Belâyî was a scholar who served as a kadı (judge) in fifteenth-century Amasya and wrote poetry under this pen name (mahlas). It is his daughter, Mihrî Hatun, who has carried his name down to us: two old manuscripts of her divan bear the heading "the divan of Mihrî, daughter of Mevlânâ Belâyî", and Mihrî herself names her father by this pen name in two of her poems. Of Belâyî's own poetry, however, not a single line has come down to us. His identity is also disputed in the sources. Mehmet Arslan, who published Mihrî's divan, and the encyclopedia entries introduce him as Kadı Hasan Amasyevî; Gönül Ayan and Sabiha Gemici give his real name as Mehmed Çelebi b. Yahyâ; in Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar's Amasya Tarihi (History of Amasya), on the other hand, there is no entry under the name Belâyî, and Mihrî appears there as the granddaughter of the kadı Bilâlî Mehmed Çelebi. The first volume of the same work gives the name "Belâ'î Çelebi" this time to the father of the other woman poet of Amasya, Zeyneb Hatun. This page sets out separately what we know and from which source each piece of information comes.

Life

Belâyî's dates of birth and death are unknown. Almost everything known about him is scattered through the sources that tell the life of his daughter. According to these he was a kadı from Amasya, came from a family devoted to learning and letters, and also composed poetry. It is recorded that Mihrî learned Arabic and Persian, knew the religious sciences well and acquired a culture that allowed her to trade verses with male poets in literary gatherings; Mehmet Arslan attributes this upbringing partly to her father's office as kadı. It is also accepted that the family descended from the Halveti sheikh Pîr İlyas, but the number of generations between them differs in the sources: İsmail E. Erünsal gives Pîr İlyas as Mihrî's grandfather, while Arslan calls him her "great-grandfather". Considering that Pîr İlyas died in 813 (1410) and that Mihrî is thought to have been born between 1455 and 1461, the second view is the more plausible; this is our own assessment.

The only clue to when Belâyî died again comes from Mihrî. In the prayer section of her mesnevi Tazarru‘-nâme, thought to have been written towards the end of her life, Mihrî asks God "adumuz eylükle yâd olmaġ içün / hem Belâyî rûḥı şâd olmaġ içün", that their name be remembered with kindness and that Belâyî's soul be gladdened. This prayer, made for the soul of someone who has died, suggests that Belâyî was no longer alive when the work was written. Since the work appears in the copy of the divan that Mihrî sent to Bayezid II in 1508, it must have been completed before that date. The death date of 889 (1484) that Hüsameddin gives for Bilâlî Mehmed Çelebi fits this frame if that person is accepted as Belâyî; but, as explained below, there is no document confirming such an identification.

Connection with Amasya

The sources agree that Belâyî was from Amasya. Latîfî opens his entry on Mihrî with the words "Nefs-i Amasyadan Belâyî tahallus ider bir kadınuñ kızı idi"; in plain terms, Mihrî was from the city of Amasya itself, the daughter of a kadı who used the pen name Belâyî. According to Gülşen Kaya, in the register of royal gifts (in‘âmât defteri) from the reign of Bayezid II published by Erünsal, the father's name appears as Mevlânâ Hasan Amasyevî, that is, Mevlânâ Hasan of Amasya. Since it is known that Mihrî was born in Amasya, spent her life there and was buried in the tomb of Pîr İlyas, it is clear that the family belonged to the settled learned circles of Amasya. Whether Belâyî served as kadı in Amasya or in some other district, however, the sources do not say.

The State of the Sources and the Debate

The Pen Name Belâyî

The pen name rests on firm ground, because it comes from Mihrî's own texts. Two manuscripts of the divan, designated F and S in Arslan's edition, carry the heading "Dîvân-ı Mihrî Duhter-i Mevlânâ Belâyî"; the S manuscript, which bears the seal of Bayezid II at its end, is very probably the copy Mihrî sent to the sultan in 1508. In addition, in the last couplet of her thirty-ninth ghazal Mihrî says "Ey belâ-keş Mihrî sen beñzer Belâyî neslisin / Saña dâ'im bî-vefâlar gâlibâ andan çıkar": O Mihrî who endures afflictions, it seems you are of Belâyî's line, and that is why the faithless always come your way. Here the poet builds a play on words between her father's pen name and the word "belâ" (affliction). These two texts show beyond dispute that Belâyî was Mihrî's father.

His Real Name

The father's real name, however, is given in three different forms. Mehmet Arslan introduces him as Kadı Hasan Amasyevî both in his edition of the divan and in his entry on Mihrî; Erünsal uses the same name. Gönül Ayan in 1989 and Sabiha Gemici in her 1990 doctoral thesis write that Belâyî's real name was Mehmed Çelebi b. Yahyâ. Gülşen Kaya draws attention to this duality as follows: although the name Yahyâ bin Mehmed occurs in many sources, in the in‘âmât register the name is written as Mevlânâ Hasan Amasyevî. These sources agree on the pen name and the office of kadı; the only point on which they part is the real name. That Kaya gives the name in the reverse order to Ayan's, as "Yahyâ bin Mehmed", is also significant, because, as will be seen below, Hüsameddin too presents Mihrî's father as Yahyâ, son of Mehmed Çelebi. The only name said to rest on an archival document is Hasan; on which document the name Mehmed Çelebi b. Yahyâ rests is not shown in the texts of Ayan and Gemici.

Hüsameddin's Records

In the seventh volume of Amasya Tarihi, which contains the entries on scholars and notables, there is no entry under the name Belâyî. Mihrî is instead mentioned at the end of another entry:

Bilâlî Mehmed Çelebi-Kara Kadı Amasyalıdır. Yahyâ Çelebi mahdûmudur. Tahsîl-i ulûm etdikten sonra Amasya'da müderris, kadı olup 889'da vefât etdi. Âlim, kâtib şâir, edîb idi. Mahdûmu Yahyâ Çelebi de meşâhîr-i kudâttan olup kerîmesi Mihrî Hâtun şâirât-ı nisâdandır.

In English: Bilâlî Mehmed Çelebi, known as Kara Kadı, is from Amasya and is the son of Yahyâ Çelebi. After completing his studies he became a müderris (madrasa teacher) and kadı in Amasya, and died in 889 (1484). He was a scholar, scribe, poet and man of letters. His son Yahyâ Çelebi was likewise one of the famous kadıs, and his daughter Mihrî Hatun is one of the women poets.

According to this entry, Mihrî is the granddaughter of the poet and kadı Mehmed Çelebi and the daughter of Yahyâ Çelebi, also a kadı. The names in the entry coincide strikingly with the name "Mehmed Çelebi b. Yahyâ" given by Ayan and Gemici: in both there is a Mehmed Çelebi whose father was Yahyâ, who served as kadı and who composed poetry. Written in Arabic script, "Bilâlî" and "Belâyî" differ by a single letter and can easily be confused. The possibility that follows is this: the information of Ayan and Gemici is connected with this entry or with a record going back to the same tradition, and the person Hüsameddin read as "Bilâlî" is Mihrî's father Belâyî. In that case, Hüsameddin's presentation of Mihrî one generation lower, as the daughter of Mehmed Çelebi's son Yahyâ, would be a confusion. This interpretation is ours; since neither Hüsameddin's entry nor the text of Ayan and Gemici cites a source, it cannot be verified.

The confusion grows in the first volume. Listing the poets who grew up in Amasya, Hüsameddin mentions "Belâ'î Çelebi" among the kadıs of the reign of Murad II, and writes that in the reign of Mehmed II (the Conqueror) "Zeyneb Hâtun, daughter of Belâ'î Çelebi" won fame among the women. In this way the name Belâyî is given this time to the father of Zeyneb Hatun, who presented a divan to Mehmed II. According to Hasan Aksoy's entry on Zeyneb Hatun, Zeyneb's father was the kadı Mehmed Çelebi, and Hüsameddin refers to this person as Belâî Çelebi. Mehmet Arslan, on the other hand, writes plainly in his entry on Zeyneb that the information that Zeyneb's father was a kadı with the pen name Belâyî is wrong, and that Kadı Belâyî was the father of Mihrî Hatun, who lived in the same period. Zeyneb's father too was a kadı, but his name does not appear in the sources.

The conclusion that emerges from this picture is that the family details of the two women poets of Amasya have become mixed up in the sources; the article on the women poets of Amasya on this site draws attention to the same confusion. That Mihrî's father was a kadı with the pen name Belâyî is certain. Whether the father was Hasan or Mehmed, whether he was the same person as Hüsameddin's "Bilâlî Mehmed Çelebi", and whether the paternity of "Belâ'î Çelebi" assigned to Zeyneb is an error of transmission or belongs to a second kadı bearing the same pen name cannot be settled with the information available today.

Another Poet with the Same Pen Name

The pen name Belâyî is not common. In the introduction to his biographical anthology of poets (tezkire), Latîfî advises poets not to choose pen names evoking affliction and distress such as Zârî, Âhî, Figânî, Belâyî and Nâlî, since such names were considered ill-omened. A gazel (ghazal) by a poet named Belâyî of Yenihisar, who lived in the middle of the sixteenth century and is introduced by Yunus Kaplan, survives in a poetry anthology (mecmua). Given the period in which he lived and his home town, this poet cannot be the same person as Mihrî's father, and his ghazal should not be counted as the work of Belâyî of Amasya.

Poetry

Belâyî's poems have not come down to us. There is no entry under his own name in the tezkires, no couplet attributed to him in the anthologies, and no quotation from him in his daughter's divan. The sources that report his poetic activity mention him only as a kadı "who also wrote poems under the pen name Belâyî". The description "kâtib şâir" (scribe and poet) that Hüsameddin uses for Bilâlî Mehmed Çelebi supports this information if the two are accepted as the same person. Belâyî's literary legacy can today be traced only indirectly, in his daughter's poetry and in the learned milieu in which she grew up.

Family and Circle

Belâyî's only known child is Mihrî Hatun, one of the first Ottoman women poets whose divan has come down to us complete. Mihrî took part in the literary circle that formed around the court of Bayezid II and his son Prince Ahmed (Şehzade Ahmed) in Amasya, never married, and after 1512 died in Amasya and was buried in the tomb of Pîr İlyas; her poems appear in the Literature section of the site under the heading Mihrî Hatun. Pîr İlyas, the Halveti sheikh of the Gümüşlüoğulları to whom the family is linked, is among the best-known founders of dervish lodges in Amasya. If we take Hüsameddin's record as our basis, the father of Belâyî, or of Bilâlî Mehmed Çelebi with whom he is confused, Yahyâ Çelebi, and his son Yahyâ Çelebi were also kadıs; these details have not been confirmed by any other source.

Chronology

813 (1410): Death of the Halveti sheikh Pîr İlyas, regarded as the ancestor of the family.

860-865 (1455-1461): According to Mehmet Arslan's estimate, Belâyî's daughter Mihrî is born in Amasya.

889 (1484): According to Hüsameddin, the Amasya kadı and poet Bilâlî Mehmed Çelebi dies.

914 (1508): Mihrî sends her divan to Bayezid II; the S manuscript, headed "daughter of Mevlânâ Belâyî", is very probably this copy.

917 (1512): The last gift to Mihrî is recorded in the in‘âmât register.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

  • İsmail E. Erünsal, "Mihrî Hatun", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 30, Ankara 2020, pp. 37-38. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/mihri-hatun
  • Hasan Aksoy, "Zeyneb Hatun", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 44, İstanbul 2013, pp. 360-361. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/zeyneb-hatun
  • Sabiha Gemici, Mihrî Hatun Divanı: Karşılaştırmalı Metin, Cümle Yapısı ve Cümle Türleri, Doctoral Thesis, Uludağ Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, 1990.
  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, Master's Thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010 (section "Mihrî Hâtun'un Hayatı ve Sanatı" and p. 68).

Books

Online sources