In the middle of the fifteenth century the Amasya mint had as its clerk, and later as its superintendent, Hüseyin Çelebi of the Sofuzâde, who used the pen name Ârifî in his poetry. His life is tied to the Amasya years of two princes: Şehzade Alâeddin Ali, strangled in 846 (1442-43) according to Hüsameddin, and Şehzade Bayezid, the future Bayezid II, who governed the sanjak after him. He died around 871 (1466-67). Both his pen name and his standing as a poet are known only from a short entry by Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar, and that entry preserves not one couplet.

The Entry in the History of Amasya

Hüsameddin's entry Ârifî Hüseyin Çelebi-Sofuzâde runs to five sentences:

Amasya'da medfûn Sofu Bâyezîd Çelebi bin Mahmûd Çelebi mahdûmudur. Tahsîl-i ilim edib kitâbet ve inşâsı güzel olduğundan Amasya vâlisi Şehzâde Alâeddîn Bey zamanında ümenâdan olmuştu. 846'da müşârün-ileyhin şehâdetinde Amasya dârbhânesi kâtibi ve Sultân Bâyezîd'in Amasya vâliliğinde dârbhâne emîni oldu. 871 sâline doğru vefât etdi. Kâtib, şâir idi.

Rendered into English: his father, Sofu Bayezid Çelebi son of Mahmud Çelebi, lies buried in Amasya. Hüseyin studied, and because he excelled at correspondence and formal prose he had joined the ranks of the trusted officials (ümenâ) in the time of Prince Alâeddin, governor of Amasya. When the prince met his death in 846 he was clerk of the Amasya mint, and during Sultan Bayezid's governorship of Amasya he became superintendent of the mint. He died towards the year 871. He was a secretary and a poet.

His Life

What carried Ârifî forward was his pen. The skill Hüsameddin calls "kitâbet ve inşâ" covered chancery correspondence, the language of patents and legal deeds, and ornate official prose; a young man who did this well at a prince's court was soon drawn into financial business as well. The "ümenâ" whose ranks Ârifî joined were exactly such people: officials trusted with money and accounts in the treasury, the endowments and the mint.

The Amasya mint was one of the town's most important financial institutions in those years. Hüsameddin records that it was re-established in the Pervâne quarter in 811 (1408-09), ran for many years under Ahî Darbhâneci Bedreddîn Mahmûd Çelebi, and even struck coins in the name of Yörgüç Pasha. When Bedreddîn Mahmûd died early in 838 (1434-35), his sons were also serving as its superintendents. Ârifî became the mint's clerk in 846, the year shaken by the death of Şehzade Alâeddin Ali. How the prince died is disputed in the sources; Hüsameddin tells it as a strangling in Amasya, and in Ârifî's entry he uses the word "şehâdet," martyrdom.

The next step falls in the years when Prince Bayezid governed Amasya. In another entry Hüsameddin dates the prince's arrival in the sanjak to 861 (1457): that year Ârifî's uncle Burhâneddîn Ahmed Çelebi came to Amasya with him as his tutor. Ârifî's appointment as superintendent of the mint can be placed after that date, in the last decade of his life; the source gives no exact year. Even his death is dated only approximately: "towards the year 871."

The Sofuzâde Family

Ârifî belonged to the Sofuzâde, one of Amasya's old learned families. In his first volume Hüsameddin presents them as a branch of the "Niğde lineage," descended from Ahî Hüseyin Niğdevî, who was among the notables of Amasya in 770 (1368-69). The branch took its name from Sofu Bayezid Çelebi, the "royal tutor" (muallim-i sultânî) of Mehmed I, who died in 814 (1411-12). The quarter where the family lived came to be called Sofuzâde, and the branch kept its standing until about the year 1000, producing governors-general and viziers.

The children of Sofu Bayezid's son Mahmud Çelebi appear in fifteenth-century Amasya. One of them, Burhâneddîn Ahmed Çelebi, studied at Edirne, taught at the Üç Şerefeli madrasa, came to Amasya to teach Arabic literature to Prince Bayezid, and died in 880 (1475-76) as professor of the Rahmâniye. Another son, Bayezid Çelebi, was Ârifî's father; at the close of the entry Bâyezîd Çelebi-Şeyh İmâdzâde, Hüsameddin notes that he too died in the years after 865 (1460-61). The father described as "buried in Amasya" in Ârifî's entry must be this Bayezid; sharing a name with the great-grandfather Sofu Bayezid, he is a point where two generations can easily run together in the record.

Repeated names within the family cause a further tangle. In his ninth volume Hüsameddin writes that "the other Sofuzâde Hüseyin Çelebi, son of Mahmud Çelebi son of Sofu Bayezid Çelebi" was a notable and died around 881 (1476-77). By the given pedigree this second Hüseyin was Ârifî's uncle. The two Hüseyins lived in almost the same years, and the name "Mahmûd Çelebi" in Ârifî's entry is just the kind of detail that invites confusing him with his uncle. Hüsameddin, for his part, records them as two separate men.

His Poetry

The last two words of the entry, "kâtib, şâir," a secretary and a poet, are all we know of Ârifî as a poet. His poems have not been found, and whether they were ever gathered into a divan is unknown. His pen name places him among Hüsameddin's entries headed "Ârifî." The other names under that heading belong to other ages: Ârifî Ahmed Pasha, who rose from chief of the scribes to vizier in the eighteenth century, the Naqshbandi sheikh Ârifî Mehmed Efendi, who died in 1265 (1848-49), and the scribe Çorumluzâde Ârifî Hüseyin Efendi, who died in Istanbul in 1169 (1755-56). The last shares both name and calling with the Sofuzâde Ârifî Hüseyin, but three centuries lie between them and rule out any confusion.

Chronology

770 (1368-69): Ahî Hüseyin Niğdevî, ancestor of the Niğde lineage to which the Sofuzâde belonged, appears among the notables of Amasya.

811 (1408-09): The Amasya mint is re-established in the Pervâne quarter.

814 (1411-12): Sofu Bayezid Çelebi, the royal tutor who gave the family its name, dies.

846 (1442-43): Şehzade Alâeddin Ali dies; Ârifî Hüseyin Çelebi is then clerk of the Amasya mint.

861 (1457): His uncle Burhâneddîn Ahmed Çelebi comes to Amasya as tutor to Prince Bayezid.

c. 871 (1466-67): Ârifî Hüseyin Çelebi dies.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Online sources