Cezerî Kasım Pasha was an Ottoman statesman of the reigns of Mehmed II (the Conqueror) and Bayezid II who rose through the financial and chancery services, served as treasurer (defterdar) to Şehzade Bayezid (Prince Bayezid) while the prince was sanjak governor in Amasya, and became chancellor (nişancı) and vizier once his master took the throne. He was also a man of letters who wrote poetry under the pen name Sâfî, whose divan was compiled in his lifetime, and whom the biographers of poets counted among the first to bring proverbs into verse in abundance. Today his name lives on mainly through his mosques in Eyüp and Cağaloğlu in Istanbul, the madrasa he added to the Emîr Sultan complex in Bursa, and the Kâsımiye Mosque in Thessaloniki that once bore his name.

His tie to Amasya runs through the princely court that, in the second half of the fifteenth century, turned the city from a provincial centre into a small court city. Mehmed II entrusted him with his son's finances in Amasya, and Bayezid, on becoming sultan, raised this old servant first to the chancellorship and then to the vizierate. This part of his life appears fairly clearly in the sources. What follows is murky: the lives of several Kasım Pashas who lived in the same period became entangled in the chronicles and in the hands of later biographers, producing a range of more than sixty years, between 1482 and 1543, for the date of his death. To tell the story of Kasım Pasha is, to some extent, to untangle this confusion.

Name, Nisba and Family Origins

The nisba "Cezerî" recalls Ibn al-Jazarî, regarded as one of the greatest authorities in the science of Qur'anic recitation. According to one tradition, Kasım Pasha was this scholar's grandson and the son of Cezerîzâde Şemseddin Mehmed Bey, one of the chancellors of Mehmed II's reign, and took his nisba from this lineage. Yet a document drawn up in his own name survives, and it points in another direction. In his endowment deed dated Ramadan 907 (March 1502) his name is written as "Kâsım Paşa b. Abdullah". In Ottoman documents the formula "son of Abdullah" is used mostly for converts, devşirme recruits or freedmen. The other tradition, transmitted by sources such as Latîfî, Gelibolulu Mustafa Âlî and Bursalı Belîğ, holds that Kasım Pasha was a slave of Sheikh Mehmed Cezerî or of this family and took his nisba from his master's house; in the face of this document it appears the stronger of the two. İsmail E. Erünsal, author of the encyclopedia entry, reaches the same conclusion.

In contemporary chronicles his name appears in several forms. Neşrî calls him "Cezerî Kasımı Paşa", Ibn Kemal "Cezerî Kasımı", and Âşık Çelebi "Cezerî Kasım Paşası". These usages show that his contemporaries, too, found the nisba necessary to distinguish him from other statesmen of the same name. The sources state that his mother was the daughter of Ali Efendi of the Fenârîzâde, one of the long-established families of the Ottoman learned hierarchy. There is no record at all of his place or date of birth. We can follow his life only from his first service in the Imperial Council onward.

From the Imperial Council to Amasya

Kasım Pasha entered state service in the Dîvân-ı Hümâyun, that is, in the central chancery offices of the empire. There he won the favour of Mahmud Pasha and was appointed by Mehmed II as treasurer to Şehzade Bayezid, who was then in the sanjak of Amasya. Ibn Kemal writes that for a time he also served as treasurer of the beylerbeylik (governorate-general) of Rumelia. The sources do not say which of these two posts came first, how long he stayed in Amasya, or the exact year of his appointment.

The treasurership of a prince was no small office. Bayezid had been sanjak governor in Amasya since 1454 and, like every prince sent out to a sanjak, had set up his own council: with its lala (tutor-guardian), chancellor, treasurer, judge, teacher and companions, this council was a small provincial likeness of the central government in Istanbul. The treasurer was the man who managed the prince's crown revenues, the tax registers of the sanjak, and the expenses of the palace and the retinue. In those years Amasya was a military base near the eastern frontier as much as it was a lively cultural centre, with scholars, poets and physicians gathered around the prince. Kasım Pasha's presence in this circle, both as a man of the pen and as a poet, marked the beginning of an acquaintance that would shape the rest of his life: when Bayezid became sultan, he would keep him close.

The Amasya historian Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar, in Nişancılar Durağı, a work that collects the biographies of chancellors and remains in manuscript, draws a more detailed frame for Kasım Pasha's Amasya years. According to him, before coming to Amasya Kasım Pasha had been treasurer of the army sent against the Akkoyunlu ruler Uzun Hasan, was shortly afterwards made treasurer of the Imperial Treasury (Hazîne-i Âmire), went to Amasya in 878 (1473-74) as lala to Şehzade Bayezid, and in 884 (1479), when Vizier Mustafa Pasha was appointed lala to the prince, returned to Istanbul and became chancellor. Erünsal specifically notes that Hüsameddin gives no source for this information. The account of the lala appointment must therefore be read with caution.

Hüsameddin's Two Accounts

In the third volume of Hüsameddin's own major work, the Amasya Tarihi (History of Amasya), the staff of the prince's council between 1470 and 1481 is listed year by year, and this list does not fully match the account in Nişancılar Durağı. According to the Amasya Tarihi, in 875 (1470) the prince's chancellor, Halil Paşazâde İbrahim Pasha, became lala. In 877 (1472) the Amasya treasurer Sa'deddin Çelebi died and was succeeded by Hacı Nevruz Bey, one of the city's notables. In 878, after defeating Uzun Hasan at Otlukbeli, Mehmed II came to Amasya and stayed for a month; during this time the lala İbrahim Pasha was dismissed and "Fenârîzâde Şemseddin Ahmed Çelebi, treasurer of the imperial army" was made lala in his place. In 883 (1478-79), following the commission of inquiry sent by Mehmed II, the prince's council was changed from top to bottom: Hamza Beyzâde Mustafa Pasha became lala in place of Fenârîzâde Ahmed Bey, and the treasurer Hacı Nevruz Bey was replaced by İshak Paşazâde Pîrî Bey of Amasya.

When these two accounts are placed side by side, a striking similarity emerges. In Nişancılar Durağı the man who was army treasurer on the Uzun Hasan campaign and was appointed lala to Bayezid in 878 is Kasım Pasha. In the Amasya Tarihi, the man who in the same year and in the same capacity passed from the army treasurership to the prince's lalaship is Fenârîzâde Şemseddin Ahmed Çelebi. In both works the end of the lalaship is tied to the appointment of Mustafa Pasha. If one recalls that Kasım Pasha's mother came from the Fenârîzâde family, the question remains open whether the same author's writing two different names for the same office in two works arises from a confusion, or from a kinship or shared service not yet clarified in the sources. This matter cannot be resolved with the documents at hand. What is certain is that he was appointed by Mehmed II as treasurer to Şehzade Bayezid in Amasya. The lalaship rests solely on Hüsameddin's unsourced record.

These years were among the most eventful in Amasya's history as a princely seat. Figures such as the poet Tâcî Bey, Âfitâbî Abdurrahman Çelebi and the scholar Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Efendi had gathered around the prince, and Bayezid held conversation gatherings with this circle at Lâdik. The inquiry of 1477-79 ended with the break-up of this circle; the vizier and companion Hızır Paşazâde Mahmud Pasha was executed, Tâcî Bey fled to Baghdad and Müeyyedzâde to Iran. Kasım Pasha's name does not appear among these events. If Hüsameddin's dates are correct, he was at that moment about to leave the lalaship and return to Istanbul.

Chancellor and Vizier

When Mehmed II died in May 1481, Bayezid set out from Amasya, reached Istanbul and ascended the throne. The new sultan surrounded himself with men he knew from his years as prince, and in 886 (1481) Kasım Pasha was appointed chancellor. The nişancı was the member of the council who drew the imperial monogram (tuğra) on decrees and patents issued in the sultan's name and directed legal affairs and the chancery. For a man of the pen with a background in finance and a devotion to poetry, this was a natural continuation of his career.

The following year, in 887 (1482), he was appointed to the vizierate left vacant by Mustafa Pasha, son of Hamza Bey. This Mustafa Pasha bears the same name and nisba as Hamza Beyzâde Mustafa Pasha, who according to the Amasya Tarihi was sent to the prince as lala in 1478-79. But Kasım Pasha's vizierate did not last long; he was dismissed before a year had passed and replaced by Mesih Pasha. The reason for his dismissal is not explained in the sources.

For the years after the vizierate the sources do not agree. Ibn Kemal states that after leaving the vizierate he was sent to Kefe (Caffa) in the Crimea. Gelibolulu Mustafa Âlî, in one place in his work, writes that upon his dismissal he was given the sanjak of Thessaloniki by way of retirement and remained there until his death. Elsewhere in the same work, however, he says that he died in 887 (1482) "after serving three years as vizier". Hoca Sâdeddin Efendi likewise reports that he remained vizier for about three years from 887 and then died. These last two records, as will be seen below, cannot be sustained against the endowment deed showing that he was alive in 1502.

The Thessaloniki and Saruhan Traditions

Kasım Pasha's name is linked to Thessaloniki in several ways. To Âlî's note on the sanjak of Thessaloniki is added the conversion into a mosque, in the late fifteenth century, of the church of Hagios Demetrios, the largest Byzantine sanctuary of the city. In the Ottoman period this building was known as the "Kâsımiye Mosque". Semavi Eyice writes that it was converted into a mosque by Cezerî Kasım Pasha. The abjad value of the mosque's two-line Arabic inscription yields the year 897 (1492), while in numerals 898 (1493) is written. Evliya Çelebi reports that the inscription he saw in 1667-68 bore the name of Bayezid II, and for this reason the building appears in some sources as an endowment of Bayezid. In another entry Eyice notes that the true founder of the mosque can be established with certainty only once the old endowment records are examined. After Thessaloniki passed out of Ottoman rule in 1912, the Kâsımiye Mosque was turned back into a church, burned completely in the fire of 1918, and after a restoration lasting some twenty years was reopened as a church, stripped of every trace of the Turkish period.

Traditions from a later period confuse the matter entirely. Celâlzâde Mustafa Çelebi relates that in the reign of Selim I (Selim the Grim), when Şehzade Süleyman was in the sanjak of Saruhan, Kasım Pasha, one of the two most experienced men of the state, was charged with his lalaship and treasurership. This Kasım Pasha was dismissed from the lalaship in 922 (1516). According to Matrakçı Nasuh, the same man went to Thessaloniki, became a vizier of the Dome (Kubbealtı) upon the accession of Süleyman the Magnificent, gave up this post after the Belgrade campaign on grounds of old age, and in Zilkade 927 (October 1521) returned to Thessaloniki in retirement. On the basis of these records some studies accept that Cezerî Kasım Pasha served for a time in Manisa as lala to Şehzade Süleyman. Erünsal, however, stresses that there is no firm clue that the Kasım Pasha mentioned in the two sources is Cezerî Kasım Pasha. Although the Thessaloniki connection brings the two accounts closer, there is no direct document showing that the same man became vizier again after a gap of more than thirty years.

The Other Kasım Pashas

What makes Cezerî Kasım Pasha's biography so difficult is that several well-known statesmen bearing the same name lived between the end of the fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth. The sources speak of other Kasım Pashas known by the epithets Koca, Evliya and Güzelce. Their offices, the buildings they commissioned and their death dates became mixed up over time, and in later biographical works such as Mehmed Süreyya's Sicill-i Osmânî they were merged as if they were a single person.

A confusion to which the Amasya reader should pay particular attention comes from the city's own history. In Hüsameddin's Amasya Tarihi there is yet another Kasım Pasha who, during the Amasya governorship of Bayezid's son Şehzade Ahmed, became vizier and lala in 905 (1499-1500) and in 908-909 (1502-1504) fell out with the Iranian companions around the prince and fled to Şehzade Selim in Trabzon. This man is Kasım Pasha, son of Abdullah Bey of the Âbâdoğulları of Hakala, and he has no connection whatsoever with Cezerî Kasım Pasha. From the same family, Hacı Beyzâde Kasım Bey completed, according to Hüsameddin in 873 (1468-69), the stone madrasa he had begun in his home village of Hakala, and the "Kasım Bey Madrasa", for centuries one of the important institutions of Amasya's scholarly life, was named after him. When the name "Kasım Pasha" or "Kasım Bey" appears in Amasya sources, it should be kept in mind that most of these have nothing to do with Cezerî Kasım Pasha and belong to this local family.

The Question of His Death Date

The sources contain no reliable information on the date of Kasım Pasha's death. Hüseyin Ayvansarâyî, in his Vefeyât-ı Selâtîn, gives the year 890 (1485) and writes that he was buried in the madrasa he had built near Emîr Sultan in Bursa. In the second edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, Cengiz Orhonlu accepted the date 887 (1482). On the other hand, some studies and late sources such as the Sicill-i Osmânî, adding the lives of other Kasım Pashas to his, extend his death year as far as 950 (1543-44).

Erünsal narrows this range on the basis of documents. The endowment deed of his mosque in Cağaloğlu, Istanbul, bears the date Ramadan 907 (March 1502), and this document shows that Kasım Pasha was alive at that time. In a record dated 939 (1532-33) in the Islamic court registers of Bursa, on the other hand, he is referred to as "the late". Accordingly, Kasım Pasha must have died after 1502 and before 1532-33. Giving a narrower date does not seem possible with the documents now available.

As to the place of his grave there is likewise a single record. According to Bursalı İsmail Belîğ, Kasım Pasha is buried on the west side of the madrasa he built opposite the tomb (türbe) of Emîr Sultan in Bursa. Since Ayvansarâyî too says that he was buried in Bursa, in the same madrasa, the sources that diverge on the date of his death agree on his burial place.

Charitable Foundations

The biographer of poets Sehî Bey, speaking of Kasım Pasha, says that no other person among the Ottoman lords was known to be so generous in charitable works. Indeed, the buildings attributed to him are spread across several cities of the empire. The attribution of some of them, however, is disputed because of the confusion with his namesakes.

In Bursa Kasım Pasha had a madrasa, a bathhouse and a soup kitchen (imaret). The madrasa was a later addition to the Emîr Sultan complex, founded on a height commanding the city on Bursa's eastern side. The core of the complex was formed by the dervish lodge of Emîr Sultan and the mosque, imaret and bathhouse built by his wife Hundi Fatma Hatun, daughter of Bayezid I (Yıldırım); Kasım Pasha's madrasa completed this group. Of the buildings of the complex, the mosque, tomb, bathhouse and fountains have survived to the present; the madrasa no longer stands. Eyice also records that he built a mosque at Cumaâbâd near Bursa.

In Istanbul two places of worship bear his name. One of them is the masjid at a corner of a crossroads in Cağaloğlu. The 1502 endowment deed belongs to this building. It took its final form in 1866-67, was demolished in 1957 without any reason being given, and after its plot had stood empty for many years a new mosque with a timber roof, similar to the old one, was built in its place. The second is the Cezerî Kasım Pasha Mosque, also called the Akarçeşme Mosque, which stands today in the Nişancı quarter of Eyüp at the corner of Zalmahmutpaşa Avenue and Akarçeşme Street. Ayvansarâyî, in his Hadîkatü'l-cevâmi', gives 921 (1515) as its date of construction. When the mosque was first built, it had a timber madrasa and a raised primary school beside it.

The mosque in Eyüp is a square-planned building within a courtyard, measuring 11.20 x 11.20 metres on the outside. Its prayer hall is covered by a single dome 8.80 metres in diameter resting on pendentives; in front of it is a three-domed portico carried on arches resting on four columns. Brick and cut stone were used together in the walls, and the balcony corbel of the stone minaret is decorated with a scallop-shell motif. One notable feature of the plan is that the main door does not lie on the axis but opens opposite the rightmost bay of the portico. The mosque's best-known ornament is the tile panel depicting the Kaaba above the window to the left of the mihrab. Made up of six tiles and, according to its inscription, endowed in March 1726 by Osman son of Mehmed of İznik, this panel holds a special place among the Kaaba depictions of Turkish tile art because it shows the Kaaba together with the surrounding buildings and with a definite sense of perspective. The 1822-23 inscription above the door records a restoration, and the 1849-50 ablution fountain in the courtyard a later benefaction.

Besides these, the Kâsımiye Mosque in Thessaloniki and its imaret are accepted as his. Cengiz Orhonlu established that Kasım Pasha also had a mosque in Kefe in the Crimea. According to Eyice, he had numerous endowments in Istanbul and Galata. The sources mention other charitable works as well, but whether they belonged to him is disputed. No trace of Kasım Pasha's foundations is found in Amasya. The buildings in the city that bear his name belong, as noted above, to Kasım Bey of Hakala and his family.

The Poet Sâfî

Besides his career as a statesman, Kasım Pasha is remembered as a poet, and in his poems he used the pen name Sâfî. Sehî Bey counts him among the esteemed poets of Anatolia and says that his divan was famous. Latîfî's assessment is more decisive: according to him, among the poets of Rum the practice of mesel, that is, the skilful placing of proverbs and popular sayings into verse, first issued from Sâfî. This feature is a well-known tendency of the period at the end of the fifteenth century when the Turkish gazel found its own voice. The same Latîfî names Necâtî as the poet who brought this manner to maturity.

A couplet that sets the names of Sâfî and Necâtî side by side belongs to İshak Çelebi, one of the poets of the age. Addressing Sâfî, the poet says that for poetry to be read and admired among the people, it must be full of proverbs like Necâtî's:
"Şi'rin dilersen okuna makbûl-ı halk ola / Sâfî, Necâtî şi'ri gibi pürmesel gerek."
The editors of the 2016 edition of the divan present Kasım Pasha as Necâtî's master. The nature of this relationship is not explicitly described in the biographies of poets, but it is clear that the two poets were named along the same stylistic line.

Although Sehî says that his divan was famous, the only copy of the work known today is in the private library of İsmail E. Erünsal. This copy, thought to have been compiled in the poet's lifetime, does not contain all his poems. The sections traditionally placed at the beginning of divans, such as the tevhid and na't, are missing. There are only three kasides: the first is addressed to Imam Husayn, the other two to Mehmed II and Bayezid II. On the basis of these features, Erünsal thinks the copy may have been compiled at an early stage of Kasım Pasha's life. Some of his poems also appear in the great anthology of nazires compiled by Pervâne Bey. The divan was published in Konya in 2016 by Ahmet Sevgi and Hakan Sevindik under the title Cezerî Kasım Paşa Sâfî Dîvânı, and thus a poet whose name had long been known but whose text had not been available was brought before researchers. Sâfî's poems and the contents of his divan are treated separately in the Literature section of this site.

His Place in Amasya's Memory

Cezerî Kasım Pasha was not born in Amasya and left no building or endowment in the city. What links him to the history of Amasya is that the decisive period of his life was spent in Şehzade Bayezid's council in Amasya. This treasurer, to whom Mehmed II entrusted his son's finances, became part of the staff that moved from Amasya to Istanbul with Bayezid's accession, and found the trust of the princely years repaid in the offices of chancellor and vizier. In this respect his story is one of the examples showing that Amasya, as a princely sanjak, trained not only sultans but also the statesmen around them.

As the poet Sâfî, too, he was no stranger to the literary atmosphere of the prince's gathering in Amasya. His name does not appear in Hüsameddin's lists of the poets who gathered around Bayezid in his Amasya years. However, the fact that one of the kasides in his divan was presented to Bayezid II, together with the view that the divan was compiled at an early date, suggests that some of his poems may go back to the princely years. This is a possibility rather than a fact confirmed by documents.

Chronology

1473-74 (878): According to Hüsameddin's unsourced record, after serving as army treasurer on the Uzun Hasan campaign he goes to Amasya as lala to Şehzade Bayezid.

1479 (884): According to the same record, he returns to Istanbul when Mustafa Pasha is appointed lala to the prince.

1481 (886): Becomes chancellor on the accession of Bayezid II.

1482 (887): Becomes vizier in place of Mustafa Pasha, son of Hamza Bey; is dismissed before a year has passed and replaced by Mesih Pasha.

1492-93 (897-898): According to its inscription, the church of Hagios Demetrios in Thessaloniki is converted into a mosque; the building becomes known as the Kâsımiye Mosque.

March 1502 (Ramadan 907): The endowment deed of his masjid in Cağaloğlu, Istanbul, is drawn up.

1515 (921): According to Ayvansarâyî, the Cezerî Kasım Pasha Mosque in Eyüp is built.

1532-33 (939): He is referred to as "the late" in the Islamic court registers of Bursa.

1957: His mosque in Cağaloğlu is demolished.

2016: His divan is published by Ahmet Sevgi and Hakan Sevindik.

Bibliography

The following sources were used in this article:

  • İsmail E. Erünsal, "Kasım Paşa, Cezerî", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 24, Istanbul 2001, pp. 545-546 (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • İsmail E. Erünsal, "Sâfî, Cezerî Kâsım Paşa", Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü (TEİS), Ahmet Yesevi University, published 2014, updated 2020 (teis.yesevi.edu.tr). teis.yesevi.edu.tr
  • Semavi Eyice, "Cezerî Kasım Paşa Camii", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 7, Istanbul 1993, pp. 507-508 (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Semavi Eyice, "Kāsımiye Camii", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 24, Istanbul 2001, pp. 553-554 (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • M. Baha Tanman, "Emîr Sultan Külliyesi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 11, Istanbul 1995, pp. 148-151 (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar, Amasya Tarihi, e-book edition of the Amasya Municipality: vols. 1-4 (vol. 3, the staff of the prince's council between 875 and 886; Âbâdoğlu Kâsım Paşa in the time of Şehzade Ahmed; the Kâsım Bey Madrasa at Hakala); vols. 6-8 (records of the Âbâdoğulları and of Hacı Beyzâde Kâsım Bey); vols. 9-12 (record of Kâsım Paşa's flight to Trabzon).
  • Ahmet Sevgi - Hakan Sevindik (eds.), Cezerî Kasım Paşa Sâfî Dîvânı, Palet Yayınları, Konya 2016 (publisher's description).
  • Bayram Ali Kaya, "Necâtî Bey", KÜRE Ansiklopedi (for Latîfî's assessment of Necâtî).

Online sources