Name, Pen Name and Nickname

Basîrî was a divan poet who lived through the reigns of Bayezid II, Selim I (Selim the Grim) and Süleyman the Magnificent, wrote in both Persian and Turkish, and won his real fame through his wit. In the preface to the Persian divan he compiled in his own hand, he gives his full name as Mehmed b. Ahmed b. Ebü'l-Meâlî el-Murtazâ. His pen name comes from the Arabic root of "basîret" and means "one whose inner eye is open, perceptive." The tezkires, the Ottoman biographical dictionaries of poets, also call him "Alaca Basîrî," "Piebald Basîrî," a nickname derived from baras (abraş), the skin disease that left patches on his body. The poet did not hide the nickname; on the contrary, he made it material for his own jokes. Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin Yasar, in his Amasya Tarihi (History of Amasya), calls him "Nişânîzâde," son of the chancellor, and presents him as the son of a man who served as chancellor (nişancı) in Amasya.

Basîrî's life can be read from two separate groups of sources, and the two draw portraits that hardly resemble each other. The sixteenth-century tezkires of poets, and the modern studies based on them, see him as an "Acem" poet, a Persianate easterner who came from the Akkoyunlu courts and from Herat and settled in Istanbul. Hüsâmeddin, by contrast, describes him as the son of a chancellor who grew up in Amasya, was raised at the court of Şehzade Ahmed (Prince Ahmed), and became the prince's boon companion and personal poet. The two pictures coincide only at a few points: the father's name, Ahmed; the patronage of İskender Çelebi; a stipend drawn on the endowment of Hagia Sophia; and death in the early 940s of the Hijri calendar.

His Family According to Hüsâmeddin

Hüsâmeddin treats Basîrî's father in a separate entry in the "cim" section of Amasya Tarihi, under the name Câmî Ahmed Çelebi (Kutbzâde). According to this entry, Ahmed Çelebi was the son of the sister of the famous poet and mystic Molla Abdurrahman Jâmî (Câmî), and his father was Kutbeddin Mehmed Câmî. Elsewhere Hüsâmeddin uses more cautious language, saying only that he "is reported" to have been a relative of Jâmî. Ahmed Çelebi came to Amasya with a letter of recommendation from Jâmî, won the favour of Şehzade Bayezid, the later Bayezid II, who was then sanjak governor of Amasya, and was appointed Persian tutor to the prince's son Ahmed.

Ahmed Çelebi's real rise began when Şehzade Ahmed took over the sanjak of Amasya. According to Hüsâmeddin, in 886 (1481) he became the prince's council secretary, and in 896 (1490-91) his tevkiî, that is, his chancellor, gaining great influence at the Amasya court. In 904 (1498-99) he worked against the sâhib-i divan, the head of the prince's council, Tâceddin Paşa; the following year he succeeded in having him dismissed, and he also had the chief judge Ebussuûd Efendi, who opposed him, removed from office. While he was waiting to become head of the council himself, Abdullah Beyzâde Kâsım Paşa was appointed instead, and Ahmed Çelebi was dismissed. His successor, the calligrapher Fettâhîzâde Ahmed Efendi, was encouraging him to take up teaching in a madrasa when he died, in Hüsâmeddin's words, "stricken by grief." Hüsâmeddin also reports that Münîrî of Amasya, in his Münşeât, describes him as learned, a poet and a man of letters, but conceited. The signature "Ahmed bin Kutbeddîn el-Câmî et-Tevkîî" found in the appendix to Tâceddin Paşa's endowment deed is the documented trace of this chancellor's presence in Amasya.

One detail in this family record deserves attention. In the full name Basîrî wrote in his own hand, his father's name is Ahmed and his grandfather's is Ebü'l-Meâlî el-Murtazâ. In Hüsâmeddin's record the father is again Ahmed, but the grandfather is Kutbeddin Mehmed Câmî. The father's name agrees in both sources; the grandfather's does not.

The Amasya Years According to Hüsâmeddin

In Hüsâmeddin's account, Basîrî grew up in Amasya. When his father became Şehzade Ahmed's chancellor, he studied literature under his father's protection, drew close to the prince by presenting him with kasides, and in the end became his boon companion (nedim) and personal poet. Hüsâmeddin writes that in these years he "attained a life of comfort." He adds that the jesting exchanges, the "mütâyebât," between Basîrî and Şehzade Ahmed were recorded in the Münşeât of Münîrî of Amasya, and that the same work shows Basîrî as about twenty-seven years old in 916 (1510-11). If this record is correct, the poet was born around 1483-84.

Hüsâmeddin describes the literary atmosphere of the Amasya court in these years on the occasion of the circumcision feast held in 911 (1505-06) for Şehzade Ahmed's sons. Having obtained permission from his father Bayezid II, the prince invited the surrounding governors and held a great celebration, and the city was decorated. Hüsâmeddin says that at that time the Turkish poets Çeşmî, Şermî, Figânî, Kâmî, Melîhî, Münîrî and Mihrî were well known in Amasya, and among the "Acem poets" Basîrî, Penâhî and Kutbî. These poets wrote kasides congratulating the prince on the feast and received generous rewards. According to Hüsâmeddin, the Acem poets displayed all their skill to win Sultan Ahmed's eye and heart. That Basîrî is counted here among the "Acem" poets sits in curious tension with the same author's account of him as someone who grew up in Amasya.

Şehzade Ahmed's defeat in the struggle for the throne and his strangling in 1513 on the orders of his brother Selim I changed Basîrî's fortunes as well. Hüsâmeddin places this event in the year 918 and writes that afterwards the poet lived in Amasya in disfavour. When Selim I came to Amasya in 920 (1514), Basîrî presented him with a "Victory kaside," won the sultan's favour and went to Istanbul. There he attached himself to İskender Çelebi of Amasya, the treasurer (defterdar), became his boon companion, and was granted a stipend from the surplus revenues of the Hagia Sophia endowment. Hüsâmeddin believes that having been Şehzade Ahmed's intimate companion denied him advancement under Selim and Süleyman, and that without İskender Çelebi's protection he would have been reduced to depending on the gifts of men such as Revânî.

Basîrî in the Tezkires: From the Akkoyunlu Courts to Herat

The youth of the Basîrî described by the tezkires and modern research unfolds in an entirely different geography. According to Mehmed Çavuşoğlu's article in the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, the poet in his youth served the sons of the Akkoyunlu ruler Uzun Hasan, Uğurlu Mehmed (d. 882/1477) and Yâkub Bey (d. 896/1490), and presented kasides to them. He travelled widely, and around 892 (1487) went to Herat, where he met Ali Şîr Nevâî (Alisher Navoi), Hüseyin Baykara, Molla Jâmî and Binâyî. Âşık Çelebi records that in Herat he was in the service of the leading figures of the age. A record based on Nail Tuman gives his birth as 871 (1466), and Âşık Çelebi says he was about seventy when he died.

The most concrete document of the Herat years is the letter of recommendation Ali Şîr Nevâî wrote for Basîrî. A copy of this letter, recorded in some anthologies under the title "Nevâî Nâmesi," survives in the Süleymaniye Library in manuscript Fatih 4020, among three letters appended to the end of a Persian manual of letter writing. According to the edition published by Aysu Akcan in 2025, the beginning of the same manuscript bears the note "in the hand of Molla Basîrî," and the script of the letters does not appear to differ from that of the main text. In the letter Nevâî says that Basîrî came to this land, distinguished himself among his peers and showed the virtue of his pen name, and he introduces him to other learned men by composing a riddle (muamma) on his name. The letter is written in Chagatai Turkish and is signed "Ali Şîr."

His Arrival in Ottoman Lands

The tezkires link Basîrî's arrival in Ottoman territory with the names of Nevâî and Jâmî. Latîfî says that Basîrî was the first to bring Nevâî's divan to Ottoman lands. Âşık Çelebi writes that when he came in the reign of Bayezid II, he brought with him the books, ghazals and letters of commission of Nevâî and Jâmî. Akcan notes that this account presents Basîrî as someone who carried the prestige of the Herat court to Istanbul, and that this may have helped him gain acceptance among the Ottoman elite.

According to Çavuşoğlu, the poet spent a short time in Istanbul around 1491 and then became the companion (musahib) of the Akkoyunlu ruler Göde Ahmed Bey. A memory of this first visit to Istanbul also survives in the tezkires: he asked Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Çelebi for a trusteeship, and on hearing that Müeyyedzâde had said, "compassion is a disease, and we do not have it," he composed this couplet:

Mansıb-ı vaslın dirîğ eyler bu ben üftâdeden
Dil-berüm bî-rahmrek olmış Müeyyedzâdeden

Göde Ahmed Bey sent the poet as an envoy to Bayezid II in 901 (1495-96). According to Sehî Bey, Basîrî was in the service of Uğurluoğlu, and when his master went to Persia and became ruler, he was sent to Bayezid as an envoy; while Basîrî was in Ottoman lands, the event that befell his master made it impossible for him to return, so he married in Istanbul and stayed. Göde Ahmed died in 1497. Akcan notes the possibility that the poet came on his own initiative to join Göde Ahmed's circle without any formal role as envoy. What is certain is that after his master's death he remained in Istanbul and never went back.

A Wit in Istanbul

In Istanbul Basîrî's patrons were among the leading statesmen and scholars of the age: the chancellor and poet Tâcîzâde Câfer Çelebi, the military judge (kazasker) Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Çelebi and later the treasurer İskender Çelebi. He received an annual allowance from the imperial treasury and a daily stipend of ten akçe from the surplus revenues of the Hagia Sophia endowment. Beyond that, he lived on the rewards for the kasides he presented to the sultan and to the great men of the state. According to Fikret Sarısoy's study of the Persian divan, of its twenty-three kasides eleven are addressed to Bayezid II and nine to Selim I, a distribution which shows that the poet stood close to the courts of both sultans.

Rewards did not always come, and Basîrî was not one to accept that quietly. When Zeyrekoğlu became military judge, Basîrî presented him with a kaside; when Zeyrekoğlu promised a reward and failed to give it, the poet's tongue turned on him. The story involving Revânî Çelebi is even better known. According to Latîfî, Basîrî presented Revânî with a kaside in hope of a return, and Revânî, to display his generosity, sent a few coins; it turned out there were ten akçe, five of them copper and five lead. The offended poet wrote a quatrain showing Revânî as cut from the same cloth as another miser nicknamed "Stingy Hamîd," and added a couplet saying that when he went to Revânî's kitchen to ask for food, he found the cook foaming at the mouth from hunger. Revânî answered in the same tone: in one of his couplets, speaking of the beloved's hard, dark heart, he touched on Basîrî's nickname by telling him, "you too are a little piebald."

Âşık Çelebi describes this side of Basîrî as follows: his wit was at peace with the men of power, he was the salt of every gathering, and his words mixed like milk and sugar; he needled the great, yet still wore their robes, made the notables drink poison in the guise of jest, yet still ate their bread. Çavuşoğlu concludes that, although his jokes were mostly of the bawdy and satirical kind, the fact that he was sought after in the gatherings of statesmen shows that they were neither coarse nor wounding and gave pleasure to those who heard them. Latîfî's words are close to this: "The late poet was a remarkable man, nimble of tongue and sweet of speech, smiling of face and jesting of word, a born companion and of playful temper." The same biographer, after saying that he had many colourful jokes worth copying into anthologies, ties his words to the poet's own nickname: in his character and temper he had no fault "other than his piebaldness."

Some of Basîrî's jokes have been preserved verbatim in the tezkires. In one treatise he distributed judgeships to his fellow candidates for office according to their nicknames, giving Boyabad Hisarı to Tall Muslihiddin, Yalakâbâd to Bâlî the Dog, Göynük to Ahî, and to himself, because of his piebaldness, Alacahisar. According to Âşık Çelebi, he presented the treatise to a vizier who was preparing to marry a sultan's daughter; when the vizier teased him, "you have handed out posts to your friends, is there no share for us?", the poet said he had given him the sanjak of Sultanönü, "before the sultana," as suited his situation. In another joke he assigned bathhouses to professions and groups: the Müftü Bath to madrasa teachers, the Kazasker Bath to candidates for office, the Alaca Bath to women, the Azablar (Bachelors) Bath to young unmarried men, the Sırt (Back) Bath to porters, and the Vefa (Fidelity) Bath to the beautiful. These games, built on the names of Istanbul's baths and quarters, show why the poet was in demand at gatherings.

Basîrî was also a master of the chronogram. The tezkires cite the chronograms he composed on the events of Süleyman the Magnificent's reign: the date he set in the last line of a quatrain praising the sultan for the conquest of Belgrade (1521), his line giving the date of the conquest of Rhodes (1522) three times over within a single hemistich, and the chronogram he wrote for the birth of Şehzade Cihangir. He formed friendships with the Istanbul poets of the first quarter of the sixteenth century, above all Zâtî, Kandî and Keşfî.

Views on His Origin

Where Basîrî came from is the question on which the old sources differ most. Hakîm Şah Muhammed el-Kazvînî, who translated Nevâî's Mecâlisü'n-nefâis into Persian, calls him "Mevlânâ Basîrî-i Acemî"; Sehî Bey and Gelibolulu Âlî also call him Acem. In one version of Latîfî he is said to come from a place near the Persian frontier, while researchers relying on another edition of Latîfî state that he describes him as being from Baghdad. Âşık Çelebi, Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi, Beyânî and, following them, Mehmed Süreyya and Şemseddin Sâmi call him a Khorasani; Riyâzî and Kâtib Çelebi record him as from Baghdad. Âşık Çelebi's claim that Nevâî mentioned him in his tezkire is also mistaken: Basîrî's name does not appear in Nevâî's work, and was only added, among the poets of Selim I's reign, in Kazvînî's translation.

Çavuşoğlu rejects the records that make him a native of Baghdad or Khorasan and says there are strong reports indicating that he came from the south-eastern provinces of present-day Turkey. In his view, the tezkire writers' use of "Acem" stems from the Ottoman intellectuals' habit of regarding everyone living beyond the empire's eastern frontier as Acem. Basîrî at first wrote in what the tezkire writers called the "Acem manner," in his own Azeri dialect, and later moved to Istanbul Turkish; traces of that dialect can still be seen here and there in the poems he wrote in his own hand. Ahmet Kartal agrees with this view, but, on the basis of certain Chagatai features in his Turkish poems, also suggests that he may have been a Turk from Central Asia.

Hüsâmeddin gives an entirely different answer to this debate. In his view, Latîfî's statement that Basîrî came to Rûm with letters of recommendation from Jâmî and Nevâî actually belongs to his father Ahmed Çelebi, since Basîrî's age does not fit it. He also interprets Latîfî's remark that Basîrî "spent most of his time in the land of Rûm" as meaning "in Amasya." In the tezkires the word "Rûm" usually denotes the Ottoman lands or Anatolia; reading it as Amasya is Hüsâmeddin's own interpretation.

Comparing the Two Accounts

The two accounts cannot be reconciled chronologically. The Basîrî of the tezkires is old enough to present kasides at the Akkoyunlu court before 1477 and to meet Nevâî in Herat in 1487, and he is about seventy when he dies. According to the information Hüsâmeddin gives on the authority of Münîrî, however, Basîrî was twenty-seven in 916 (1510-11), which means he was either not yet born or a small child at the time of the Herat journey. Hüsâmeddin noticed this difficulty and tried to resolve it by transferring the Herat story to the father. Yet this solution cannot account for the Akkoyunlu service, the embassy from Göde Ahmed and the story of his marrying and staying in Istanbul found in the tezkires.

On the other hand, the points where the two accounts meet are not negligible either. On both sides the father's name is Ahmed; in both the poet enters the patronage of İskender Çelebi, receives a stipend from the surplus revenues of the Hagia Sophia endowment, presents kasides to Selim I, and dies in Istanbul in 940-941. Two possibilities therefore stand out: either Hüsâmeddin's Amasya sources describe a period of the same poet's life that the tezkires do not record, or Nişânîzâde Mehmed Çelebi of Amasya and the Acem Basîrî of Istanbul came, through the same pen name and a similar full name, to be told as a single person over time. None of the modern studies examined mentions any life of Basîrî in Amasya, and no study was found that compares the Münîrî record on which Hüsâmeddin relies with these works. Basîrî's connection with Amasya therefore rests today on Hüsâmeddin's account alone and should be read with caution.

Works

Basîrî's most important known work is his Persian divan, whose only copy, written in his own hand, is in the Süleymaniye Library (Âşir Efendi 292). In the same volume, the divan is preceded by Riyâzetü'l-inşâ by Hâce-i Cihân Mahmûd b. Muhammed el-Gîlânî, and the colophon of the book is also the poet's. The divan consists of a preface, twenty-three kasides, 121 ghazals and short poems, most of them chronograms; by Sarısoy's count it totals 1,305 couplets.

The sources also mention a Turkish divan, but no independent copy of it has been found. About fifty Turkish poems, most of them ghazals, stand together at the end of the Persian divan; Kartal counts them as one kaside, forty-six ghazals and some short poems and single couplets, and has published them in transliteration. Some of his Turkish poems also appear in sixteenth-century anthologies of parallel poems (nazire mecmuaları). Kartal attributes Kâtib Çelebi's mention of a Turkish divan to four couplets Kâtib Çelebi had seen in an anthology.

The Letâif (Witticisms), the work that brought the poet his real fame, has not survived complete. An incomplete copy containing a collection of his jokes is in the library of the Koyunoğlu Museum in Konya. Some of these jokes, transmitted at second hand, can also be found in the collection of witticisms compiled by Lâmiîzâde Lem'î Çelebi and attributed to his father Lâmiî. Âşık Çelebi also mentions a work by him called Bengînâme, but this too has not yet been found.

His Poetry

Çavuşoğlu finds Basîrî's poems almost flawless in metre and his diction easy, and notes that the plays on meaning favoured by most of his contemporaries are rarely found in him. According to Kartal's study, the chief subject of his Turkish poems is love; the poet compares himself to Mecnun and Ferhad and claims to have surpassed them on the path of love. A mystical vein is also evident: couplets reminding whoever wishes to see "the light of God" that the tavern and the mosque are filled with the same light are an example. Latîfî, too, writes that because he stayed long in the land of Rûm he adopted the manner of the Rûm poets in Turkish verse, and that he had admired sayings in both Persian and Turkish. Hüsâmeddin, in his entry on Basîrî, also quotes the following three opening couplets by the poet as examples:

Âşıklarını âh o Mesîhâ-dem öldürür
Bu âdem oldurur ki Mesîh âdem öldürür

Şol iki mahmûr gözler çehre-i dildârda
İki nergisdir açılmış gûşe-i gülzârda

Gerçi kim derler cihânda ârife bir gül yeter
Ârife bir gül yeterse bana yârim gül yeter

His Death

Âşık Çelebi and Kınalızâde record that Basîrî died in Istanbul in 941 (1534-35); Hüsâmeddin gives the year of his death as 940 (1533-34). According to Âşık Çelebi he was about seventy when he died. He was buried outside Edirnekapı, in a cemetery where many poets lie. No building, endowment or grave bearing his name is known in Amasya; his connection with the city consists of the family and court memories recorded by Hüsâmeddin in Amasya Tarihi.

Chronology

1477: Death of the Akkoyunlu prince Uğurlu Mehmed, in whose service he had been in his youth.

c. 1487: Meeting with Ali Şîr Nevâî, Molla Jâmî and Binâyî in Herat; Nevâî's letter of recommendation.

1490-91: According to Hüsâmeddin, his father Ahmed Çelebi becomes chancellor to Şehzade Ahmed.

c. 1491: First, brief stay in Istanbul.

1495-96: Sent by Göde Ahmed Bey as envoy to Bayezid II.

1497: Death of Göde Ahmed; the poet remains in Istanbul.

1499-1500: According to Hüsâmeddin, his father is dismissed from the chancellorship in Amasya.

1505-06: According to Hüsâmeddin, named among the "Acem" poets who presented kasides to Şehzade Ahmed at the circumcision feast in Amasya.

1510-11: Aged twenty-seven according to the record based on Münîrî.

1513: Şehzade Ahmed is strangled.

1514: According to Hüsâmeddin, presents a "Victory kaside" to Selim I in Amasya and goes to Istanbul.

1521: Composes a chronogram on the conquest of Belgrade.

1522: Composes a chronogram on the conquest of Rhodes.

1533-35: Dies in Istanbul (Hüsâmeddin 940; Âşık Çelebi and Kınalızâde 941).

Bibliography

The following sources were used in this article:

  • Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin Yasar, Amasya Tarihi, vol. 7 (entries on Basîrî Mehmed Çelebi and Câmî Ahmed Çelebi) and vol. 3 (the period of Şehzade Ahmed), published by Amasya Municipality.
  • Mehmed Çavuşoğlu, "Basîrî", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 5, Istanbul 1992, pp. 105-106 (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Ahmet Kartal, "Basîrî ve Türkçe Şiirleri", İlmî Araştırmalar: Dil, Edebiyat, Tarih İncelemeleri, 10 (2000), pp. 77-96.
  • Aysu Akcan, "ʿAlī Şīr Nevāyī's Letter of Recommendation for the émigré poet Baṣīrī", Keshif: E-Journal for Ottoman-Turkish Micro Editions, 3/1 (2025), pp. 1-8.
  • Fikret Sarısoy, Basîrî'nin Farsça Divanı, MA thesis, Kırıkkale University Institute of Social Sciences, 2001 (abstract).
  • Hamid Algar, "Jami and the Ottomans", Jāmī in Regional Contexts (ed. Thibaut d'Hubert, Alexandre Papas), Brill, Leiden 2018/2019 (cited at second hand).
  • Tezkires cited through these sources: Sehî Bey, Heşt Bihişt; Latîfî, Tezkiretü'ş-şuarâ; Âşık Çelebi, Meşâirü'ş-şuarâ; Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi, Tezkiretü'ş-şuarâ; Beyânî, Tezkire; Münîrî, Münşeât.

Online sources