A city's most lasting wealth is the people it raises, and by that measure Amasya is one of the most productive centers of learning in Ottoman history. Its madrasas did not remain merely local places of study. They worked as a school that supplied the empire's judgeships, military chief judgeships and muftiships with scholars. The local historian Abdizâde Hüseyin Hüsameddin (Yasar) calls Amasya a mine of scholars in the sciences and the learned arts, a center of distinguished scholars with its madrasas and schools. The name "Kubbetü'l-Ulemâ" (the dome of the scholars, the place where scholars gather), which old books give to the city, carries the same verdict.

The Ground of a City of Learning

Amasya's scholarly identity reaches back before the Ottomans. The city that produced a geographer like Strabo in antiquity continued to host men of learning and art under the Seljuks and the Danishmendids. According to the Amasya entry in the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, in the Ottoman period, especially in the years when princes resided there, the city became a great cultural center in which many scholars, artists and poets gathered, and until the middle of the sixteenth century the princely palace was the scene of lively cultural activity. The same entry lists among those who grew up in this milieu the historian Şükrullah, the calligrapher Şeyh Hamdullah, Tâcî Bey and his sons the çelebis Câfer and Sâdî, the physician Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin, Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Çelebi and Zenbilli Ali Efendi. That calligraphy, medicine, history and jurisprudence stand side by side in this list shows that the madrasa worked together with a palace milieu.

The city's physical equipment was large enough to carry this accumulation. The same encyclopedia entry records that in the early sixteenth century Amasya had nine mosques, ten madrasas, four zawiyas, six soup kitchens and fifteen bathhouses. Some of these relate directly to scholarly life: the Bayezid II Mosque and Complex (1486), the mosque of Vizier Mehmed Pasha, the tutor of Prince Ahmed (1486), the Kapı Ağası Hüseyin Ağa Madrasa (1488) and the mosque known as Dârülhadis, Sofular or Abdullah Pasha (1502) all belong to the same decades. Sultans who cared about their sons' education sent them the most learned teachers of the day, and these teachers also taught the city's students at large. The governor's palace, the madrasas and the endowed libraries formed a network that fed one another.

The city is also remembered for its learning in the period after the Battle of Ankara. According to the account, when Amasya refused to surrender, Timur wished to punish its people, and the people were spared because İlyas Çelebi answered the ten questions Timur put to the city's scholars. The story appears in the sources as a tradition, but the memory that a danger to a city of learning was turned aside by learning itself reflects how the city saw itself. This prestige continued in later centuries. The French traveler Georges Perrot, who visited the city in 1861, described Amasya as "the Oxford of Anatolia" and wrote that nearly two thousand students were studying in its madrasas. Mustafa Vâzıh Efendi, who wrote a work about the city in the early nineteenth century, calls it a city of students. The sources also use names such as "Baghdad of Rum", "city of sages" and "city of madrasas" for it.

Cemâleddin Aksarâyî and Molla Fenârî

One of the early links in the chain of scholars connected with Amasya is Cemâleddin Aksarâyî. This scholar, whose given name was Mehmed, gained a reputation in the reign of Murad I in the religious, literary and rational sciences, wrote on Qur'anic exegesis, hadith, jurisprudence, ethics, literature and medicine, and was known by the nisba Cemâlî. The TDV entry on Aksarâyî says that he lived in Aksaray and taught at the Zincirli Madrasa. The entry on Molla Fenârî in the same encyclopedia, however, says that after leaving İznik Fenârî went to Amasya, became a student of Aksarâyî and received an ijaza from him in 1376. The two entries do not fully agree on this point. Even if the city in which the teacher taught remains disputed, the sources clearly name Amasya in the student's formation.

The tradition about Aksarâyî's teaching method is striking. He is said to have divided his students into three groups: he taught the first on the way to the madrasa, walking along the road, the second under the madrasa's arcades, and the third inside the madrasa. Those taught while walking were called "peripatetics" (meşşâiyyûn), those gathering in the arcades "stoics" (revâkıyyûn). The author of the entry reminds the reader that teaching while walking was in fact a method used by Aristotle at the Lykeion and that revâkıyyûn is the name given to followers of the Stoa, and so points to the echo of the ancient Greek schools in Islamic literature. The same source relates that Seyyid Şerîf el-Cürcânî set out to become his student after hearing of his fame, but on reaching Aksaray learned that the teacher had died. His death date is 1388-89 according to Bursalı Mehmed Tâhir, 1377 according to Brockelmann and 1388 according to Adnan Adıvar.

Molla Fenârî (1350-1431) is the best-known student Aksarâyî trained. After Amasya he went to Cairo together with Cürcânî, and on his return to Bursa he was appointed by Bayezid I as a madrasa professor at Manastır and as judge. Murad II appointed him mufti in 1425. Some sources speak of Fenârî as the "first şeyhülislâm", but the TDV notes that this title should not be understood in the institutional sense it acquired in the mid-sixteenth century. His students include Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, Şehâbeddin İbn Arabşah and his son Mehmed Şah Fenârî. Amasya's share in this chain reaches the formation of the first generation of the Ottoman ulema.

Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Çelebi

One of the brightest figures among Amasya's scholars is Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Çelebi, born in the city in January 1456. His father, Alâeddin Ali Çelebi, was the son of Şemseddin Müeyyed Çelebi, one of the Kâzerûniyye sheikhs, and served as sheikh of the Yâkut Pasha Zawiya. Müeyyedzâde takes his epithet from his grandfather. The sources trace the family line back to Abû Ishaq al-Kâzerûnî, founder of the Kâzerûniyye order in Iran. When his father became chancellor (nişancı) to Prince Bayezid, who had been sent as governor to Amasya (1461), the young Abdurrahman met the prince and entered his close circle. It is reported, on the strength of Müstakimzâde's record, that he learned the art of calligraphy at the same time from Şeyh Hamdullah, one of Bayezid's companions.

His youth was cut short by a crisis. Those who envied him complained to Mehmed II the Conqueror that Müeyyedzâde had been influential in leading Prince Bayezid to drink and entertainment, and the sultan issued an order for his execution along with that of the prince's chamberlain Hızırpaşazâde Hacı Mahmud. Before the order reached Amasya, Müeyyedzâde, who learned of it with the help of Prince Bayezid, fled to Aleppo, then in Mamluk hands (1479). From there he went to Shiraz and received an ijaza from Celâleddin ed-Devvânî, and there he also formed a friendship with Hâfız-ı Acem. In Shiraz he copied with his own hand a manuscript of Nasîr al-Dîn al-Tûsî's work on Euclid, and this note appears at the head of the manuscript in the Beyazıt State Library. The sources also mention a love affair in those years with the Amasya poet Mihrî Hatun, but most sources state that it rested on a pure affection and that Mihrî Hatun was more interested in Sinanpaşazâde İskender Çelebi.

When Bayezid ascended the throne on the Conqueror's death, Müeyyedzâde first returned to Amasya (October 1483) and soon afterwards came to Istanbul. He began teaching at the Kalenderhâne Madrasa; on 23 March 1486, the day he married the daughter of Kestelî, he was appointed professor at the Sahn-ı Semân Madrasa. In 1494 he was sent to the judgeship of Edirne, in September 1501 he became military chief judge of Anatolia, and four years later of Rumelia. During the movement of the janissaries loyal to Prince Selim against the statesmen who favored Sultan Ahmed, his mansion was plundered, and in 1511 he was dismissed from the chief judgeship of Rumelia. When Selim the Grim took the throne he was appointed judge of Karaferye and, in 1513, chief judge of Rumelia again; a year later he joined the Çaldıran campaign at the sultan's request. He was dismissed a second time on the way back and died shortly afterwards, on 13 September 1516. He was buried in the cemetery of the Eyüp Sultan Tomb. It is reported that after speaking of his virtue Selim said, "Alas, we reached his last days."

Müeyyedzâde's real influence is seen in those he trained or took under his patronage. According to the TDV, Kemalpaşazâde, Ebüssuûd Efendi, Hâfız-ı Acem, Zâtî and Necâtî Bey are among the scholars and poets who grew up under his protection. Kemalpaşazâde wrote his Ottoman history at his urging and by order of Bayezid II, and Necâtî Bey arranged his divan in his name and praised him in its preface. Müeyyedzâde is said to have written poetry in Arabic, Persian and Turkish under the pen name Hâtemî; although poems of his appear in the biographical anthologies, no divan of his has been found. The sources write that he had a library of 7,000 volumes; the TDV finds this figure exaggerated. When his dispersed books were gathered and counted at Selim's order after his death, a register in the Topkapı Palace archive shows 2,112 volumes.

His works are mostly in the form of drafts and treatises. The best known is the collection of fatwas, which survives in many copies under different titles (Mecmaʿu'l-fetâvâ, or Müeyyedzâde Cöngü). Besides this he left treatises on theology, logic and philosophy, a treatise on reverence for the Prophet, a refutation of Molla Lutfi's treatise on the verse of pilgrimage, and a treatise on questions of the law of inheritance (farâiz). His authorship of Terġībü'l-lebîb, a commentary on the Hidâya, is regarded as doubtful by the TDV. Müeyyedzâde was influential in the spread of his teacher Devvânî's works and views in the Ottoman lands; his Shiraz connection is one of the strongest examples linking Amasya to the wider scholarly network of the Islamic world.

Zenbilli Ali Efendi

Another name whose tie to Amasya is much discussed is Zenbilli Ali Cemâlî Efendi. He bears the nisba Cemâlî because he descends from Cemâleddin Aksarâyî, his father's grandfather, and the family is said to go back to Fakhr al-Dîn al-Râzî. His birth date and place are uncertain. Hüseyin Hüsameddin writes that he was born in the Eslem Hatun (İslâm) quarter of Amasya, but the TDV says this view should be treated with suspicion because of the author's tendency to present many people as natives of Amasya. Some sources call him a Karamanian, and since the Cemâlî family is known to have lived in Aksaray, it is also claimed that he was born there. That Amasya was an important stop in his life is clear in the sources, however: the years in which he served as mufti and professor there were spent in this city.

He received his first education from Lârendeli Mevlânâ Hamza, the maternal grandfather of Pîrî Mehmed Pasha, and then in Istanbul followed the lessons of Molla Hüsrev. When Molla Hüsrev became mufti, he went to Bursa and studied with Hüsâmzâde Mustafa Efendi, the professor of the Sultâniye; his teacher took him as his assistant (muîd) and married him to his daughter. Under Mehmed the Conqueror he was appointed professor at a madrasa in Edirne, and the sultan sent him 5,000 akçe and robes. When, because of his closeness to Sinan Pasha, the political rival of Vizier Karamânî Mehmed Pasha, he was pushed to lower-ranking madrasas and his pay was cut, he resigned and for a time entered the service of the Halvetî sheikh Mes'ûd-i Edirnevî. In Istanbul he frequented the lodge of the Konya-born Sheikh Muslihuddin Mustafa.

Under Bayezid II he returned to teaching. According to Mecdî, the sultan saw him one night in a dream and wished to meet him; Ali Cemâlî refused, saying "To meet with sultans is the most hateful of disputes", yet he was nevertheless given the Hudâvendigâr Madrasa in Bursa. Hoca Sâdeddin and Atâî write instead that he was first sent to the muftiship of Amasya, and the TDV finds this second report more likely. It is thought probable that Bayezid sent him to Amasya, where Çelebi Halife (Cemâl-i Halvetî) of the Cemâlî family, who had played a part in his accession, lived, in order to show his devotion to his sheikh. He then taught at the Hudâvendigâr and Sultâniye (Yeşilcami) madrasas in Bursa; Mecdî writes that in that period the muftiship of the city was given to him against his wishes.

When the construction of the Beyazıt Madrasa in Amasya was completed in 1486, he returned to the city to take up the professorship together with the muftiship of Amasya. Five years later, in 1491, when Prince Ahmed gave precedence to his tutor Birgivîzâde Mustafa Efendi over the assembled ulema at the circumcision feast of his sons Murad and Alâeddin, Cemâlî Efendi left his post and went back to Istanbul. The TDV adds that the attitude of Amasya's Sunni mystics and scholars toward Prince Ahmed, said to have felt closeness to scholars of Persian origin, also played a part in this event. According to Mecdî, Bayezid was angered at his leaving without permission and dismissed him; six months later he appointed him to the Sultan (Beyazıt) Madrasa he had had opened for him in Istanbul. When the efendi hesitated to accept this madrasa, which he considered unsuited to his scholarly level, he was transferred to the Sahn-ı Semân.

On a pilgrimage with Çelebi Halife, he had to wait a year in Egypt because of disturbances in Mecca. In the meantime the mufti of Istanbul, Efdalzâde Hamîdüddin Efendi, had died in 1503 and the muftiship had been given to him. Around the middle of 1504 he came to Istanbul and took his seat in the fatwa office. Bayezid also gave him, for 50 akçe, the duty of teaching one day a week at the madrasa he had built in 1505-1506, today the Turkish Foundations Calligraphy Arts Museum, and in 1506-1507 appointed him overseer of the endowments of his charitable works in various parts of the country. From then on it became customary to give the professorship of the Beyazıt Madrasa in Istanbul and the supervision of Bayezid's endowments to the muftis of Istanbul. Selim the Grim kept him in office throughout his reign, and Süleyman the Magnificent did so until his death. In Süleyman's time he took part in the conquest of Rhodes and led the first Friday prayer in the Saint John Cathedral, which had been turned into a mosque. When he fell too ill to work in 1523 he appointed Sheikh Bahâeddinzâde Muhyiddin Mehmed as his deputy. His tenure as mufti thus reached twenty-four years. His death falls shortly before 1526, in May-June, and his grave is in the cemetery of the mosque and school he built at Zeyrek.

The story behind his name is told as follows. To finish the business of those who came for a fatwa quickly, he lowered a basket (zenbil) from the window of his house, received the questions in it, and returned the answers in the same basket, and the people called him "the Zenbilli mufti." The sources portray him as a modest and dignified scholar who was an authority in jurisprudence, its methodology, literature, lexicography, grammar, Qur'anic exegesis and hadith. According to a statement in the Risâle-i Hırzü'l-mülûk, he liked to ease people's affairs. Because he was attached to Sheikh Muslihuddin Mustafa he was a mystic, and so is sometimes recorded in works with the nisba "Sûfî". His treatise on devrân, the Sufi whirling dance, maintains that the practice is not forbidden when performed with the intention of remembrance (dhikr).

Traditions about his stance toward Selim the Grim are also known. It is said that he told the sultan that officials could not be put to death on the sultan's order, that execution was possible only after a court ruling and by the mufti's fatwa, and that he would openly issue a fatwa for Selim's deposition if he carried out an execution contrary to the law. When Selim told him in harsh terms not to interfere in his governing decisions, the efendi left the sultan's presence in anger without permission, and the sultan, later realizing his mistake, flattered him and offered him the chief judgeships of Anatolia and Rumelia. The TDV says there is a very high probability that these traditions were meant to stress the importance of the office of şeyhülislâm, which was then taking shape as a new official institution. It also notes that the first important steps by which the Istanbul muftiship took on a form like that of the grand vizierate were taken in his term of office.

He was also known for his charity. He had mosques, masjids and schools built in Istanbul. The Alaca Mescid in Galata was demolished in 1957 when Azapkapı Street was opened. The Müftü Ali (Zenbilli Ali Efendi) Mosque in the Küçük Mustafa Pasha district was built as a masjid and made a mosque in 1525-1526. The single-domed, square-plan Ali Cemâlî Efendi School on Zeyrek Slope was built between 1523 and 1525. The Müftü Hamam, whose income he endowed to these buildings, disappeared in 1960. His sons also joined scholarly life: Muhyiddin Mehmed Şah (Molla Çelebi) wrote an Ottoman history, Rûhî Çelebi another Ottoman history, Fudayl Çelebi produced verse and prose works, and Cemâleddin Mehmed (Cemal Çelebi) served as judge and governor. Among his main works are the Hanafi legal Fetâvâ-yı Ali Efendi (Muhtârât mine'l-Fetâvâ) and an abridgment of the Hidâya. The Âdâbü'l-evsiyâ, though attributed to him, has been established as the work of his son Fudayl Çelebi.

Those Who Taught in Amasya and Those Raised There

The breadth of the scholarly network becomes clearer when one looks at the list of scholars from Amasya whose works survive in libraries. In a paper presented at the International Amasya Scholars Symposium held in Amasya in 2017, Recep Dikici introduces fifty-six people one by one whose manuscript or printed works are in Turkish libraries. The list includes writers on exegesis, hadith, jurisprudence, theology, mysticism, history, logic, medicine, linguistics and rhetoric, and people from surrounding districts such as Merzifon and Lâdik are also included. Not all of these people were palace scholars close to the princely court. Some were professors who wrote glosses in a single madrasa cell, some jurists who came out of their villages and rose to the high offices of the state, and some sheikhs raised in the circles of the orders.

One of them, Sinâneddin Yûsuf Amâsî, known as Muhaşşî Sinân, is one of the examples of men who rose from the city's madrasas to the highest ranks of the Ottoman scholarly class. In Amasya he studied at the Küçük Ağa Madrasa with Emir Kulu Şemseddin Efendi and at the Hüseyniyye Madrasa with Taşköprülü Muslihuddin Efendi; when Taşköprülü was transferred to Bursa he went with him. He attended the lessons of Muhyiddin Fenârî, one of the Sahn-ı Semân professors, for seven years, and in 1518 studied with the şeyhülislâm Zenbilli Ali Efendi. He became a candidate (mülâzim) in 1521; after serving at madrasas in Gelibolu, Edirne and Istanbul he held judgeships in Aleppo, Bursa, Edirne and Istanbul, and in 1547 became military chief judge of Anatolia. In 1561 he moved to the professorship of the Süleymaniye Dârülhadis. Because he wrote a gloss on the Qur'anic commentary of Qâdî al-Baydâwî he was called "Muhaşşî". It is recorded that when Ebüssuûd Efendi died he was offered the office of şeyhülislâm, that he declined it, and that he died in Istanbul in 1578.

The life of Dede Cöngî differs from this line. Born in the early sixteenth century in the village of Sonusa (Uluköy) in Amasya, Dede Cöngî earned his living tanning hides until 1514, and he is also recorded as being close to Akhi circles in this period. He then began his studies, specialized in Hanafi jurisprudence, exegesis and Arabic literature, and served as professor and mufti in Bursa, Tire, Merzifon, Diyarbekir and Aleppo. In 1558 he was appointed mufti of Kefe, and in 1565, citing old age, he resigned and withdrew into seclusion in Bursa. He is known by this name because he wrote his works in notebooks called cönk. His Arabic al-Siyâsa al-shar'iyya was translated into Turkish several times and became better known than the Arabic original. He dedicated his treatise on the public treasury, which sets out the legal rules on the state budget, to Süleyman's son Prince Mustafa. His gloss on morphology was for a long time a reference book for madrasa students.

The other names on Dikici's list show different faces of the city. Tâcîzâde Câfer Çelebi studied calligraphy under Şeyh Hamdullah, died in 1514 and left a work called Fetihnâme-i İstanbul; his brother Sâdî Çelebi (d. 1516) wrote glosses on Seyyid Şerîf's commentary on the Miftâh and on Sadr al-Sharî'a's commentary on the Wiqâya. Muhyiddin Muhammed b. Kâsım (Hatip Kasımoğlu, d. 1533) was a professor at the Sultan Bayezid Madrasa in Amasya and later in Istanbul. Musa b. Musa worked as the keeper of the books of the Bayezid Mosque and died in 1531. Hayreddin Hızır Efendi, whom sources show as from Merzifon and also as from Kastamonu, was a scholar who taught exegesis as the imperial tutor of Bayezid II and died in 1541. Şükrullah Amasyavî was an adviser to Murad II and Mehmed the Conqueror, occupied himself with medicine and music, died in 1488 and was buried in the Şeyh Vefa Tomb.

In later centuries too the city went on producing ulema. Yûsufzâde Abdullah Hilmi Efendi (1674-1754) taught the sciences of recitation, exegesis and hadith, served as keeper of manuscripts at the Imperial Palace Library of Mahmud I, and completed his commentary on Bukhari in thirty volumes over twenty-eight years. Akif Mustafa Efendi (1687-1759) left the muftiship and died in Amasya as professor of the Bayezid II Madrasa. Abdülkerim b. Hüseyin el-Amasî, known as Hoca Kerîm (d. 1885), wrote treatises on subjects such as divine decree and destiny, the soul and the motion of time. Nûh b. Muhammed Amâsî (d. 1569), after learning the outward sciences, chose the way of asceticism; according to the tradition, when Süleyman sent him a thousand gold pieces before the Nakhchivan campaign and asked to meet him, he refused and said the gold should be given to those in need. These records show that Amasya's work of producing scholars was not confined to the madrasa roof.

The Road of Learning and Contact with the People

One of the common features of Amasya's scholars is that they counted travel as a part of learning. Müeyyedzâde went to Shiraz, Molla Fenârî to Cairo, and Zenbilli Ali Efendi moved between Bursa, Edirne, Istanbul and Egypt. On their return they carried their teachers' works and new texts to Anatolia; Devvânî's works spread in the Ottoman lands through Müeyyedzâde. Books traveled along with the journeys. The copies of Tûsî and Ibn Sînâ that Müeyyedzâde copied are today in the Beyazıt State Library and the Topkapı Palace Library.

The zenbil story points to the way learning reached the people. The basket lowered from the window is an image of a şeyhülislâm who could answer ordinary people's questions quickly and without turning them away. The TDV reminds us that such stories may also have been told to stress the prestige of an institutional office. Even so, that the zenbil took the place of the şeyhülislâm's own name in popular memory is a clue to how closely the fatwa was bound up with daily life. Müeyyedzâde's fatwa collection and Zenbilli's Fetâvâ-yı Ali Efendi are written answers to the same daily need.

The Amasya school of scholars should not be thought of as the name of a single institution. The madrasas, the princely palace, the endowed libraries, the zawiyas and the calligraphy workshops around Şeyh Hamdullah were not separate structures but places through which the same people moved. A scholar might teach at the madrasa in the morning, be present at the prince's divan in the afternoon, and join a conversation at the zawiya in the evening. With the end of the princely governorship in the mid-sixteenth century the city's political weight declined, but the madrasa tradition continued, and the two thousand students Perrot saw in 1861 are a sign of it.

Chronology

1350: Molla Fenârî is born (April).

1376: Fenârî receives an ijaza from Cemâleddin Aksarâyî in Amasya.

1425: Murad II appoints Molla Fenârî mufti; Fenârî dies in Bursa in 1431.

1456: Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Çelebi is born in Amasya (January).

1461: Müeyyedzâde's father becomes chancellor to Prince Bayezid.

1479: To escape an execution order, Müeyyedzâde goes to Aleppo and from there to Shiraz.

1483: Bayezid takes the throne; Müeyyedzâde returns to Amasya and then to Istanbul.

1486: The Amasya Beyazıt Madrasa is completed; Zenbilli Ali Efendi takes up duty as professor and mufti. Müeyyedzâde is appointed to the Sahn-ı Semân professorship.

1491: Following the order-of-precedence incident at the circumcision feast of Prince Ahmed's sons, Zenbilli Ali Efendi leaves Amasya.

1501: Müeyyedzâde becomes military chief judge of Anatolia; in 1505 he moves to the chief judgeship of Rumelia.

1504: Zenbilli Ali Efendi takes his seat in the fatwa office in Istanbul.

1514: Müeyyedzâde joins the Çaldıran campaign at Selim the Grim's request.

1516: Müeyyedzâde dies (13 September).

1523: Zenbilli Ali Efendi falls ill and appoints a deputy; he dies around 1526.

1861: Georges Perrot visits Amasya and calls the city "the Oxford of Anatolia".

2017: The International Amasya Scholars Symposium meets in Amasya (21-23 April).

Sources

Academic studies

Online sources