Âşıkpaşazâde is the author of the Tevârîh-i Âl-i Osmân, one of the earliest Ottoman chronicles. His real name appears in the sources as Derviş Ahmed or Pîr Ahmed Çelebi; he used the pen name (mahlas) "Âşıkî" in his verse, but was better known as Âşıkpaşazâde, after his great-grandfather Âşık Paşa. He was born in the village of Elvan Çelebi in the sanjak of Amasya, where his forefathers' dervish lodge stood, and according to Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar he was brought up in Amasya. He spent the end of his life in Istanbul, in the lodge he had founded, and completed his chronicle after passing the age of eighty-five. Hüsameddin introduces him as "a poet and historian" and says that he also left poems and hymns (ilâhi). What we have today when we speak of Âşıkî's poetry are the verse passages he scattered through his chronicle.

Hüsameddin's Entry

When the seventh volume of Amasya Tarihi comes to the men of Amasya named Pîr Ahmed, it gives Âşıkpaşazâde this notice:

Pîr Ahmed Çelebi-Âşık Paşazâde Amasya civârında Elvân Çelebi Tekkesi şeyhi Yahyâ Çelebi bin Süleyman Çelebi bin Abdurrahmân Çelebi bin Elvân Çelebi bin Alâeddîn Alî Âşık Paşa bin Muhlis Paşa bin Baba İlyâs Horasânî mahdûmudur. Âşıkî diye mahlas kabûl etmişdir. Elvân Çelebi nâhiyesinde doğdu. Amasya'da Gümüşlüzâde Pîr Abdurrahmân Çelebi'nin hücre-i terbiyesinde büyüdü. Ulemâ ve meşâyîhden ulûm ü me'ârif tahsîl edib sonra Saraclar şeyhi Pîr Sun'ullâh Halvetî'ye hizmet ederek halîfesi oldu. Pîr-i müşârün-ileyhin irtihâlinden sonra Hicâz'a gidip hâcc etdi. On yıl Mekke-i Mükerreme'de ve on yıl da Medîne-i Münevvere'de mücâveret ve Hicâz meşâyihinin enfâs-ı mübârekesinden istifâza ederek 867'de İstanbul'a geldi. Tarîk-i sûfiyyede kemâli zâhir olup Haydar civârında ba'zı ahbâbı kendisine bir hâne ve zâviye yaptırdı. 870 tarihinden i'tibâren hânesinde ikâmet ve zâviyesinde zikr ü tevhîde muvâzabet etdi. Ba'dehû erbâb-ı hayrın yardımıyla güzel ve kargir bir câmii şerîf yaptırdı. Zâviyesinde yıllarca inzivâ edib Sultân Bâyezîd-i Sânî asrında fevkalâde iştihâr etdi. Zâviyesi erkân-ı devletin ziyâret-gâhı olup 908'de dâr-ı kudse intikâl eyledi. Âlim, zâhid, halûk, âbid, Halvetî-meşreb, ehl-i kemâl idi. Mahdûmu Derviş Mehmed Çelebi kendisinden evvel vefât etdi. İki kızı olup birinci dâmâdı eş-Şeyh Abdullâtîf Çelebi sağlığında zâviyesi şeyhi olmuşdu. Vefâtında ikinci dâmâdı es-Seyyid eş-Şeyh Velâyet Çelebi yerine şeyh oldu. Pîr Ahmed Çelebi, şâir, müverrih bir zât olduğundan eş'âr ve ilâhiyyâtı bir de Birinci Sultân Osmân'dan i'tibâren Fâtîh Sultân Mehmed Hân'ın irtihâline kadar "Vakâyi-i Târihiyye"yi Türk diliyle yazmış olduğu tarihi vardır. Vefâtında doksan yaşına varmış bir pîr idi. İkametgâhı ceddi Âşık Paşa adıyla el-yevm meşhûrdur. Zâviyesi ittisâlindeki türbesinde medfûndur.

Put into plain English: he was the son of Yahyâ Çelebi, sheikh of the Elvan Çelebi lodge near Amasya; his lineage goes back through Süleyman Çelebi, Abdurrahman Çelebi, Elvan Çelebi, Alâeddîn Ali Âşık Paşa and Muhlis Paşa to Baba İlyas-ı Horasânî. He took the pen name "Âşıkî". He was born in the district of Elvan Çelebi and grew up in Amasya under the training of Gümüşlüzâde Pîr Abdurrahman Çelebi. He acquired learning and spiritual knowledge from scholars and sheikhs, then entered the service of Pîr Sun'ullah Halvetî, sheikh of the Saddlers' lodge, and became his deputy (halife). After his sheikh's death he went to the Hejaz and made the pilgrimage; having stayed ten years in Mecca and ten years in Medina and benefited from the blessed breath of the sheikhs of the Hejaz, he came to Istanbul in 867. When his perfection on the Sufi path became evident, some friends built him a house and a lodge in the Haydar quarter. From 870 he lived in his house and devoted himself to remembrance of God (zikr) in his lodge. Later, with the help of benefactors, he had a fine stone mosque built. He lived in seclusion in his lodge for years and became exceedingly famous in the reign of Bayezid II; his lodge became a place of visit for the great men of state. He died in 908. He was a learned, ascetic, good-natured and devout man of perfection, of Khalwati disposition. His son Derviş Mehmed Çelebi died before him. He had two daughters; his first son-in-law, Şeyh Abdüllatîf Çelebi, had become sheikh of the lodge in his lifetime, and on his death his second son-in-law, Seyyid Şeyh Velâyet Çelebi, succeeded him. Since Pîr Ahmed Çelebi was a poet and historian, he left poems and hymns, as well as a history written in Turkish of the events from Osman I to the death of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror. At his death he was an old man of ninety. The place where he lived is known to this day by the name of his ancestor Âşık Paşa; he is buried in his tomb adjoining his lodge.

Life and the Differences between the Sources

Most of what is known of Âşıkpaşazâde's life rests on what he himself tells in his chronicle. According to Abdülkadir Özcan's article in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, it is accepted on the basis of a statement in the work that he was born around 803 (1400). Emine Sonnur Özcan, however, shows that the work gives two separate clues: one is the record that he was in Geyve at the age of thirteen in 816 (1413), the other a couplet in which he says that he was eighty-six in 889 (1484), the year Bayezid II set out on his Moldavian campaign. The second takes his birth back to 1398.

The life told by the TDV differs considerably from Hüsameddin's. According to the encyclopaedia, Âşıkpaşazâde was brought up from childhood in the milieu of the dervish lodge, travelled widely, stayed as a young man in Geyve in the house of Yahşi Fakih, and witnessed some events of the Interregnum and the struggle between Murad II and Düzmece Mustafa. He stayed as a guest at the lodge of Sadreddin Konevî in Konya and was initiated by Şeyh Abdüllatîf el-Kudsî, who brought the Zeyniyye order to Anatolia. In 1437 he made the pilgrimage, stopping in Egypt on the way back; he stayed in Skopje (Üsküp) under the patronage of Paşa Yiğitoğlu İshak Bey, took part in some of the campaigns of Murad II, and in 1457 received gifts from Mehmed II at the circumcision festivities of the princes in Edirne. In 874 (1469-70) he married his daughter Râbia to his disciple Şeyh Seyyid Velâyet. When he completed his chronicle in 1484 he was about eighty-five, and it is accepted that he died after that date; his grave is probably in the graveyard of the mosque he had built in the name of his great-grandfather in the Haydar quarter of Istanbul.

The two accounts disagree on several points. Hüsameddin gives his sheikh as Pîr Sun'ullah Halvetî, sheikh of the Saddlers' lodge; the TDV speaks of the Zeyniyye sheikh Abdüllatîf el-Kudsî. The twenty years that Hüsameddin says he spent in the Hejaz and his arrival in Istanbul in 867 do not fit the TDV's pilgrimage of 1437 and the years in Rumelia and Edirne that followed. Hüsameddin gives his death as 908 (1502-03) and his age as ninety; this takes his birth to around 818, some fifteen years later than the date the TDV gives. The name of his son-in-law Seyyid Velâyet is common to both sources. Where Hüsameddin took his information from, he does not say. The TDV's chronology, which rests on the work itself, looks sounder; Hüsameddin's record may reflect what remained in the memory of the family and of Amasya.

Âşıkpaşazâde's link with Amasya comes from two directions. The first is his birthplace: the village of Elvan Çelebi belonged in his time to the sanjak of Amasya. This village is where the lodge of the family's ancestor Elvan Çelebi stood; the sources give the author's birthplace as the village of Elvan Çelebi in the district of Mecitözü within the borders of the "sanjak of Amasya". The second is the Amasya years recorded by Hüsameddin. According to him, Âşıkpaşazâde grew up in Amasya under the Khalwati sheikh Gümüşlüzâde Pîr Abdurrahman Çelebi. This information does not appear in the TDV article. The question of how the family and Âşık Paşa himself were tied to the city belongs to Âşık Paşa's own page.

The Tevârîh-i Âl-i Osmân

What made Âşıkpaşazâde known is the Ottoman history he wrote towards the end of his life. According to the TDV, the part of the work reaching to the reign of Bayezid I was taken from the menâkıbnâme of Yahşi Fakih, the Hungarian battle of 1391 from Umur Bey, son of Kara Timurtaş, and the Battle of Ankara of 1402 from someone who had been present at it as a guardsman (solak); the reigns of Murad II and Mehmed II rest on the author's own observation. The work is arranged in chapters (bab), at times in question-and-answer form. Its language is plain and close to the spoken language of its time; it was written in the manner of a popular epic, to be read by the middle classes and especially by military men. More than ten manuscript copies exist; it was published by Âlî Bey (Istanbul 1332), Friedrich Giese (Leipzig 1929) and Nihal Atsız (Istanbul 1949). It was a source for Neşrî's Cihannümâ.

Hüsameddin says that the history recounts events from Osman I to the death of Mehmed II. The TDV notes that the end date of the work differs in its various manuscripts and that, considering the author's age, the parts after chapter 166 may have been added by others.

His Poetry

For the "eş'âr ve ilâhiyyât", the separate poems and hymns that Hüsameddin mentions, no record of a known divan or anthology was found, nor does any of the poets' tezkires we searched carry an entry under the pen name Âşıkî. What we have of Âşıkî's poetry are the verse passages he placed within the prose narrative of the chronicle. The TDV says that some of these passages were taken from Ahmedî's İskendernâme and that they have no literary value. Emine Sonnur Özcan reads the same couplets with a different eye: in her view the concepts expressing Ottoman sovereignty lie in the work largely among the author's verse lines, and the concepts "Âl-i Osmân" (the House of Osman) and "gazâ" (holy war) also occur mostly in these verse lines.

All the verse passages of the chronicle are given in this category as separate pages, following the edition of Kemal Yavuz and M. A. Yekta Saraç: four mesnevi passages and close to two hundred short poems. The first of them is the mesnevi passage in which the author states his own age, and its authorship is the clearest: "Ömrüm ki bu dem irişdi hadde / Heştâd u şeş bu yıl u sedde", my life has this year reached eighty-six (Mesnevi 1). The other four are tied to the founding narrative of the Ottoman principality: the poem with the refrain "'Osmân" that praises Osman Gazi, after his election as bey, as the key to the gate of Islam (Manzume 1), the poem with the refrain "senüñdür" that addresses "my son" after his dream and Şeyh Edebâlî's interpretation of it (Manzume 2), three couplets announcing the conquest of İnegöl (Manzume 3), and a second poem with the refrain "'Osmân", composed on the occasion of the first Friday sermon (hutbe) read at Karacahisar (Manzume 4). Which passages belong to Âşıkî himself and which to Ahmedî or other poets is discussed on the page of each piece; according to the edition, the pieces in the last chapters and the appendix are most probably additions by later hands.

Family

According to Hüsameddin, his son Derviş Mehmed Çelebi died before his father. The husband of one of his two daughters, Şeyh Abdüllatîf Çelebi, became sheikh of the lodge while Âşıkpaşazâde was still alive; after his death the other son-in-law, Seyyid Velâyet Çelebi, succeeded him. Hüsameddin adds that Abdüllatîf Çelebi was the son of Âşıkpaşazâde's brother Mehmed Çelebi. The TDV records that Seyyid Velâyet was Âşıkpaşazâde's disciple and married his daughter Râbia in 874. The other descendants of Elvan Çelebi are listed in Âşık Paşa's biography.

Chronology

Around 1398-1400: He is born in the village of Elvan Çelebi (according to two separate clues in the work; the age at death given by Hüsameddin points to around 818).

816 (1413): He is in Geyve, in the house of Yahşi Fakih.

1437: He makes the pilgrimage (TDV).

1457: He attends the princes' circumcision festivities in Edirne.

874 (1469-70): He marries his daughter Râbia to Seyyid Velâyet.

889 (1484): He says he is eighty-six; he completes his chronicle in these years.

908 (1502-03): He dies according to Hüsameddin; the TDV places his death after 1484.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Online sources