Amasya's place in Ottoman divan literature is explained less by the number of poets the city produced than by the setting created through its long service as a princely sanjak. When an Ottoman prince was sent out to a province, he was accompanied by his lala (tutor-guardian), his teachers, his secretaries and his companions. This small court was as much a gathering place for learning and the arts as a provincial seat of government. A poet who wished to present a qasida, a scholar who wished to dedicate a book, a calligrapher in search of pupils, would most often turn to the prince's residence or to the homes of lesser patrons around him. In Amasya the most brilliant phase of this arrangement coincided with the years when Bayezid II was a prince and with the long governorship of his son, Şehzade Ahmed. The city's later poets are the product of that accumulation.

The Princely Sanjak and Its Literary Setting

The contribution of princely sanjaks to literature cannot be separated from the workings of the patronage system. Patronage was a relationship of mutual interest. By bringing a qasida to a powerful patron, a poet gained both material reward and standing. A patron, for his part, showed his regard for learning and the arts to the extent that he gathered scholars and artists around him. The reward was most often a gratuity in money or a robe of honor, and sometimes a post such as a professorship or a clerkship. From sultans and viziers down to master poets themselves, small gatherings formed at every level of this order, and poets who could not reach the sultan clustered around these secondary patrons. As Murat Ali Karavelioğlu notes in his article on the circle of Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Çelebi, there was hardly an Ottoman ruler who did not practice poetry, calligraphy or music, and a ruler was expected to have some share in these arts himself if he was to act as judge among scholars and artists.

In the second half of the fifteenth century Amasya was one of the cities where this order worked best. Bayezid, son of Mehmed II (the Conqueror), was sent to Amasya as sanjak governor around 1454-55, when the sources say he was seven or eight years old, and he left the sanjak in 1481 upon his father's death. Some studies give the length of his stay as twenty-six years, others as twenty-seven. Experienced statesmen such as Çandarlı İbrahim and Yahya Pasha were appointed to him as lalas. Bayezid took writing lessons from the Amasya calligrapher Şeyh Hamdullah and is recorded as having received a diploma (icazet) from him. That he summoned his teacher and his family to Istanbul on his accession shows how close the relationship was. According to Karavelioğlu, Amasya began to live through a Renaissance in these years. While building works in the city gathered pace, a broad circle of learning, literature and the arts formed around the prince.

It should be added that this circle was not confined to poetry. Calligraphy and music were taught in the same milieu, and history and law were discussed. In a listing quoted by Karavelioğlu, the people born or raised in Amasya include the historian Şükrullah, the calligrapher Şeyh Hamdullah, the men of letters Tâcî Bey and Sa'dî Çelebi, the women poets Mihrî Hatun and Zeynep Hatun, the scholar-statesmen Müeyyedzâde Hâtemî and Zenbilli Ali Efendi, and the physician Sabuncuzâde Şerafeddin. The list shows that the literary circle cannot be considered apart from the city's wider intellectual life.

The Circle of Bayezid II

According to Halûk İpekten's findings, drawn from the biographical dictionaries (tezkires), the literary circle in Amasya during Bayezid's princely years included Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Çelebi, Tâcîzâde Câfer Çelebi, Mihrî Hatun, Sâfî (Cezerî Kasım Pasha), Seyfî of Sinop, Âfitâbî of Amasya and Hâtemî. A small correction is needed here. Hâtemî is the pen name Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Çelebi used in his poems, so the two names refer to the same man and the list contains one person fewer than it appears to. Among other poets reported to have been at the prince's court are Çeşmî, Şermî, Figânî, Kâmî, Melîhî, Münîrî, Makâmî and Zeynep Hatun. Of these, however, Makâmî was, according to Sehî and Âşık Çelebi, the imam of Prince Ahmed rather than of Bayezid, and Çeşmî and Kâmî are likewise mentioned in the sources mainly in connection with Prince Ahmed's circle.

At the center of this circle stood the prince himself. Bayezid wrote poetry under the pen name Adlî, and his only known work is his Turkish divan, of which five manuscripts have been identified. In Yavuz Bayram's comparative edition the divan contains 144 Turkish ghazals, one murabba, one qit'a, one nazm, four matlas and two müfreds, together with 14 Persian ghazals, one qit'a and two matlas. Latîfî says that he surpassed his ancestors in the ghazal and puts it in the words "tarz-ı gazelde âbâ-i kirâmına gâlib". Âşık Çelebi relates that the sultan took refuge in poetry when he grew weary of affairs of state. Modern scholars, however, do not consider it right to rank Bayezid with Şeyhî, Ahmed Pasha or Necâtî as a poet. His importance in the history of poetry comes less from his divan than from the close interest he showed in poets and from his contribution to a climate favorable to poetry in cities such as Amasya, Istanbul, Edirne, Bursa and Manisa.

This interest continued after he took the throne. Mollâ Lutfî, Müeyyedzâde, İbn Kemal, İdris-i Bitlisî, Tâcîzâde Câfer Çelebi and his brother Sa'dî Çelebi, Zenbilli Ali Efendi, Necâtî, Zâtî, Visâlî and Firdevsî are counted among those the sultan patronized. Entries in a register of gratuities (inâmât defteri) document the scale of the assistance given to poets, statesmen, and men of religion and learning. In this way the network of relationships that began in Amasya was carried to Istanbul during his reign as sultan.

Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Çelebi

One of the best-documented figures of the Amasya literary circle is Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Çelebi. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, he was born in Amasya in January 1456. His father, Alâeddin Ali Çelebi, was sheikh of the Yâkut Pasha Lodge when he became chancellor (nişancı) to Prince Bayezid in 1461. Through this connection Abdurrahman entered the prince's circle while still young. The family's origins are traced to Iran and to Ebû İshak Kâzerûnî, founder of the Kâzerûniyye order. Müeyyedzâde took calligraphy lessons from Şeyh Hamdullah and wrote poetry in three languages, Arabic, Persian and Turkish. His divan has not survived, however, and his verse is known only from the examples preserved in the tezkires.

The most striking account of Müeyyedzâde's Amasya years is the story that explains his exile. According to the sources, those who envied him complained to Mehmed II that he had led Prince Bayezid into drink and amusement. The sultan issued an order for his execution, together with that of the prince's chief attendant Hacı Mahmud. Learning of it before the order reached Amasya, Prince Bayezid sent his companions out of the country. Müeyyedzâde went first to Aleppo, then on to Shiraz, where he studied under Celâleddin ed-Devvânî and formed a friendship with Hâfız-ı Acem. The TDV dates his flight to 1479. The length of his stay in Shiraz is given as four years in some sources and seven in others. After Bayezid's accession he returned to Amasya in October 1483 and soon afterwards came to Istanbul, where he began teaching at the Kalenderhâne Madrasa. In later years he became professor at the Sahn-ı Seman Madrasa, judge of Edirne, Anatolian military judge (kazasker) in 1501, and then Rumelian kazasker.

An account from Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi, quoted in Karavelioğlu's article, also conveys the atmosphere of these Amasya gatherings. According to it, Prince Bayezid, his attendant Hacı Mahmud and Müeyyedzâde would meet at night and hold convivial gatherings with conversation and wine. The account may contain a literary exaggeration, but it gives an idea of the period's culture of assemblies. Another noteworthy detail is the rumor that Müeyyedzâde had a love affair with Mihrî Hatun while he was in Amasya. The TDV states that most sources describe it as a pure affection and that Mihrî was more interested in Sinanpaşazâde İskender Çelebi.

Müeyyedzâde's real significance lies in the circle he formed in his mansion and office in Istanbul. His house was spoken of as a source of the learned, a gathering place of poets and a meeting point of the refined. Kemalpaşazâde, Ebüssuûd Efendi, Hâfız-ı Acem, Zâtî and Necâtî are counted among those who benefited from his protection. It is reported that Kemalpaşazâde wrote his history of the Ottomans under his influence and by the order of Bayezid II. The most telling document of this patronage is the divan of Necâtî Bey. Left without a patron by the death of Prince Mahmud, Necâtî arranged his divan in Müeyyedzâde's name and wrote a long eulogy of him in the preface. The divan also contains a qasida of twenty-eight couplets written for him. Zâtî, for his part, says that because he made his living from the gifts of Anatolian kazasker Müeyyedzâde and chancellor Câfer Çelebi, he did not ask for a post of his own.

Müeyyedzâde was a patron, and he was also a gatherer of knowledge. The sources say he had a library of seven thousand volumes. The TDV finds this figure exaggerated for the period, but adds that a count made on the order of Selim I after his death found 2,112 books and that the valuable ones may have been taken into the sultan's private library. The library's contents range from Qur'anic commentary to philosophy, from law to astronomy, from music to medicine. The tezkire accounts also relate his skill at solving riddles and the report that at a gathering of friends he wrote a sixteen-line letter in which every line began with the letter sin and ended with nun. These details, which come to us only through anecdote, show the image he had among his contemporaries. Selim I's remark about him, "What a pity that we reached his last days", is quoted from Âşık Çelebi.

The end of Müeyyedzâde's life reflects the harshness of the politics of his day. In the last years of Bayezid II's reign, janissaries loyal to Prince Selim attacked the statesmen who supported Prince Ahmed. In September 1511 Müeyyedzâde's mansion was plundered together with that of Tâcîzâde Câfer Çelebi, and he was dismissed from the Rumelian kazaskerate. When Selim took the throne he was reappointed and joined the Çaldıran campaign, but he was dismissed a second time on the way back. He died shortly afterwards, on 13 September 1516, and was buried near the Eyüp Sultan shrine.

Tâcîzâde Câfer Çelebi and the Chancery Family

Another important scribal family of Amasya is that of Tâcî Bey. According to Latîfî and Âşık Çelebi, Tâcî Bey was a poet, secretary and calligrapher. He served as treasurer (defterdar) to Prince Bayezid in Amasya and died in 1485. His son Câfer Çelebi, according to the TDV, was born in Amasya in August 1452, received his first schooling in the city, completed his studies in Bursa and held madrasa and judicial posts. In 1497 he became chancellor of the Imperial Council (Divan-ı Hümayun), and he is said to have been a pioneer in the development of divan chancery writing. He took part in the Modon and Koron campaign (1500) and included in his divan a qasida describing the conquest of Modon in detail.

The influence of Ahmed Pasha can be seen in Câfer Çelebi's verse. He wrote more nazires to him than to anyone else in his divan, and he was also influenced by Necâtî and Şeyhî. Those who wrote nazires to him include Basîrî, Nihâlî, Mesîhî, Revânî, İshak Çelebi, Kemalpaşazâde, Zâtî and Amrî. In Edirneli Nazmî's Mecmau'n-nezâir the number of nazires written to Câfer Çelebi is 146, and this figure measures his influence on contemporary poets. His brother Sa'dî Çelebi is known for his Münşeât. In the last years of Bayezid II, Câfer Çelebi wrote a qasida supporting Şehzade Ahmed's accession, and in 1511 he barely escaped the janissary attack. Under Selim I he became chancellor again, joined the Çaldıran campaign and drafted the letters sent to Shah Ismail. In February 1515, during the janissary mutiny among the army wintering in Amasya, his house was burned. In the inquiry he held in Istanbul the sultan found him among those responsible, and Câfer Çelebi was executed on 18 August 1515. The tezkires report that Selim felt deep regret over this execution.

Mihrî Hatun and the Women Poets

One of the best-known figures of the Amasya literary circle is Mihrî Hatun. Since a separate article is devoted to her, it is enough here to note her place within the circle. According to the TEİS entry she was born in Amasya, and her father was Kadı Hasan Amasyevî, who wrote poetry under the pen name Belâyî. Her birth is placed between 1455 and 1461. She attended the gatherings first of Bayezid II and then of Şehzade Ahmed, and most of the qasidas in her divan were presented to Ahmed. Five payments totaling 13,000 akçe in gratuities are recorded for her, and this record shows she was still alive in 1512-13. The widely given date of death, 1506, was thus shown to be wrong. Karavelioğlu reports that Müeyyedzâde knew Zeynep Hatun in her last years and attended many poetry gatherings with Mihrî. Zeynep Hatun's name is also listed among the women poets of Amasya.

These women show that the community of poets in Amasya was not made up of men alone. In Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar's Amasya Tarihi, İğnecizâde Sâfiye Hatun is mentioned as a pupil of Mihrî Hatun and Şeyhzâde Hubbî Ayşe Hatun among the women poets of the sixteenth century. These entries come from a single source, and their details have not been separately verified.

The Era of Şehzade Ahmed

When Bayezid went to Istanbul in 1481, he left his eldest son Ahmed in Amasya as governor. According to the sources Ahmed served longer as sanjak governor in Amasya than any other prince, about thirty years. Like his father, he opened his court to poets and scholars. Mihrî Hatun was a well-known member of his gatherings. Yasar's Amasya Tarihi writes that Ahmed was inclined toward Iranian scholars, especially sayyids, and that his physician Kutb-ı Şirvânî and his chancellor Ahmed-i Câmî magnified Iranian literature and statesmen in his eyes. The same work says that a poet named Figânî was executed by Ahmed on the slander of certain Shiites in Amasya. These two pieces of information come from a single source and need to be supported by other studies.

Ahmed's struggle for the throne turned Amasya from a literary center into a political stage. During the Şahkulu rebellion serious disorder broke out around Amasya. When his father was considering abdication, Ahmed left Murad in Amasya and went to Istanbul, but he did not succeed. In 1514 he was defeated by his brother Selim at Yenişehir and eliminated. So the first great literary period of Amasya came to a close. Şehzade Korkut, too, was born in Amasya and wrote poems under the pen name Harîmî. Müeyyedzâde sent him a treatise on theology, with an Arabic qasida added at its head.

Şehzade Mustafa and the Later Princes

The most striking literary figure of Amasya in the sixteenth century is Şehzade Mustafa, eldest son of Süleyman the Magnificent. According to the TEİS he was sent to Amasya in 1541, after eight years as governor in Manisa. He wrote poems under the pen name Muhlisî. He had a broad literary circle in Amasya, and Şikârî, Senâyî, Sürûrî Efendi, Kara Fazlî, Zârî and Zamânî are counted among the poets around him. The sources note that the prince's poetry was not very good. When he was killed in his father's tent near Konya Ereğli on 6 October 1553, many poets near and far wrote elegies. Fünûnî, Rahmî, Nazmî of Edirne, Müdâmî, Sâmî, Kara Fazlî, Nisâyî, Şeyh Ahmed Efendi, Selîmî and Kadîrî were among them, and the most famous elegy is by Taşlıcalı Yahya Bey. Its first couplet runs: "Meded meded bu cihânın yıkıldı bir yanı, / Ecel celâlileri aldı Mustafa Han'ı." The Austrian traveler Hans Dernschwam, passing near Amasya after the prince's death, writes that the people were grieved and angry and that everyone praised Mustafa.

Süleyman's other son, Şehzade Bayezid, became sanjak governor of Amasya in 1558. He is said to have written poetry under the pen name Şâhî, and the poems he wrote after fleeing to Iran are reported to bear traces of regret and longing. When Bayezid was defeated by his brother Selim near Konya in 1559, he withdrew to Amasya, then took refuge with the Safavid Shah Tahmasb and was executed in Qazvin in 1562. The last prince assigned to Amasya was Murad, the twenty-one-year-old son whom Selim II sent in 1566 on his accession. After about a year and a half he was transferred to Manisa, and with that the period of Amasya as a princely sanjak ended. The sources say that the growing importance of sanjaks close to Istanbul, and Amasya's distance from the capital, played a part. The historical records show that twelve princes were appointed to Amasya as "çelebi sultan", that six of them later became sultan, and that six served only as sanjak governors.

How the Gatherings Worked and How a Poet Was Formed

There are few details specific to Amasya about how these gatherings were run, but the general etiquette of the period is well known. Poets came together, read their new ghazals and qasidas, and competed in skill by writing nazires on a couplet. Gelibolulu Mustafa Âlî's Mevâ'idü'n-nefâ'is describes the rules of such gatherings in detail. Karavelioğlu observes that poets who did not observe the conventions of the gathering fell from favor even if they held the title çelebi, and he names İshak Çelebi and Nihâlî Câfer Çelebi among them. The gathering was a school of manners as much as a stage for competition.

There are also records that Amasya poets took part in the nazire tradition. Revânî and Zâtî wrote nazires to Âfitâbî's zemin poems, and eighteen zemin poems of Sâfî have been identified. This information shows that Amasya poets were part of the circulation of divan poetry in Istanbul.

Patronage was also decisive in the formation of a poet. According to the Kınalızâde account Karavelioğlu relates, a man named Kasım, of the abdal group called Işık and not quite in his right mind, served Müeyyedzâde for years and finally asked for a professorship. When Müeyyedzâde said that no madrasa is given to the Işık group and that a professor must have sound learning, Kasım replied that only his master could possess such qualities. Müeyyedzâde was pleased with the answer and gave him what he asked. The anecdote shows that the patronage relationship did not stop at money but also involved a language of upbringing and compliment.

Later Centuries

After the era of the princely sanjak closed, Amasya's poetic tradition continued. Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar's Amasya Tarihi is one of the most comprehensive compilations on the city's poets. The work mentions the names of about five hundred poets, gives detailed lives of 283 and only names 181. Yasar drew on the tezkire of the scholar Abdî Efendi on Amasya poets and on the supplement of Şeyh Alizâde Hafız Ahmed Rüştü Efendi. Because these two works were later lost, Yasar's quotations from them carry added value. It should also be remembered that not every name in the work was born and lived in Amasya, and that some spent their lives in other cities and had only a tie to Amasya.

Yasar's book also contains intriguing claims, such as Selim I being known as a poet under the name Selîmî and Bayezid II under the name Adlî, Nedim's ancestors from Merzifon, and Kemalpaşazâde being counted as an Amasyan. Each of these needs separate verification. Kemalpaşazâde is in fact thought in some circles to be from Tokat and in others from Edirne, and Yasar mentions this debate in his own account. What is certain is that Amasya not only raised its poets but also carried them to Istanbul and placed them in the ranks of the state. That some figures such as Mihrî Hatun are treated in separate articles follows from this, since each name that came out of Amasya is a broad subject of study in its own right. Earlier poet-statesmen such as Kadı Burhaneddin stand at another link of this chain.

Chronology

1440: Şehzade Alâeddin, at fifteen, becomes sanjak governor of Amasya.

1454-55: Şehzade Bayezid, aged seven or eight, is sent as sanjak governor to Amasya.

1461: Alâeddin Ali Çelebi becomes chancellor to Şehzade Bayezid.

1479: Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Çelebi flees to Aleppo to escape the execution order.

1481: Bayezid leaves Amasya to take the throne and leaves his son Ahmed in his place.

1483: Müeyyedzâde returns to Amasya and then to Istanbul.

1497: Tâcîzâde Câfer Çelebi becomes chancellor.

1511: The mansions of Müeyyedzâde and Câfer Çelebi are plundered in the janissary mutiny.

1514: Şehzade Ahmed is defeated by his brother Selim at Yenişehir.

1515: Câfer Çelebi is executed.

1516: Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Çelebi dies.

1541: Şehzade Mustafa is sent to Amasya.

1553: Şehzade Mustafa is killed.

1558: Şehzade Bayezid becomes sanjak governor of Amasya.

1566: According to Hüsameddin, Prince Murad (later Murad III) becomes governor of Amasya; the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, however, places him continuously in Saruhan (Manisa) in these years. The record is disputed; see Murad III (Murâdî).

Sources

Primary sources

Academic studies

Other sources

Online sources