All that survives of Bâkî Ahmed Çelebi's poetry is the news of its loss: in Abdî Efendi's anthology of Amasya poets a ghazal of his stood beneath his biography, but the anthology burned. The son of the cavalryman (sipahi) Kâsım Ağa, this secretary and poet made his living by the pen in Amasya in the decades before 1650. He began as secretary to the town stewardship and then spent many years collecting the poll tax, which earned him the names "Cizyedâr" and "Cizyeci". He died in 1058 (1648). What we know comes from a brief entry in Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar's Amasya Tarihi, whose last sentence also records the loss of the ghazal.

Hüsameddin's Entry

Amasyalıdır. Sipâhî Kâsım Ağa'nın mahdûmudur. Tahsîl-i kitâbet ve inşâ ederek Şehir kethüdâlığı kâtibi oldu. Ba'dehû Cizye tahsîl me'mûru olup yıllarca bu hizmetinde kaldı. Bunun için Cizyedâr, Cizyeci dendi. 1058 senesinde vefât etdi. Şâ'ir, kâtib, me'ârif-âşinâ idi. Abdî Efendi'nin tezkiresinde bu tercemesi zeylinde bir gazeli var idi. Hayfâ ki yandı.

In English: Of Amasya; his father was the sipahi Kâsım Ağa. Having learned the art of writing and official correspondence (inşâ), he became secretary to the town stewardship. Later he became a poll-tax collector and remained in this service for years. For this reason he was called Cizyedâr, Cizyeci. He died in 1058 (1648). Poet and secretary, he was at home in learning. In Abdî Efendi's anthology there was a ghazal of his beneath this biography. Alas, it burned.

From Secretary to Tax Collector

Hüsameddin's phrase "tahsîl-i kitâbet ve inşâ" shows that Bâkî Ahmed Çelebi was trained not in the madrasa but in the scribal service: he learned the writing, accounting and formulae of official letters that a secretary needed. In Hüsameddin's records the town stewards of Amasya usually come from among the town's notables; Bâkî Ahmed Çelebi began his career as the secretary of this office.

The cizye was the poll tax levied on non-Muslim subjects. Hüsameddin's chronicle of events often records that the poll tax of Amasya and Tokat was farmed out each year to a muhassıl, an agha charged with collecting it. One of these records holds a clue to Bâkî Ahmed Çelebi's circle: in Zilhicce 1041 (June-July 1632) "Kâsımzâde Mustafa Ağa" became collector of the poll tax of Amasya and Tokat. In the same years an Amasya poll-tax collector named Mustafa Ağa had a son who wrote poetry: İlhâmî Hasan Çelebi-Cizyedârzâde, whose details also come from Abdî Efendi's anthology, worked as poll-tax secretary under his father and died in 1078 (1668). That Bâkî Ahmed, son of Kâsım Ağa, also spent years in the poll-tax service invites us to bring these three names together in one family: Kâsımzâde Mustafa Ağa might be İlhâmî's father, the collector Mustafa Ağa, and Bâkî Ahmed Çelebi his brother. Hüsameddin draws no such kinship; Mustafa and Kâsım were among the commonest names of the age, and this identification must remain a possibility resting only on the similarity of names and offices.

The Lost Ghazal and Abdî Efendi's Anthology

The entry's last two sentences, ending "Hayfâ ki yandı", point to one of Hüsameddin's most valuable sources. Abdî Efendi, professor at the Abdullah Pasha Madrasa, had collected in an anthology (tezkire) the short biographies and poems of the poets who grew up in Amasya between 1000 and 1081. Hüsameddin saw a copy of this work and used it in his entries on poets, but the copy later burned. For some poets he quotes verses from the anthology; for Bâkî Ahmed Çelebi he noted only that the ghazal existed and gave no text. The contents of the anthology and the poems Hüsameddin managed to save are described together on the site in Abdî Efendi: the Lost Tezkire of Amasya Poets and Its Poems; Bâkî Ahmed Çelebi is counted there among the poets named in the anthology.

The Great Poet of the Same Name

Bâkî Ahmed Çelebi's name is the same as a pen name often met with in poetry anthologies. The Merzifon Cönkü introduced by Metin Hakverdioğlu contains three ghazals signed "Bâkî", and one may ask whether they belong to the Amasya tax collector. All three appear in the divan of the great Istanbul poet Bâkî; this distinction is set out in detail on the page Bâkî: Ghazals of the Great Divan Poet in the Merzifon Cönkü. Whether the Amasya secretary actually used "Bâkî" as a pen name is not certain either; in Hüsameddin's heading the name and the epithet stand side by side, and no separate pen name is given.

Poetry

Nothing of his verse survives. Its one recorded piece, the ghazal Hüsameddin mentions, went with the burned copy of Abdî Efendi's anthology. For the Ottoman Turkish wording of the entry and a glossary, see Bâkî Ahmed Çelebi-Cizyedâr.

Chronology

Zilhicce 1041 (1632): Kâsımzâde Mustafa Ağa becomes collector of the poll tax of Amasya and Tokat.

1058 (1648): Bâkî Ahmed Çelebi dies.

Zilkade 1078 (1668): The poet İlhâmî Hasan Çelebi, son of the poll-tax collector Mustafa Ağa, dies.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Online sources