Abdîzâde Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar is known as the author of the twelve-volume History of Amasya; but in his youth he wrote poetry under the pen name (mahlas) "Asrî", and he kept up the habit until the end of his life. No divan or poetry miscellany of his is known. The poems we have today are the verses he scattered through the pages of his own work and a ghazal published in a newspaper a year before his death: a murabba of thirty-seven stanzas describing Amasya quarter by quarter, two tahmis written on the ghazals of two Amasyan poets, and a ghazal reproaching his home town. This page deals with his poetry and these poems; his work as a historian and his life are told in detail in Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar.

Life

Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn was born on 5 November 1869 in the Çeribaşı quarter of Amasya. His father was Hacı Mehmed Ağa, known as Abdîzâde, and his mother Zâhide Hatun. After completing the rüşdiye (middle school) in Amasya he went to Istanbul for a madrasa education, and learned French alongside Arabic and Persian. He worked in the office of the Şeyhülislam, as deputy judge in various districts and in the Ministry of Endowments, and became a member of the Târîh-i Osmânî Encümeni (Ottoman Historical Society). He wrote many works on the Turkish language. The first four volumes of the History of Amasya and the remainder of the fourth were printed in his lifetime; the other volumes remained in manuscript and were published by the Municipality of Amasya in 2022. He died on 10 February 1939 at his home in Şişli, Istanbul, and was buried in the Feriköy Cemetery.

The Pen Name Asrî

In the first volume of the History of Amasya, immediately after the last stanza of the Amasya murabba, as he begins to tell his own life, Hüsameddin explains how he took his pen name:

Arz edilen âsâr-ı mütekaddimîn, Amasya'nın kâffe-i ahvâl ve ricâlini câmi' olamadığından bunları zamm ve ilâve ederek bir târîh-i mufassal tahrîrini tasmîm eden muharrir-i âciz, zamân-ı sabâvetimde bir müddet edebiyât ile iştigâl etdiğim cihetle akrân arasında "Asrî" mahlasını ihtiyâr ve ba'dehû tetebbu'ât-ı târîhiyyeye hasr-ı iştigâl etmiş idim.

In English: Since the earlier works mentioned could not encompass all the circumstances and men of Amasya, this humble author, who resolved to add to them and write a detailed history, had, because I occupied myself with literature for a while in my boyhood and early youth, chosen the pen name "Asrî" among my peers, and afterwards devoted myself entirely to historical research.

"Asrî" comes from the Arabic word "asr" (age, time) and means "of the age, contemporary". Hüsameddin's own words present poetry as a youthful pursuit left behind, but the poems preserved in the sources show that this is not quite true: the murabba appeared in the first volume, printed in 1912, one of his tahmis in the tenth volume, written in the 1930s, and his ghazal was published in 1938.

Poems

The Amasya Murabba

Hüsameddin's longest and best-known poem is the murabba of thirty-seven stanzas beginning with the line "Etdikçe tecellî dile envâr-ı Amasya". The historian says that many poets and historians had praised Amasya in verse and prose, but that, so as not to lengthen his work, he did not quote them, and instead wrote a "kasîde-i murabba'" to serve as a "fihrist icmali", that is, a summary table of contents of his work. Each stanza of the poem was placed at the beginning or end of the relevant topic in the first and second volumes, followed by a prose explanation of what the stanza describes. The stanzas describe in turn the founding of the city, the Çakallar and Karakaya vineyards, Mount Ferhad, Saraydüzü, the citadel, the royal rock tombs, the tombs of saints, the city's fruit and its scholars; the last stanza gives the reason for writing the history and the author's pen name. The refrain is "Amasya", and the word occurs forty times in the poem. The murabba has been published in full, with an English version and commentary, in our Poems of Amasya series: The Amasya Murabba: Etdikçe tecellî dile envâr-ı Amasya. We do not repeat the text here.

Tahmis on a Ghazal by Nelmî

In the eighth volume Hüsameddin tells the life of an Amasyan müderris poet he knew well, Tahsîn Hasan Efendi, known as Nelmî. Nelmî, in the grip of a love and the mental crisis that followed it, returned to Amasya, shut himself in a cell of the Kapancızâde Madrasa, and in Zilhicce 1317 (1900) took his own life by throwing himself into the Yeşilırmak from above the Yörgüç Pasha soup kitchen. Hüsameddin writes that at their last meetings Nelmî gave him a ghazal with the refrain "aglasun", that he read the ghazal aloud beside him, that they wept together, and that on hearing of his death he wrote a tahmis on the ghazal "in his voice". This five-stanza tahmis is emotionally the most intense of Hüsameddin's poems. For Nelmî's life and ghazal see Nelmî (Tahsîn Hasan Efendi).

Tahmis on a Ghazal by Rüşdî

In the tenth volume, in the biography of the Amasyan grand vizier Şirvânîzâde Mehmed Rüşdü Pasha, Hüsameddin quotes the pasha's ghazal with the refrain "bir değilse de", preserved in Fatîn's tezkire. He then says, "Müşârün-ileyhin şu gazeli tab'ımda bir küşâyiş uyandırdığından irticâlen şöyle tahmîs eyledim": because the ghazal awakened an opening in his temperament, he composed a tahmis on it on the spot. In the last stanza of the tahmis he places his own pen name in the same stanza as Rüşdî's. Mücahit Kaçar says this tahmis is at least as successful as the ghazal itself. For the pasha's life see Rüşdî (Şirvânîzâde Mehmed Rüşdü Pasha).

A Ghazal Reproaching Amasya

Hüsameddin's last known poem was published in an issue of the Amasya newspaper Yeşilırmak in 1938 and does not appear in the History of Amasya. Kaçar was the first to study it, taking the text from an article by Hüseyin Menç. In the six-couplet ghazal beginning "Ey Amasya bana söyle nasıl füsûn ettin", the poet says that although he devoted his life and his pen to the history of his home town he received nothing in return, and that the city left him behind and pleased others. Kaçar notes that Hüsameddin wished to become a deputy for Amasya and that this wish went unanswered, and that he expressed in letters to friends his sorrow at realising he would not be able to print the remaining volumes of the History of Amasya; he reads the ghazal as the expression of this disappointment. Kaçar also says that the metre breaks in the first line, and that the printed text of this line may be faulty, since the poet makes no metrical errors in his other poems.

Literary Personality

Hüsameddin's poetry has remained in the shadow of his historical work. Kaçar, the first to study him systematically in this respect, says that his poems contain no faults of metre or rhyme, that he had an excellent command of the divan tradition, and that his talent places him among the above-average poets rather than among mere amateurs. Metin Hakverdioğlu calls the murabba an "Amasya Güzellemesi" (praise poem for Amasya) and notes that hyperbole and simile are the figures most used in it, the poet discovering something extraordinary in every corner of Amasya. The introduction to the 2022 edition also mentions the murabba, the tahmis and the ghazal together and stresses the strength of his poetry.

What these poems have in common is that each is tied to an occasion. The murabba was written as the skeleton of a history book, the tahmis are responses to the verse of two poets whose lives he was telling, and the ghazal is the reproach of an old writer settling accounts with his home town. Hüsameddin's language is clear for its time; he uses Arabic and Persian compounds freely, but his sentence structure remains intelligible. His skill in the tahmis at continuing another poet's ghazal in that poet's voice shows that he handled the forms of the old poetry with the ease of a poet rather than a historian. Kaçar voices the hope that the poems of this poet, of whom no divan or miscellany is known, may one day come to light as a collection; no such compilation has been found to date.

Poems in This Section

Of his poems whose texts survive in the sources, two are tahmis and one is a ghazal; each is given on a separate page in this category with its original text, an English version and commentary: the tahmis on Nelmî's ghazal ("Vasl içün çok ağladım yok çâre hicrân aglasun"), the tahmis on Rüşdî's ghazal ("Birdir gınâ-yı kalb ü gınâ bir değilse de") and the ghazal published in 1938 ("Ey Amasya bana söyle nasıl füsûn ettin"). The Amasya murabba, as noted above, appears in the Poems of Amasya series. Since Hüsameddin died in 1939, his poems are not under copyright.

Chronology

5 November 1869: Born in the Çeribaşı quarter of Amasya.

1317 (1900): Writes a tahmis on Nelmî's ghazal after Nelmî's death.

1912: The first volume of the History of Amasya, containing the stanzas of the Amasya murabba, is printed; the second volume follows in 1914.

1932: Completes the tenth volume, which contains his tahmis on Rüşdî's ghazal.

1938: The ghazal "Ey Amasya bana söyle nasıl füsûn ettin" is published in the newspaper Yeşilırmak.

10 February 1939: Dies in Istanbul.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Online sources