Ahmet Emrî Yetkin, whose Arabic odes (kaside) were printed in Cairo and his Turkish religious poems in Ankara, was one of the last Amasya poets to write in quantitative metre (aruz), under the pen name "Emrî". He used Persian too as a language of verse. A scholar who carried his madrasa education into the Republican years, he had for his father the Amasya mufti Abdurrahman Kâmil Efendi. He was born in Amasya at the beginning of 1887 and died there on 6 May 1974. He corresponded with figures such as Ali Nihad Tarlan, Süheyl Ünver, Ahmed Remzi Akyürek and Feridun Nâfiz Uzluk. Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar gave him an entry in Amasya Tarihi, but left it in the middle of its first sentence.

Hüsameddin's Record

The entry opened in the seventh volume under the heading "Emrî Ahmed Efendi-Mecdî-zâde" consists only of this:

Amasyalıdır. Amasya Müftüsü Hâfız Abdurrahman Kâmil Efendi'nin mahdûmudur. Pederinden ikmâl-i tahsîl ederek

In translation: He is from Amasya. He is the son of the Amasya mufti Hâfız Abdurrahman Kâmil Efendi. Having completed his education under his father... The editors of the book note in a footnote that the author left his marginal note on Emrî Ahmed Efendi incomplete. Since Hüsameddin died in 1939, the entry could in any case have seen only the first half of Emrî's life. The record's counterpart on the site is the page Emrî Ahmed Efendi-Mecdîzâde. Because the entry gives the pen name, the father's name and the family name together, it clearly describes Ahmet Emrî Yetkin.

Life

According to Recep Orhan Özel, who draws on the autobiographical note Emrî kept in his own hand, Ahmed Emrî was born in Amasya on the eve of Friday, 18 Cemâziyelevvel 1304 (February 1887). In the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi Muammer Ülker records that his name and pen name give the year of his birth by the abjad reckoning; the encyclopedia gives the year as 1886-87, Raşit Çavuşoğlu as 1887. He attended primary school under Hacı Ömerzâde Mehmet Şükrü Efendi and received his diploma in 1899; after two and a half years at the rüşdiye (middle school) he left it and entered the Bekir Paşa Madrasa, where his father taught, receiving his licence (icazet) there in 1908. He also attended the lessons of his uncle Mustafa Sâdık Efendi and of Köprülü Mustafa Tevfik and Köprülü Ârif Fâzıl Efendi, and studied the law of inheritance (ferâiz) with Kapancızâde Hâfız Şerif Efendi.

He completed the temporary teachers' college (Dârülmuallimîn) opened in Amasya and in 1911, through an examination, became a dersiâm (licensed public lecturer). His working life began with primary school teaching; after serving as a clerk at the Amasya Sharia Court, in 1915 he became teacher of Turkish and composition at the Dârü'l-hilâfe Madrasa and taught there and at the İmam-Hatip school until 1925. After the madrasas were closed he worked as an assessment clerk and as storekeeper of the Public Works department, and from 1930 until his retirement in 1943 he was a labour clerk in Public Works. When his elder brother Mehmet Sabri Yetkin was elected mufti in 1942, Emrî too was among the candidates, but he withdrew. He died on 6 May 1974. According to Özel he was buried in the Tekirdede Cemetery on the Suluova road, according to Ülker in the new cemetery near Kültepe; the two names may refer to the same cemetery. The poem inscribed on his gravestone was composed by Mehmed Çavuşoğlu, who gave the date of his death in the chronogram line "İrciî emri ile gitti bekāya Emrî".

Circle and Letters

Emrî spent his whole life in Amasya, but through his letters he reached a wide circle. He corresponded with presidents of religious affairs such as Ahmed Hamdi Akseki, Ömer Nasuhi Bilmen and Lütfi Doğan, and with scholars and writers such as İbnülemin Mahmud Kemal İnal, Ali Nihad Tarlan, Süheyl Ünver, Feridun Nâfiz Uzluk, Mustafa Âsım Köksal and Bekir Sıdkı Sencer. Some of the notebooks containing drafts of his letters are in libraries in Amasya. In a letter of 1963, written after reading his Persian poem Gül-i Sad-berg, Ali Nihad Tarlan found the work perfect in "metânet, selâset ve selîka" (firmness, fluency and taste); Süheyl Ünver too, in the notes he kept after meeting him in Amasya, calls him "Türkiyemiz'in sayılı, Arapça ve Farsça bilen yegâne iyi yetişmiş âlimi" (one of the rare, uniquely well-trained scholars of our Turkey who know Arabic and Persian). İbnülemin informed him in a verse reply that, since he received the autobiography Emrî sent for Son Asır Türk Şairleri only after the book had been printed, he could not include him in the work.

His friendship with Ahmed Remzi Akyürek, the last sheikh of the Üsküdar Mevlevi lodge, is also known. Akyürek wrote a taştir (an expansion inserting new lines into each couplet) of Emrî's twenty-three-couplet poem "İbrete Sâik Bir Nazm-ı Râik" in 1934, and after his visit to Amasya in 1936 sent from Üsküdar to "Müftî-zâde Şâ'ir Emrî Efendi" a ghazal headed "Amasya İçin" (For Amasya). This ghazal has been published in the Poems of Amasya series. Yakup Şafak has shown that a poetry miscellany numbered 1645 in the Amasya Beyazıt Library, attributed in the records to Akyürek, in fact belonged to Emrî; the miscellany contains poems collected from Mevlevi poets and short notes on Amasya, but none of Emrî's own poems.

Works

His printed works are Tuhfetü'l-ihvân (Cairo 1956), consisting of three Arabic odes, and Sübha-i Emrî (Ankara 1971), which gathers his Turkish religious poems and appeared with commendations by Ömer Nasuhi Bilmen and İbnülemin Mahmud Kemal. Several of his poems were published in the journals Mahfil and İ'tisâm. Among the works that remained in manuscript are the hundred-couplet Persian Gül-i Sad-berg; Nağamâtü'l-anâdil, an Arabic commentary on the examples in Birgivî's Avâmil; Mecma'u'l-elkâb, explaining a hundred epithets; Kelimâtü'l-ekâbir, collecting sayings of great Muslims; Hizânetü'l-cevâhir, explaining a hundred sayings of Ali; Tuhfe-i Emrî, a translation of Ibn Arabi's prayer; Müntehabât, a selection of wise sayings; and Mecmûa-i Eş'âr-ı Emrî Yetkin, in which he collected his poems in his own hand. Researchers have not been able to locate some of the works named in the sources.

His Poetry

Copyright note: Since Ahmet Emrî Yetkin died in 1974, his poems are protected by copyright until the end of 2044; for this reason they cannot be published on separate pages. Below, only two couplets are quoted in order to introduce his poetry.

Emrî wrote in aruz and in the forms of classical poetry: supplication (münâcât), praise of the Prophet (na't), response poems (nazire), poems built on another poet's line (tazmin), verse translation, and above all poems of religious and moral counsel. In 2021 Raşit Çavuşoğlu published the unpublished response poems and tazmins from the poet's notebooks. Among them are response poems to ghazals by Ayaşlı Es'ad Muhlis Pasha, Adanalı Ziya, Ahmed Remzi Akyürek and Tâhirülmevlevî, a poem built on a line of Feridun Nâfiz Uzluk, and five response poems written in the same metre and rhyme with the refrain "-in varsa" (if you have). The first of these five is dated 21 July 1955; its opening couplet and pen-name couplet read:

Olursun matlaba vâsıl delîl ü rehberin varsa
Çıkarsın zirve-i 'izz ü kemâle şehperin varsa
Oku bu nazm-ı Emrî'yi hemân yaz durma bir lahza
Nefâ'is kaydına mahsûs yanında defterin varsa

In prose: If you have a guide, a leader, you reach your goal; if you have strong wings, you rise to the summit of honour and perfection. Read this poem of Emrî; if you have beside you a notebook set aside for recording fine sayings, do not pause for a moment, write it down at once. In the opening couplet "şehper" is the strongest flight feather of a bird; with this word the poet describes the spiritual strength that will carry a person high. The pen-name couplet ties the advice to an invitation to the reader and asks that the whole poem be read as a poem of counsel. Çavuşoğlu says that it cannot be determined whether the five response poems were written to another poet's poem or to the poet's own.

Family

His father, the Amasya mufti Mecdîzâde Abdurrahman Kâmil Efendi (1850-1941), is known for his sermon during the War of Independence and his membership of the Society for the Defence of Rights; his poetry is described in the article Abdurrahman Kâmil Efendi: Poet and Works. His elder brother Mehmet Sabri Yetkin (1884-1963) was mufti of Amasya for twenty years and also wrote poetry; his life is on the page Sabrî. His younger brother Mustafa Niyazi Yetkin served as a preacher and died in 1959. The family came from Crimea, was called Mecdîzâde because it first settled in Mecitözü, and took the surname Yetkin in 1934. Muammer Ülker, regarded as Emrî's pupil and spiritual son, later became director of the Süleymaniye Library and wrote his entry in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi.

Chronology

18 Cemâziyelevvel 1304 (February 1887): Born in Amasya.

1908: Receives his licence from the Bekir Paşa Madrasa.

1911: Becomes a dersiâm.

1915: Becomes teacher of Turkish and composition at the Dârü'l-hilâfe Madrasa.

1934: Ahmed Remzi Akyürek writes a taştir of his poem "İbrete Sâik Bir Nazm-ı Râik".

1943: Retires as labour clerk in Public Works.

1956: Tuhfetü'l-ihvân is printed in Cairo.

1971: Sübha-i Emrî is printed in Ankara.

6 May 1974: Dies in Amasya.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Books

Online sources