Bahçevanzâde Cenânî Ali Efendi rose by his pen in a vizier's household and, at the end of his life, came back to Amasya and endowed his vineyard and garden to a small mosque and a primary school he had built on the edge of the town. He was a secretary, calligrapher and poet of the second half of the seventeenth century. His father was Mehmed Efendi, whom Hüsameddin calls one of the "well-known scholars". What we have of his life is confined to a short entry in the eighth volume of Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar's Amasya Tarihi, and even there neither his birth nor his death is given. The entry carries two dates: the death of his patron Ankebût Ahmed Paşa and his own return to Amasya in 1099 (1687-88). They are enough to place his life roughly.

Hüsameddin's Entry

Meşâhîr-i ulemâdan Mehmed Efendi'nin oğludur. Ankebûd Ahmed Paşa'nın dâ'iresinde kâtib-i dîvân olarak bulundu. Müşârün-ileyhin vefâtında hâcegândan olup 1099'da Amasya'ya avdet etdi. Filingirler mevki'inde mescid ve mekteb yaptırdı. Bağ ve bâğçesin vakf ve imâm u mu'allime tahsîs ederek ba'dehû vefât etdi. Şâ'ir, kâtib hattât idi.

In English: He was the son of Mehmed Efendi, one of the well-known scholars. He served as divan secretary in the household of Ankebût Ahmed Paşa. On the Paşa's death he joined the hâcegân (the senior secretaries) and in 1099 returned to Amasya. He built a small mosque (mescit) and a school at the place called Filingirler. He endowed his vineyard and garden, assigning the income to the imam and the schoolmaster, and died some time afterwards. He was a poet, secretary and calligrapher.

In the Household of Ankebût Ahmed Paşa

The man Cenânî Ali Efendi attached himself to was one of the most restless statesmen Amasya produced in the seventeenth century. Ankebût Ahmed Paşa was the son of a fief-holding (zaim) family from the Kayabaşı quarter in the south-west of the town. His wrestler's build and his archery caught the eye of Murad IV, who took him into the palace; from the imperial stables he rose to the governorships of Sivas, Konya and Anatolia, to the governorship of Buda and to the rank of vizier. The sanjak of Amasya was given to him six times. According to Hüsameddin he was known in the chronicles as "the Spider" (Örümcek) and in Amasya as "Kayalı Paşa". He spent the last twenty years of his life on Crete: in 1071 (1661) he became commander and warden of the island, lived for years in Chania, was sent to Rethymno (Resmo) after the conquest of Candia, and died there on 21 Muharrem 1092 (February 1681).

A pasha's divan secretary was the man who handled his correspondence, drafted his orders and followed him wherever he went. The entry gives no years for his service. The Paşa's long stay on Crete suggests that his secretary spent some time on the island too; since nothing confirms it, it remains a possibility. What is certain is that his master's death marked a turning point in his career: according to the entry, when the Paşa died he became one of the hâcegân, the senior and respected rank of the scribal profession.

Return to Amasya and the Endowment at Filingirler

Cenânî Ali Efendi came home in 1099 (1687-88). In that same year Amasya went through the great upheaval that Hüsameddin calls "the terrible event of fire and slaughter", in which many buildings, mansions and inns burned and many people died. Whether Cenânî reached the town before or after the disaster, the entry does not say.

What he did after his return shows how a man of the pen used his savings. He built a mescit and a school at Filingirler, endowed his vineyard and garden for the two buildings and assigned the income to the imam of the mescit and the teacher of the school. Listing the vineyards of Amasya, Hüsameddin writes that on the north bank of the river, after Bahçeler İçi, came the vineyards called "Filingir, Firingir, Firenkler", and last of all the vineyards of Ziyare. Cenânî's mescit seems to have stood among these vineyards, somewhere at the eastern end of the town. The name of today's Filingirler quarter, attached to the village of Yassıçal, recalls this old locality; but no document is known to show whether the mescit was a forerunner of the present Filingirler Mosque. The locality and the present-day quarter are taken up again in the piece on Yassıçal (Yaylagöl).

The family name fits these surroundings too. "Bahçevanzâde" means "son of the gardener"; Hüsameddin does not touch on its origin. For a man whose father was a scholar and who was himself a secretary, the name may well go back to an earlier generation.

The Other Cenânî

In Amasya Tarihi the entry on Cenânî Ali Efendi is immediately preceded by another Cenânî who lived nearly two centuries earlier: Rıdvânzâde Cenânî Hüseyin Çelebi, divan secretary to Prince Ahmed, who was put to death in 918 (1512), a month after the prince's execution. Both were secretaries, both were calligraphers and both used the same pen name. There is no ground for putting the likeness down to kinship: the popularity of the pen name and the long tradition of scribes in Amasya are explanation enough, and Hüsameddin draws no link between the two families. A few couplets by Rıdvânzâde survive in the biographical anthologies, while not a single line by Bahçevanzâde remains.

His Poetry

No poem of his is known to survive. In the last sentence of the entry "şâ'ir" stands beside secretary and calligrapher, but no couplet, divan title or anthology record is offered to back it up. Nor does Cenânî's name turn up in the pieces Hüsameddin quotes from Abdî Efendi's anthology, which recorded the poets of Amasya up to 1081 (1670). The entry itself, with glosses, is given under the title Cenânî Ali Efendi-Bahçevanzâde.

Chronology

1071 (1661): Ankebût Ahmed Paşa becomes commander and warden of Crete.

21 Muharrem 1092 (February 1681): Ankebût Ahmed Paşa dies at Rethymno; Cenânî Ali Efendi joins the hâcegân.

1099 (1687-88): Cenânî Ali Efendi returns to Amasya and builds a mescit and a school at Filingirler.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Online sources