Of the poems Kadızâde İbrâhim Efendi wrote under the pen name (mahlas) Bedrî, not a single couplet has come down to us. Some of them had been included in the tezkire, the biographical anthology of Amasya's poets, compiled by Abdî Efendi, and that tezkire burned. Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar closes his entry with two words that mourn the loss: "Hayfâ ki yandı", "What a pity that it burned." Bedrî himself was a seventeenth-century scholar of Amasya who rose from deputy judge to judge; he died in 1073 (1662-63) after leaving the judgeship of Çorum. A reading that renders the entry into modern Turkish and glosses its wording goes by the title Bedrî İbrâhim Efendi-Kadızâde.

The Entry in the History of Amasya

In the seventh volume, among the names beginning with B, Hüsameddin gives Bedrî five sentences:

Bedrî İbrâhim Efendi-Kadızâde Amasyalıdır. Kudâttan Bedreddîn Mahmûd Efendizâde Sâdık Mehmed Efendi'nin mahdûmudur. Ulemâdan tahsîl-i ulûm edib niyâbetle devr-i bilâd ederek sonra kadı oldu. Çorum kazâsından ma'zûlen 1073'de vefât etdi. Âlim, şâir, edîb, kâmil bir kadı idi. Abdî Efendi Tezkîresi'nde eş'ârı vâr idi. Hayfâ ki yandı.

In present-day language: A native of Amasya, he was the son of Sâdık Mehmed Efendi, son of the judge Bedreddîn Mahmûd Efendi. He completed his studies under scholars, travelled from town to town as a deputy judge, and later became a judge. He died in 1073, having been dismissed from the district of Çorum. He was a scholar, poet, man of letters and an accomplished judge. His poems were in Abdî Efendi's tezkire. What a pity that it burned.

His Life

His date of birth, the names of his teachers and the towns where he served as deputy are not recorded. The phrase "niyâbetle devr-i bilâd" tells us that he began his career as the deputy (naib) of a judge and went round many districts in that capacity; he received his own judge's warrant only after this long apprenticeship. His last known post was Çorum. Hüsameddin says he died "ma'zûlen", out of office, after Çorum; the word does not reveal whether the dismissal was a punishment or the ordinary end of a term. Judgeships of the period were short appointments, and a judge waiting for his next turn was routinely counted as "ma'zûl".

His Family

The by-name "Kadızâde", "son of a judge", presents the family as a line that had served as judges for generations. Hüsameddin gives no further information about his father, Sâdık Mehmed Efendi. The grandfather named as "the judge Bedreddîn Mahmûd Efendi" cannot be identified with certainty. In the same volume, just before Bedrî's entry, two judges bear this name: "Bedreddîn Mahmûd Efendi bin İbrâhim", one of the senior judges, who died after 1016 (1607-08), and Ganîzâde Bedreddîn Mahmûd Efendi, who was judge of Amasya in 1061 and 1065 and died in 1088. Since Ganîzâde died fifteen years after Bedrî, it is unlikely that he was his grandfather. Bedreddîn Mahmûd Efendi son of İbrâhim fits the dates; that Bedrî bore the same name as this judge's father, İbrâhim, is a detail in favour of the identification. Hüsameddin does not make the link; it is recorded here only as a possibility. The pen name "Bedrî" also recalls the grandfather's title "Bedreddîn", but no explanation of the origin of the pen name is given.

His Connection with Amasya

Hüsameddin's first words concern his origin: "Amasyalıdır", he was of Amasya. Though his posts took him to other districts, his poems found a place in a tezkire that an Amasya teacher devoted solely to the poets of Amasya. The city's poetic circle, it follows, knew him.

His Poetry

Bedrî's poems have not been found. And yet Hüsameddin had seen them. They were in the Tezkiretü'ş-Şu'arâ of Abdî Efendi, teacher at the Abdullah Pasha Hadith School, a work that, by Hüsameddin's description, held the poems and short biographies of the poets who flourished in Amasya between 1000 and 1081 (1591-1671). He found a "very defective" copy of it in Amasya and wrote many poets' entries from it, yet he quoted not one of Bedrî's couplets; the copy later burned. What he was able to save from the tezkire, together with the list of poets in which Bedrî is named, is collected in the article on Abdî Efendi's lost tezkire.

Chronology

After 1016 (1607-08): The judge Bedreddîn Mahmûd Efendi son of İbrâhim, probably his grandfather, dies.

1073 (1662-63): Bedrî İbrâhim Efendi dies, dismissed from the judgeship of Çorum.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Online sources