Akşemseddin, remembered as the teacher of Mehmed II (the Conqueror), is usually recalled in Ottoman memory together with the conquest of Istanbul. The letters he wrote to the young sultan during the hardest days of the siege, the sermon he delivered at the first Friday prayer in Hagia Sophia, and the discovery of the grave of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari bound his name for centuries to the spiritual side of the conquest. That well-known life also had a chapter that began in Amasya. Born in Damascus, Akşemseddin came to the lands of Amasya as a child with his father, received his learning there, studied medicine with an Amasya physician, and began his teaching career by going from Amasya to Osmancık. Hüseyin Hüsameddin says of him that he was "a Damascene by birth, but an Amasyan by upbringing and by the homeland he adopted."

His given name was Şemseddin Muhammed b. Hamza. The sources call him Akşemseddin or simply Akşeyh; Hüsameddin writes the name as "Ak Şemseddîn Mehmed Çelebi." He was a Sufi who founded the Şemsiyye branch of the Bayramiyye order, a well-known physician of his day, and a poet who also wrote verse in Turkish. The fullest account of his life is the Menâkıb-ı Akşemseddin written in the sixteenth century by Emîr Hüseyin Enîsî of Göynük. The legendary narratives of this work have to be kept apart from information confirmed by documents; several dates in Akşemseddin's life remain disputed among the sources to this day.

Lineage and Birth

Akşemseddin was born in Damascus in 792 (1390). The same date appears in the inscription of his tomb in Göynük. His father, Şeyh Hamza, was a descendant of Shihab al-Din Umar al-Suhrawardi (d. 632/1234), author of the Awarif al-maarif; on the paternal side the family traced its line back to Abu Bakr. Hüsameddin quotes in full the genealogy that Akşemseddin wrote in his own hand in the Meşâyih-nâme preserved in the Millet Library: Hamza was the son of Ali; Ali of Muhammad; Muhammad of Mahmud; Mahmud of Hidayatullah; Hidayatullah of Musa; and Musa was the son of Muhammad, son of Shaykh Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi. From there the chain runs back to Abu Bakr al-Siddiq.

In Hüsameddin's work the father's full name is given as Nûreddin Hamza-i Şâmî. According to him, Şeyh Hamza was born and educated in Damascus, migrated to Anatolia in 793 or 799, came to Amasya and settled in the Şamlılar quarter, literally "the quarter of the Damascenes." At first he taught as a ders-i âm, a teacher giving public lessons. His sons were named Akşemseddin Mehmed, Kutbeddin Mahmud and Şehabeddin Ahmed Çelebi.

Arrival in Amasya: Kavak and the Şamlılar Quarter

Two separate records describe the family's arrival in Anatolia. According to the entry in the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, Akşemseddin came to Anatolia with his father at about the age of seven, and the family settled in Kavak, which then belonged to Amasya (799/1396-97). Hasan Ali Çetin's study, based on Enîsî, gives the same place, notes that Kavak, today part of Samsun province, was at that time a district (nahiye) of Amasya, and records that Şeyh Hamza spent the rest of his life there. Hüsameddin, for his part, presents Şeyh Hamza's arrival in Amasya in 799 and his residence in the Şamlılar quarter as information "on record." The two accounts differ on the place of settlement; since Kavak was then attached to Amasya, the family may have had ties both to the town and to this district, but our sources do not clarify the point.

Şeyh Hamza's name survived in the region through a legend. Hüsameddin writes that he was buried in Amasya and was known as the "Kurtboğan Evliyası," the wolf-strangling saint. As Enîsî tells it, on the night Şeyh Hamza was buried a wolf came, dug open the grave and tried to attack the body; the shaykh put his hand out of the coffin, seized the wolf by the throat and killed it. Those who came to visit in the morning found the wolf dead and the shaykh's hand outside the grave. Enîsî adds that in that region the grave was still known as the "Kurtboğan grave." The story reflects the mark the family left among the people of the area; it is, however, a legend and cannot be read as a historical event.

Education in Amasya

The most concrete information on Akşemseddin's early education comes from Hüsameddin, who had seen Akşemseddin's own notes. According to him, while his father was still alive, Akşemseddin studied the religious sciences and Arabic with Mevlânâ Sadullah b. Halîl b. Süleyman el-Merzifonî, one of the scholars of Amasya. Sadullah Efendi was himself a pupil of Mevlânâ Hasan b. Savcı el-Merzifonî, professor and mufti of Niksar. The first links of Akşemseddin's chain of learning thus lead back to the scholars of Amasya and Merzifon at the end of the fourteenth century. Enîsî reports that he memorized the Qur'an at an early age and advanced in morphology, syntax, rhetoric, logic, creed and the principles of jurisprudence.

Akşemseddin's knowledge of medicine would later open the doors of court circles to him. Hüsameddin states that he learned medicine from Tabîb Fâzıl el-Hâc Şücâeddin İlyas b. Şa'bân el-Amâsî, "one of the physicians of Amasya," and that this is established by Akşemseddin's own record. Çetin, admitting that there is no firm evidence, suggests that Akşemseddin may have acquired his first medical knowledge at the city's hospital during his madrasa studies in Amasya, and recalls that Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin, author of the Cerrahiyyetü'l-Hâniyye, also worked at this institution. The Amasya Darüşşifa, founded under the Ilkhanids, was one of the leading medical schools of fifteenth-century Anatolia; that Akşemseddin studied there remains only a possibility. An academic catalogue note records a tradition that he also studied with Şeyh Bedreddin, but this does not appear in the other sources used here.

According to Hüsameddin, Akşemseddin taught for some time in Amasya as a ders-i âm, a teacher giving open lessons. The entry in Mecdî Mehmed Efendi's Şakâyık Tercümesi fits these years into a few sentences: he was born in Damascus, came as a child with his father to the "lands of Rûm," and after studying there became professor at the Osmancık madrasa.

The Osmancık Madrasa

Akşemseddin's first official post was at Osmancık on the banks of the Kızılırmak. According to Hüsameddin, Kadı Müeyyed Çelebi, brother of the former grand vizier Hacı Halil Paşa of Osmancık, built a madrasa in Osmancık in 820 (1417), and Akşemseddin went there from Amasya as its first professor. He served at this madrasa for about ten years as both professor and mufti, and the madrasa came to be called the "Akşemseddin Madrasa" after him. Hüsameddin confirmed with his own eyes that this building at the northern foot of Osmancık Castle was still known by the same name in his day. Studies of the town's historic buildings likewise note that the structure known today as the Akşemseddin Mosque was originally a madrasa and takes its name from Akşemseddin's teaching there.

The sources do not state clearly which administrative unit Osmancık belonged to in these years. In the fourteenth century the area at times came under the control of the emirs of Amasya and passed to Ottoman rule in 1392; in the sixteenth-century tax registers Osmancık appears as a district of the liva of Çorumlu, and in the nineteenth century it was again among the districts of the sanjak of Amasya. Hüsameddin, who says that Akşemseddin went to Osmancık "from Amasya," holds that he maintained his bond with Amasya during these years as well.

The Search for a Master and Hacı Bayram-ı Veli

According to Enîsî, Akşemseddin, "because the taste of inner knowledge would not leave his mind," set out at about the age of twenty-five toward Fars and Transoxiana in search of a spiritual master, but returned without reaching his goal. On the advice of others he considered attaching himself to Hacı Bayram-ı Veli, but drew back when he heard that Hacı Bayram sent his dervishes to collect provisions from the people as a discipline for the self. He then went to Aleppo to become a disciple of Zayn al-Din al-Khwafi, whose fame had reached Anatolia, but one night he dreamed that a chain fastened around his neck was in Hacı Bayram's hand, and he turned back to Ankara.

Ali İhsan Yurd, who carried out the most extensive research on Akşemseddin, treats this account with suspicion. In his work Def'u metâin Akşemseddin openly criticizes Zayn al-Din al-Khwafi; in Yurd's view it is impossible that he would have thought of becoming the disciple of a man he criticized, and he must have joined Hacı Bayram directly. The scene of their meeting as Enîsî tells it also has the language of legend: Akşemseddin finds Hacı Bayram and his dervishes working in a vetch field and is ignored by the shaykh; when food is handed out and nothing is given to him, he sits down beside the dogs and eats from what was given to them. Seeing this, Hacı Bayram invites him to his own table and, recalling the dream, says, "This is how a guest brought by force in chains is received."

The date of his initiation is uncertain. In Ethem Cebecioğlu's assessment, Akşemseddin was with Hacı Bayram when the latter went to the palace in Edirne in the summer of 825 (1422); given that the building with his retreat cell was built in 819 (1416), the initiation may be placed around 820 (1417). This date does not fully agree with Hüsameddin's statement that Akşemseddin stayed in Osmancık for about ten years from 820; this discrepancy between the sources has not been resolved. After a period of strict austerity and spiritual struggle, Akşemseddin soon received authorization (hilâfet) from his master. The cell in which he went into retreat still exists on the lower floor of the Hacıbayram Mosque in Ankara and bears his name. It is said that the names "Akşemseddin" and "Akşeyh" ("the white shaykh") were given to him by his master because his hair, beard and face were white and he mostly dressed in white.

Hüsameddin also quotes the chain of the order that Akşemseddin wrote in his Meşâyih-nâme, which he called Makâmât-ı Evliyâ. In this chain Hacı Bayram's master is Hamîdüddin Aksarâyî, whose own master is Şehabeddin Şâdî. According to Hüsameddin, Şehabeddin Şâdî was from Amasya and is buried in the village of Amasya known as "Şeyh Şâdî"; his master, Ahî İbrahim Basrî, lies in the town of Gümüş. Two links of Akşemseddin's Sufi chain are thus tied to the soil of Amasya.

Beypazarı, İskilip and Göynük

After receiving his authorization, Akşemseddin left his master and went to Beypazarı, where he had a small mosque and a mill built. When people began to gather around him, he withdrew to the village of Evlük near Kösdağı in the district of İskilip, today part of Çorum, and some time later left there as well and settled in Göynük. In Göynük too he built a small mosque and a mill, devoted himself to the education of his children on the one hand and of his dervishes on the other, and made the pilgrimage during these years. When Hacı Bayram died in 833 (1429-30), Akşemseddin succeeded him as spiritual guide. According to Enîsî, Hacı Bayram left instructions that Akşemseddin should lead his funeral prayer and wash his body.

Hüsameddin gives a different sequence for this period, and his account reveals a second tie with Amasya. According to him, after receiving his authorization Akşemseddin returned to Amasya and won the confidence of the governor of Amasya, Şehzade Alâeddin Ali (Prince Alâeddin Ali). When this prince, a son of Murad II, was strangled in 846 (1442-43), Akşemseddin went to Edirne, where he cured the military judge (kazasker) Çandarlızâde Süleyman Çelebi of a delirious fever. During the events in which Murad II stepped down from the throne in favour of his son Mehmed, he appeared on the side of the young prince, and in 848 (1444-45) he went to settle in Göynük. This sequence does not fully match the order Beypazarı-Evlük-Göynük in the TDV entry or the succession to the spiritual post in 833; Hüsameddin's source is Mecdî's translation, and Hüsameddin himself concedes that this translation contains "stories contrary to history."

Relations with the Court and His Medicine

Since Akşemseddin was usually at his master's side during Hacı Bayram's meetings with Murad II, he also came to know Prince Mehmed and kept up the relationship after Mehmed's accession. Although the dates are not known exactly, he went twice to Edirne before the conquest of Istanbul; on one occasion he treated Çandarlıoğlu Süleyman Çelebi, military judge of Murad II, and on the other one of the daughters of Mehmed II. The princess, once recovered, presented him with her rice fields at Beypazarı.

The sources also call him "tabîb-i ebdân," a physician of bodies. The TDV Encyclopedia of Islam writes that he is regarded as the physician who, at least a hundred years before the Italian physician Fracastoro, put forward the idea that diseases are transmitted by invisible living seeds. The view was first advanced by Osman Şevki Uludağ; some authors such as Adnan Adıvar were hesitant, while Bedii N. Şehsuvaroğlu defended it. This claim, however, rests largely on the work called Mâddetü'l-hayât, whose attribution to Akşemseddin is disputed. The debate is discussed separately below.

The Conquest of Istanbul

When Mehmed II set out from Edirne in the spring of 1453 to besiege Istanbul, Akşemseddin, Akbıyık Sultan and the other well-known shaykhs of the time joined the army with hundreds of their disciples. In the hardest moments of the siege Akşemseddin tried to raise the spirits of both the sultan and the army. One of his letters, also published by Halil İnalcık, belongs to these days; in this letter, preserved in the Topkapı Palace Museum Archive (no. 5584), Akşemseddin announces that victory is near and asks the sultan for patience and effort. Researchers consider that these letters helped bring the conquest about quickly.

After the conquest Akşemseddin delivered the sermon at the first Friday prayer held in Hagia Sophia. At the sultan's request he also located the grave of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, the Companion of the Prophet who had fallen in an earlier Muslim siege of the city; Mehmed II would build a tomb over the grave and a mosque beside it. An inscription on the southern wall of the Zeyrek Mosque, converted from a church, shows that Akşemseddin lived and taught there during his years in Istanbul; the building served as a madrasa until the Fatih madrasas were completed.

Return to Göynük

Akşemseddin's departure from Istanbul is told in two different ways. In the account based on the TDV entry and on Enîsî, after the conquest the young sultan wished to give up his crown and throne, attach himself wholly to the shaykh and learn the rules of the Sufi path from him. Akşemseddin tried to dissuade him, saying that conducting the affairs of state was a more important duty, and when he saw that he could not succeed he crossed to Anatolia by way of Gallipoli and returned to Göynük. He sent back the gifts the sultan dispatched after him to win his favour, and declined the mosque and dervish lodge the sultan wished to build in Göynük, agreeing only to the construction of a fountain.

The account Hüsameddin relates is harsher. According to it, Mehmed II could not bear the scholars and shaykhs claiming credit for the conquest and said, "I conquered Istanbul with this sword of mine, not with your prayers and help"; the offended scholars dispersed, and Akşemseddin withdrew to Göynük. After the defeat at Belgrade the sultan, warned by a dervish, repented, invited the shaykh to Istanbul and asked him to live near the tomb of Abu Ayyub; Akşemseddin, recalling the saying "love of the homeland is part of faith," asked leave and returned to Göynük. The siege of Belgrade took place in 1456; this account rests on Mecdî and is not supported by documents.

Death and Tomb

According to Enîsî's Menâkıbnâme, Akşemseddin died in Göynük at the end of Rebiülahir 863 (February 1459). The date is confirmed by two separate pieces of evidence. A couplet at the beginning of the Vahdetnâme, written in 865 (1460-61) for Mahmud Paşa by his disciple Abdürrahim Karahisârî, clearly shows that Akşemseddin had died before that date; the construction inscription over the door of his tomb also gives Rebiülahir 863. In the inscription Akşemseddin is called "the most virtuous of the meticulous and the most virtuous of the verifiers," and the year 792 is recorded as his birth and 868 as the year the dome was built.

Hüsameddin, by contrast, gives the date of death as 880 (1475-76). Because it cannot be reconciled with the Vahdetnâme couplet and the tomb inscription, this date is not accepted today; the date to be followed is 863 (1459). Akşemseddin was sixty-nine years old when he died.

The tomb stands beside the Süleyman Paşa Mosque in Göynük and was built in 868 (1463-64), about five years after his death. The hexagonal building, about 4.80 metres across, is of cut stone and covered by a lead-clad dome; each façade has two windows, one above the other. The door frame is plain, a modest example of classical Ottoman tomb architecture. In Semavi Eyice's assessment, the shaykh's carved walnut cenotaph resembles the wooden cenotaphs often seen in Anatolia in the Seljuk period and, as the last of the wooden cenotaphs made in the Ottoman period, has a value of its own. Its two long sides carry a maxim and a hadith in relief lettering, and the head panel a hadith framed with rumi ornament. The inscription on the cenotaph is the work of his son Mehmed Sâdullah.

A note in the printed edition of Evliya Çelebi's Seyahatnâme reports that the tomb, having fallen into ruin, was rebuilt at the expense of the privy treasury. During repairs from 1952 onward the cenotaphs were moved, and one was removed for reasons that cannot be explained. Today two of his sons lie in the tomb with Akşemseddin; according to Çetin, the middle cenotaph belongs to Emrullah and the one on the left to Nûrülhüdâ. The tomb is still visited; the graveyard around it holds inscribed gravestones from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries.

Works

Most of Akşemseddin's works concern Sufism. The Arabic Risâletü'n-nûriyye was written to defend Hacı Bayram and his dervishes, whose fame had spread and about whom rumours were circulating. In it Akşemseddin defends the Sufis he calls "the people of light" and describes their ethics and manners. The dates in the text show that it was written between 838 and 841 (1434-1438). Ali İhsan Yurd published the treatise with its Arabic text and the Turkish translation made by Akşemseddin's brother Hacı Ali.

The Def'u metâini's-sûfiyye, written in 856 (1452), is an Arabic refutation of the charges of unbelief and heresy brought against great Sufis such as Ibn Arabi. Akşemseddin tries to show that there is no difference between the words of these Sufis and those of well-known scholars and shaykhs such as al-Qushayri, al-Ghazali, Junayd of Baghdad and Najm al-Din Kubra. The Turkish Makâmât-ı Evliyâ explains who the spiritual master is and describes the station of sainthood and its degrees. In addition, works titled Risâle-i Zikrullâh, Risâle-i Şerh-i Akvâl-i Hacı Bayrâm-ı Velî and Risâle fî devrâni's-sûfiyye are known by name but have not survived.

Two letters that Akşemseddin wrote to Mehmed II are known; one was published by Halil İnalcık, the other by Bursalı Mehmed Tâhir. The Turkish verse Nasîhatnâme of about forty-five couplets attributed to him was also edited by Ali İhsan Yurd. Kemal Eraslan published thirty-eight Turkish poems by him that he found in a manuscript miscellany; thirty-three are in quantitative metre (aruz) and five in syllabic metre. Hüsameddin, too, lists two Sufi treatises by Akşemseddin, his Makâmât-ı Evliyâ, and a treatise on medicine containing tried remedies.

The Mâddetü'l-hayât Debate

Akşemseddin's best-known medical work is the Turkish text known as Mâddetü'l-hayât or Mâidetü'l-hayât. The TDV Encyclopedia of Islam states that its attribution is disputed but that most researchers regard it as Akşemseddin's work. The text survives in many copies, all of them late; the oldest known copy is the Ali Emîrî manuscript in the Millet Library, copied in 1096 (1685). There is also a copy in the Topkapı Palace Museum Library (Hazine, no. 552).

One of the first to voice doubts about the work was Naşid Baylâv. Ali İhsan Yurd's book, reissued in expanded form by Mustafa Kaçalin, finds Baylâv's reasons sound: the Mâddetü'l-hayât mentions syphilis under the name "frenk zahmeti," although the disease spread in Europe only after 1495; and its sentences explaining that diseases have "seeds and roots" are identical with expressions in the work of Paracelsus (1493-1541), a book first translated into Ottoman Turkish in the seventeenth century. In his 2016 doctoral thesis at Marmara University, Hasan Ali Çetin compared two copies of the work and concluded that the whole text does not belong to Akşemseddin. In his view the introduction is Akşemseddin's own, and there are clear similarities between it and the introduction of the Makâmât-ı Evliyâ; the later sections were either added afterwards to a treatise by Akşemseddin or several works were combined into a single text. Çetin notes that it is equally impossible to say that the work is not Akşemseddin's at all, and that the question cannot be settled until a copy in the author's own hand is found. The view that makes Akşemseddin a forerunner of germ theory should therefore be treated with caution.

Family and Successors

The TDV Encyclopedia of Islam writes that Akşemseddin had seven sons: Sâdullah, Fazlullah, Nûrullah, Emrullah, Nasrullah, Nûrülhüdâ and Hamdullah Hamdi. Hüsameddin counts five sons and refers to Nurullah by the nickname "Nûru'l-Hüdâ." According to his information, Şeyh Sâdullah was a professor and his father's successor, and is buried in Göynük beside his father; Fazlullah also lies there. Emrullah became trustee of the endowments of Emir Sultan and Sultan Murad in Bursa, suffered a stroke and died in 919 (1513-14).

The best known of the sons is Hamdullah Hamdi, born in Göynük in 853 (1449). He lost his father at the age of twelve, taught at the Çelebi Sultan Mehmed Madrasa in Bursa, and later went to Kayseri to become a disciple of his father's successor İbrahim Tennûrî. He is regarded as the first poet in Anatolia to complete a hamse, a set of five verse romances; his Yûsuf u Züleyhâ, completed in 897 (1492), was considered the most accomplished mesnevi in Turkish literature until Fuzûlî's Leylâ vü Mecnûn. Hamdi died in Göynük in 909 (1503) and was buried beside his father's grave. The date 914 (1508) given by Latîfî, Mecdî and Riyâzî is wrong; Hüsameddin also repeats this second date.

The Şemsiyye branch of the Bayramiyye founded by Akşemseddin was continued after him by his son Fazlullah in Göynük, İbrahim Tennûrî in Kayseri, Attaroğlu Muslihuddin in İskilip, and Hamza eş-Şâmî in and around Ankara. Abdürrahim Karahisârî, author of the Vahdetnâme, was also among his successors.

The Family's Amasya Branch: Kutbeddin Mahmud and Paşa Çelebi

After Akşemseddin settled in Göynük, one branch of his family remained in Amasya. According to Hüsameddin, his brother Kutbeddin Mahmud Efendi was one of the scholars of Amasya and is buried near his father Şeyh Hamza. The son of this brother, known among poets and shaykhs as "Kutbî Mahmud Çelebi," was Gıyaseddin İbrahim Çelebi, known in Amasya by the nickname "Paşa Çelebi."

After studying Arabic and the higher sciences in Amasya with Mevlânâ Şemseddin Ahmed Cendî, Paşa Çelebi went to Istanbul, became an assistant (mülâzım) of Hâcezâde Muslihuddin Mustafa Efendi, and was appointed professor at the Molla Gürânî Madrasa. After teaching at madrasas in Beypazarı and Ankara he returned at his own request to his hometown as professor of the Hüsâmiye Madrasa in Amasya, while attending the gatherings of Cemâleddin Mehmed Çelebi Halîfe, shaykh of the Hâce Sultan dervish lodge. After more than ten years in Amasya he moved in 911 (1505-06) to Edirne, then to Bursa, and in 918 (1512) to the Sahn-ı Semân. According to Hüsameddin, at the end of 923 (1517), after the Üçler affair in Amasya, he returned to his city once more as professor of the Sultan Bayezid Madrasa and mufti of Amasya, and for three years taught and issued legal opinions there. At the end of 926 (1520) he was appointed judge of Jerusalem, but died early in 927 (1521) as he was about to set out. The Amasya poet Münîrî composed a chronogram on his death.

His Place in Amasya's Memory

The centre of gravity of Akşemseddin's life lies in Göynük and Istanbul; the tomb, mosque and madrasa that bear his name stand in those towns. Amasya, however, is the city of his childhood, his education and his first years of teaching. His father Şeyh Hamza's grave, the family's residence in the Şamlılar quarter, his first teacher Sadullah el-Merzifonî, his medical teacher Şücâeddin İlyas el-Amâsî, his madrasa in Osmancık, and his nephew Paşa Çelebi, who rose to be mufti of Amasya, show a bond between the family and the city lasting more than a century. Hüsameddin's inclusion of his biography among the scholars of Amasya in his Amasya Tarihi shows that this bond was still alive in the memory of Amasya at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Chronology

1390 (792): Akşemseddin is born in Damascus.

1396-97 (799): He comes to Anatolia with his father Şeyh Hamza; the family settles in Kavak, then attached to Amasya (according to Hüsameddin, in the Şamlılar quarter of Amasya).

1417 (820): He goes as first professor to the madrasa built in Osmancık by Kadı Müeyyed Çelebi (Hüsameddin).

1422 (825): He accompanies Hacı Bayram on his visit to the palace in Edirne.

1429-30 (833): On Hacı Bayram's death he succeeds him as spiritual guide.

1434-1438 (838-841): Years in which the Risâletü'n-nûriyye was written.

1442-43 (846): Strangling of Şehzade Alâeddin Ali, governor of Amasya; according to Hüsameddin, Akşemseddin then goes to Edirne.

1449 (853): His son Hamdullah Hamdi is born in Göynük.

1452 (856): He writes the Def'u metâini's-sûfiyye.

1453 (857): He is with the army at the siege of Istanbul; after the conquest he delivers the first Friday sermon in Hagia Sophia.

February 1459 (end of Rebiülahir 863): He dies in Göynük.

1463-64 (868): His tomb in Göynük is built.

1503 (909): His son Hamdullah Hamdi dies in Göynük.

1517-1521 (923-927): His nephew Gıyaseddin İbrahim (Paşa Çelebi) is mufti of Amasya and professor of the Sultan Bayezid Madrasa; he dies in 927.

1685 (1096): The oldest known copy of the Mâddetü'l-hayât is made.

Bibliography

The following sources were used for this article:

Online sources