at a young age" is given for Ahmed Çelebi.
In this case the story Hüsameddin tells does not agree with the picture given by present-day research. Hüsameddin shows Ahmed alive in 1421, in the palace of Amasya at Murad II's accession, shut in the fortress during Küçük Mustafa's rebellion (1422-23), and dead in 833 [1429-30]. According to İnalcık, however, Ahmed died before 1421. The reader should be cautious before this article.
What Hüsameddin tells resembles what happened to Ahmed's much younger brothers Yûsuf and Mahmud more than to Ahmed. Before he died, Çelebi Mehmed had bequeathed that Yûsuf and Mahmud be sent to the Byzantine emperor to protect his sons' lives; but the vizier Bayezid Pasha did not hand the children over, and this lit the fuse of the Düzmece Mustafa affair. These two princes were later held in Bursa. According to some sources both died in August 1429 and were buried in Bursa in the Green Tomb of their father. In the Green Tomb today, beside Çelebi Mehmed, are the sarcophagi of his sons Mustafa, Mahmud and Yûsuf; there is no sarcophagus in Ahmed's name.
August 1429 falls in the last months of the hijri year 832; this is very close to the date 833 that Hüsameddin gives. It is possible that details such as "brought to Bursa and imprisoned", "died of the plague" and "it is also said he was strangled" are mainly accounts belonging to Yûsuf and Mahmud, and that Hüsameddin also attributed them to Ahmed. This is an inference; there is no decisive document.
The "palace of Amasya" mentioned in the article is the palace where Çelebi Mehmed lived in Amasya in his princely days. Murad II too was born in Amasya in 806 [1404], and when he turned twelve he was sent back to Amasya with the beylik of the province of Rum, which covered the regions of Amasya, Tokat, Sivas, Çorum and Osmancık. Hüsameddin says that during the rebellion the prince was taken from the palace in the city to the palace inside the fortress; this can be read as a measure to keep members of the dynasty under closer watch during a struggle for the throne.
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