Şeyh Hamdullah, regarded as the founder of Ottoman calligraphy, was born in the Eslem Hatun quarter of Amasya, learned the foundations of his art in the city and produced his earliest works there. The path that later calligraphers followed for centuries bears his name. The bond between Amasya and calligraphy, however, is too broad to be reduced to a single master. In the second half of the fifteenth century, during the years when Prince Bayezid served as sanjak governor, the city became the center of a search for a new style of writing, and a community of calligraphers linked by kinship and by ties of teacher and pupil grew up there. Şeyh Hamdullah is the best known name of that community, but his art did not arise in a vacuum.

Calligraphy and the Aklâm-ı Sitte

The foundation of classical calligraphy is the aklâm-ı sitte, the six scripts: sülüs, naskh, muhakkak, reyhânî, tevkî and rikâ. Each has its own letter proportions, its own stance and its own field of use. Sülüs and naskh came in time to be the most widely practiced; muhakkak was used mainly for the basmala, while rikâ appeared in diplomas of authorization, in calligraphers' colophons and in the closing notes of books. A calligrapher practiced these scripts under a master for years, a process called meşk, copying the same models again and again until the proportions of the letters settled into the hand. Training ended with the icazet, the master's certificate. It declared that the pupil could now use the pen in his own name.

In fifteenth-century Anatolia this tradition found its liveliest form in Amasya. From the Seljuk period and the conquest years of the Ottomans, poets, calligraphers, painters and scholars who migrated from centers such as Herat, Khorasan and Samarkand had gathered in cities like Konya, Kayseri, Sivas and Amasya. In Amasya this accumulated learning was joined by the patronage of the princely governors, and calligraphy became part of the everyday culture of the city.

The Calligraphic Circle of Amasya

The search for a new style in Ottoman calligraphy began in the reign of Mehmed the Conqueror and became clear during Bayezid II's governorship of Amasya. A wide circle formed around calligraphers such as Hayreddin Mar'aşî, Celâl Amâsî, his sons Cemal and Muhyiddin Amâsî, Abdullah Amâsî and Şeyh Hamdullah. These masters worked to refine the aklâm-ı sitte in both letterform and composition. In Amasya two schools took shape around two calligraphers, Hayreddin Mar'aşî and Celâl Amâsî, and Ottoman Turkish calligraphers descend from these two branches.

Hayreddin Mar'aşî had come to Amasya for his studies and there received an icazet in the aklâm-ı sitte from Yahyâ Sûfî of Edirne, regarded as the most powerful calligrapher of the time. He served as secretary of the divan to the governor of Amasya, Prince Alâeddin Bey, and after the prince's death spent his time teaching writing to pupils in Amasya; he is estimated to have died toward the end of 1472. No work signed by him has been found in museums or libraries. Those who report having seen his signatures, and Müstakimzâde, who writes that he saw a piece dated 1470, show that what we know of him rests on records alone. Even so, his pupils included Şeyh Hamdullah, Muhyiddin Köseç and Seyyid İbrâhim, all well-known calligraphers of the Conqueror's age.

Celâl Amâsî was the son of Ali Çelebizâde Alâeddin Hasan Çelebi and the maternal uncle of Şeyh Hamdullah. He studied calligraphy for a time with Yahyâ Sûfî Çelebi, together with Hayreddin Mar'aşî, then learned various scripts from Fettâhî Yahyâ Nîsâbûrî and received an icazet; alongside calligraphy he studied the sciences with Tokatlıoğlu Cemâleddin Yûsuf Çelebi. When Bayezid II became governor of Amasya he joined the prince's circle of intimates. After Bayezid came to the throne he invited him to Istanbul, but Celâl Amâsî returned to Amasya after a while and became the calligraphy teacher of the governor of Amasya, Prince Ahmed. He died in Amasya on 14 November 1488, on the eve of the ninth of Dhu al-Hijjah. Celâl Amâsî had a manner of his own, but his branch continued only briefly in Amasya and could not advance because the school of Şeyh Hamdullah drew greater favor. The Hayreddin Mar'aşî branch, by contrast, continued in Istanbul as the school of Şeyh Hamdullah and spread across the whole Islamic world to become the dominant style.

Celâl Amâsî's sons were known as the "sons of Celâl." Mehmed Cemâleddin and Celâlzâde Muhyiddin were among the calligraphers of their day. Muhyiddin had learned the aklâm-ı sitte from his father, received his icazet and joined the ranks of the celebrated calligraphers of the Conqueror's age. Very little is known of his life; he is said to have lived about a hundred years and to have been alive in the time of Süleyman the Magnificent. The only known example of his writing is a Qasidat al-Burda in naskh in the Ekrem Hakkı Ayverdi Collection of the Kubbealtı Cultural and Artistic Foundation. The work bears the character of fifteenth-century Ottoman calligraphy and shows that Muhyiddin founded a new style with rounder, more engaging letters, departing from the path of Yâqût al-Musta'simî. In Menâkıb-ı Hünerverân a couplet is devoted to him: "Celâloğlu ki hattât-ı cihândır / Nazîri gelmemiş nesh ü celîde."

The Formation of Şeyh Hamdullah

Şeyh Hamdullah belonged to the Sarıkadızâde family of Amasya. His father was Mustafa Dede, a Suhrawardiyya sheikh and one of the saintly men who had migrated from Bukhara to Amasya. He is known by the titles "Şeyh, ibnü'ş-şeyh, kıbletülküttâb, kutbülküttâb, şeyhürrâmiyân." His date of birth is uncertain. Müstakimzâde gives 1436, while Osman Fevzi Olcay and Ekrem Hakkı Ayverdi place it between 1426 and 1430. The span from 830 to 840 in the Hijri calendar shows how sparse the records of his life are.

He learned the religious sciences, language and literature from Hatib Kasım Efendi. In Amasya, regarded as the cradle of calligraphy, he practiced the aklâm-ı sitte under Hayreddin Mar'aşî, one of the leading masters of the time, and received his icazet. He completed his spiritual training under his father and received the khilafa. One source says he received the Halvetiyye and Zeyniyye khilafa from his father; yet the claim that a genealogy of the order in his own hand exists in the library named for it could not be verified. The Topkapı Palace Museum Library does hold an eighteen-verse Halvetiyye genealogy in sülüs, with the opening and the colophon page missing. He married the daughter of his maternal uncle Celâleddin Amâsî and had a daughter and a son, Mustafa, who was also a calligrapher.

The sources diverge on the origin of the family. The migration from Bukhara mentioned above is one account; another, based on more recent research carried out in Amasya, holds that the family was an Oghuz one that came from Purân, near the city of Rey in Khorasan. In this account Hamdullah's grandfather was Mahmud Purânî, known in Amasya as Sarı Kadı. He settled in the city in the 800s of the Hijri calendar and attached himself to the Halvetî sheikh Pir İlyas, then regarded as the greatest scholar of Amasya. The extended family settled in what is now the Dere quarter and in time grew into a neighborhood of its own; since the first mosque was built by Sarı Kadı's daughter Eslem Hatun, the quarter came to be called Eslem. Hamdullah spent his childhood and youth here and received his first schooling and training in calligraphy from his father, a scholar, mystic and calligrapher. That many of his relatives, his paternal uncles included, were well-known calligraphers shows how much the family contributed to his formation.

Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin's Amasya Tarihi relates that Hamdullah would climb to Gedikli Kaya, a rocky place in the Eslem quarter said to have been a temple site in Roman times, and practice writing there for long periods. This rocky ground, which lies today to the south of the Atatürk Monument, is known by the name Meşkgâh, "the place of practice," because of the level ground that inspired those who wished to learn calligraphy. It is related that Hamdullah, aiming to surpass the script of Yâqût al-Musta'simî, learned the aklâm-ı sitte in these years through constant practice.

His Meeting with Prince Bayezid

The turning point in Şeyh Hamdullah's life was his meeting with the sanjak governor of Amasya, Prince Bayezid. The two are thought to have met at the gatherings of his father Mustafa Dede. Bayezid, who knew enough music to compose and was versed in Turkish, Arabic and Persian literature, appointed Hamdullah his calligraphy teacher and received an icazet from him. Already known while still in Amasya, the calligrapher copied a number of works for the private library of Mehmed the Conqueror in those years. Of these, the book of Hunayn ibn Ishaq's questions and answers on medicine (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, III. Ahmed 1996) and the Masâlih al-abdân wa'l-anfus (Süleymaniye Library, Ayasofya 3740) have survived. The second was published in 2012 by the Turkish Manuscripts Institution together with a Turkish translation.

These works belong to the first period of Şeyh Hamdullah's artistic life, the so-called beginning works (evâil). In them the traces of the prevailing style of Yâqût al-Musta'simî are clear. Compared with Yâqût's Qur'an in the Istanbul University Library, the similarity in naskh is easy to see. The works in which he set out his own style he produced in Istanbul, in the second period.

The Call to Istanbul and Life at the Palace

Bayezid II, who took the throne in 1481 after the struggle with his brother Cem Sultan, summoned Şeyh Hamdullah to Istanbul with his family. According to some accounts Bayezid first appointed him calligraphy teacher to his son Prince Ahmed and then took him into his service as the palace's master of calligraphy; this does not agree with the record that Prince Ahmed's teacher was Celâl Amâsî. The calligrapher was appointed to teach fine writing to the palace scribes and staff. For writing Qur'ans, a studio (meşkhâne) was assigned to him near the Harem and another in the Edirne Palace, and two villages in Üsküdar were allotted as his arpalık. The revenue of one village went to the burnishers who polished the paper used for his writing with a smoothing stone. Şeyh Hamdullah began to produce his finest works after taking up his palace post, and from then on used the title "kâtibü's-sultân Bâyezîd Han" in his colophons. According to the gratuity register (in'âmât defteri) for 1503 to 1512, which records the gifts Bayezid II gave to scholars and artists, the highest sums were paid to Şeyh Hamdullah for the Qur'ans he wrote.

The sultan's interest in calligraphy also played a part in shaping the calligrapher's style. All the sources relate this episode: Bayezid II took seven pieces by Yâqût al-Musta'simî from the treasury and gave them to Şeyh Hamdullah, remarking that he had not seen what Yâqût had written with such care and advising that it would be good if another path than this manner were found. It is stated that Şeyh Hamdullah set out his own style after this advice. The new style soon won acceptance, and a chronogram quatrain praising it was composed: "Şeyhoğlu Hamdi hattı / Tâ kim zuhûr buldı / ʿÂlemde bu muhakkak / Nesh oldı hatt-ı Yâkūt." The word "nesh" in the quatrain evokes both the naskh script and the idea of being rendered void, announcing that the Yâqût manner had lost its validity. The account that Bayezid counted holding the calligrapher's inkwell and watching him practice among the greatest joys likewise reflects the closeness between sultan and artist.

The Style of Şeyh Hamdullah

Şeyh Hamdullah reorganized the proportions of the letters, the spaces between them and the way words sit on the line. With regular, upright strokes leaning slightly to the left, and with his extended strokes, he gave the writing fluency, suppleness and life, and removed the stiffness of the Yâqût manner. In Yâqût's style the words seem to push one another away; in the style of Şeyh Hamdullah, words made of letters fused together stand in the order of the line like a single body. The hesitation in the proportions of the letters disappeared and the letters found their classical measure. Sülüs, which had not achieved unity in line and page, was likewise freed from looseness and disorder in this school.

His most lasting influence was on the writing of the Qur'an. In Qur'ans arranged in the Yâqût manner, muhakkak, reyhânî or several of the six scripts were used in combination. With Şeyh Hamdullah's easily read, flowing naskh, the whole text of a Qur'an came to be written in a single script, which gave the text continuity and made it easier to read. The page layout and line spacing also found their most suitable proportions in his hands. In time this naskh manner became the tradition of Qur'an writing throughout the Islamic world.

Giving most of his works as murakka' albums and kıta panels, the calligrapher also set the form and dimensions of the sülüs-naskh panel with a notched corner (koltuklu) in accordance with Turkish taste. Later calligraphers imitated the size, layout and textual features of these panels, even the color of the paper. In the school of Şeyh Hamdullah reyhânî and tevkî were gradually abandoned; muhakkak continued to be used in writing the basmala, and rikâ, under the name "hatt-ı icâze," in colophons, in the diplomas of the learned class and in the closing notes of books. If Ahmed Şemseddin Karahisârî, regarded in the age of Süleyman the Magnificent as "the sun of calligraphy," is set aside, the Yâqût style completed its era as this school spread. Those who succeeded on this path were praised with the words "he wrote like the Sheikh." The aklâm-ı sitte albums in the Topkapı Palace Museum Library (Emanet Hazinesi 2083, 2084, 2086) are the finest examples of the development in the six scripts. His Qur'an of the mature period in the Istanbul University Rare Books Library (AY 6662) is the work in which the innovations in naskh can be followed most plainly.

His Works

Şeyh Hamdullah is reported to have written forty-seven Qur'ans together with about a thousand copies of the surahs al-An'am, al-Kahf and al-Naba, as well as collections of prayers and litanies, scrolls, panels and albums. Among these are pieces written by others in imitation of him, for practice or for commercial purposes, and it is often hard to tell the genuine works from the imitations. Today museums and libraries hold thirty Qur'ans, fifty copies of al-An'am and juz', 121 albums and panels, eight books on medicine and hadith, some of them copied for Mehmed the Conqueror, and six prayer collections that bear his colophon or are attributed to him in another calligrapher's record.

Archery and His Other Talents

Şeyh Hamdullah was one of the well-known archers of his time; the title "şeyhürrâmiyân," sheikh of the archers, comes from this. Bayezid II appointed him sheikh of the Okmeydanı Archers' Lodge after the elders Mahmud and Hamza. According to the records in the archery treatises, he broke the range record of a wrestler named Şîr-i Merd with a wooden arrow, shooting 1105.5 gez, about 729.63 meters (some sources place this record in 1505, at the Tozkoparan range), and set up a marker stone near the Okmeydanı Dergâh in memory of it. The oldest of the marker stones on plot 1454 at Okmeydanı, this stone is 1.53 meters tall and bears the inscription "Sâhibü'l-menzil Hamdullah ibnü'ş-şeyh reîsü'l-hattâtîn şeyhü'r-râmiyân, sene 911." Müstakimzâde writes that Tozkoparan İskender, a legend in archery, was his pupil. The sources also report that he swam well enough to cross from Üsküdar to Sarayburnu and that he showed skill as a tailor, sewing a caftan for Bayezid II without visible seams. Tailoring is not far removed from calligraphy when one recalls that calligraphers had their writing embroidered on cloth to be hung as panels, and that sewing and stitching those cloths fell to the calligrapher. He probably learned to swim in his youth in the Yeşilırmak.

His Last Years and Death

After Bayezid II abdicated in 1512 and his son Selim I took the throne, Şeyh Hamdullah withdrew into seclusion for eight years. He spent this period training pupils and guiding his disciples. It is related that after Süleyman the Magnificent came to the throne he invited him to the palace, showed him respect and asked him to write a Qur'an for him. The calligrapher pleaded old age and recommended his maternal uncle's son Celâlzâde Muhyiddin Amâsî; Süleyman put a sable fur on him and received his blessing. Muhyiddin was summoned from Amasya for the task, wrote the Qur'an and received a thousand florins in reward; he declined the offer to stay in Istanbul and returned to his hometown.

Şeyh Hamdullah died a few months after this episode, in 1520. The poets of the day composed an abjad chronogram on his death, "Zayfullah" (926 in the Hijri calendar, that is 1520). Müstakimzâde also records the following couplet as a chronogram: "Şeyh Hamdullāh olup küttâba kıble pîr-i hat / Rihletinde dil dedi târîhini dayf-i ilâh." Although some works state that he died in the time of Selim the Grim, Müstakimzâde's determination is accepted as the more accurate. His age is also disputed. From the colophon of an album in the Istanbul University Rare Books Library it is understood that he was past eighty-three when he wrote it. If Müstakimzâde's birth date is correct, he must have died at eighty-four; some researchers think he passed ninety, while accounts that he lived 110 years are regarded as exaggerated.

The funeral prayer was led by the Şeyhülislam Zenbilli Ali Efendi at the Hagia Sophia Mosque. In accordance with his will he was buried in the Karacaahmet Cemetery in Üsküdar, near Ali b. Yahyâ es-Sûfî, one of the calligraphers of the time. Many well-known calligraphers were also buried around his grave, and the place came in time to be called the "Şeyh Sofası." It is related that he set no store by worldly epithets and offices and therefore did not want his name written on his gravestone. The inscription on the stone was written later by Şâhin Ağa (d. 1701), the palace calligrapher of Mustafa II; it includes the words "Reîsülhattâtîn Hamdullah el-ma'rûf bi'bni'ş-şeyh." The date 927 on the stone is accepted as having been carved later, since it does not appear in a photograph taken about a hundred years ago, and as incorrect.

His Pupils and the Continuation of the School

Among the pupils Şeyh Hamdullah trained were sultans, princes, statesmen, scholars, sheikhs and poets. At the head of the forty-three pupils named in the biographical dictionaries stand his son Mustafa Dede and his son-in-law Şükrullah Halife. Mehmed Handan, Ali b. Mustafa, Behram b. Abdullah, Hüsameddin Hüseyin Şah, Câfer Çelebi, Şehzade Korkut, Mehmed b. Ramazan, Receb b. Mustafa, Mahmud Defterî and Mustafa b. Nasûh are mentioned as his successful pupils. In later centuries calligraphers such as Derviş Mehmed, Hasan Üsküdârî, Hâlid Erzurûmî, Derviş Ali the Elder, Suyolcuzâde Mustafa Efendi, Hâfız Osman, Hâşimîzâde Abdullah Efendi, Eğrikapılı Mehmed Râsim, Kazasker Mustafa İzzet, Mehmed Şefik Bey and Mehmed Şevki Efendi walked the same road and gave the school new vitality.

In the list of the "esâtize-i Rûm," the seven masters of Anatolia, Şeyh Hamdullah appears with his son Mustafa Dede, his relatives Abdullah Amâsî, Celâleddin Amâsî and Celâlzâde Muhyiddin Amâsî, and his contemporaries Ahmed Şemseddin Karahisârî and Şerbetçizâde İbrâhim Efendi of Bursa. These names were counted as the seven great artists of Anatolia, set against the seven masters (esâtize-i seb'a) that include Yâqût al-Musta'simî. Five of the seven come from the family of Şeyh Hamdullah or from the calligraphic circle of Amasya.

Mustafa Dede

Şeyh Hamdullah's son Mustafa Dede was born in Amasya around 900 in the Hijri calendar (1494-1495). His father was then in Istanbul, at the height of his career. It is known that Mustafa took lessons in the aklâm-ı sitte from him, but the calligraphers' biographies state that his principal teacher was Abdullah Amâsî. It is related that while traveling to the Hijaz for the pilgrimage he stayed for a time in Egypt, where he saw some of his father's albums, and that during the pilgrimage he examined the works presented to the Kaaba and to the Rawza-i Mutahhara; his real development in calligraphy is said to have come after this. It can be said, then, that he came to know his father's style through his own study and not by practicing directly under him.

Reaching his father's standard with a firm and elegant script, Mustafa Dede became an incomparable calligrapher counted among the esâtize-i Rûm. On returning from the pilgrimage he settled in Üsküdar and began to train pupils to continue the line of Şeyh Hamdullah. In 1538, at the age of only forty-five, he died as a result of wrong treatment of a minor illness. The poet Kandî composed the chronogram "Gitdi Dede'm cennete" on his death. He was buried beside his father in the Karacaahmet Cemetery, but his grave no longer exists.

He left a Qur'an each in the Topkapı Palace Museum Library, the Istanbul University Library and the Koyunoğlu Museum in Konya, an En'âm-ı Şerîf in the Topkapı Palace Museum Library, various albums and panels and a juz containing the Sura of the Cave there as well, and an album in the Turkish Foundation Calligraphy Arts Museum. Müstakimzâde, who saw the Qur'an he endowed to the Süleymaniye Mosque, says of him "not even a letter admits imitation." It is related that Bakkal Ârif Efendi, on seeing the colophon of one of his panels, confessed his inadequacy by saying "If only I could write a Mustafa like this, I would call myself a calligrapher." Müstakimzâde also reports that in later years some people tried to blend forgeries with Mustafa Dede's writings by aging paper with irons, coffee grounds and various other treatments, and that even when the proportions of the letters were matched with a compass, the master's skill could not be imitated.

Commemoration

For the 500th anniversary of Şeyh Hamdullah's death, the Sakıp Sabancı Museum held an exhibition titled "Şeyh Hamdullah on the 500th Anniversary of His Death" from 10 December 2020 to 30 September 2021. The museum's Book Arts and Calligraphy Collection preserves works by Şeyh Hamdullah and his contemporaries, by calligraphers who followed his path and by the master illuminators of the sixteenth century. The exhibition included manuscripts, Qur'ans, panels and albums of the second half of the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth century, selected from the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts in Istanbul, the Sadberk Hanım Museum and the Ekrem Hakkı Ayverdi Collection of the Kubbealtı Academy Cultural and Artistic Foundation. A book also accompanied the exhibition.

The Written Heritage of the City

Amasya's relation to writing was not confined to calligraphers. Examples of Ottoman calligraphy can still be seen today in the city's mosques, fountains, gravestones and inscriptions. The basmalas above doorways, the chronogram couplets on fountain pediments and the verses on the arches of mihrabs show that calligraphy lived in the city on the faces of buildings as well as on the pages of books. The name of Şeyh Hamdullah also lives on in the city. The Faculty of Fine Arts of Amasya University bears his name; the inscription at the entrance of the museum opened in his name was written by the contemporary calligrapher Mahmut Şahin and ends with a quatrain announcing that the master's spirit is at rest. Called the pîr of calligraphers, the master stands, as the most widely influential artist Amasya produced, at the head of a tradition of writing that continues still.

Chronology

1426-1436: The range of dates, varying by source, for the birth of Şeyh Hamdullah in Amasya.

1470-1472: The years in which Hayreddin Mar'aşî taught writing in Amasya and is estimated to have died, toward the end of 1472.

1481: Bayezid II takes the throne; Şeyh Hamdullah is summoned to Istanbul with his family.

1488: Celâl Amâsî dies in Amasya.

1503-1512: The years covered by the gratuity register of Bayezid II; the highest payments go to the Qur'ans written by Şeyh Hamdullah.

1505: The year in which, according to some sources, Şeyh Hamdullah broke the archery range record at the Tozkoparan range (911 on the marker stone).

1512: Bayezid II abdicates; Şeyh Hamdullah begins an eight-year seclusion.

1520: The invitation of Süleyman the Magnificent and the death of Şeyh Hamdullah.

1538: Mustafa Dede dies at the age of forty-five.

2020-2021: Exhibition at the Sakıp Sabancı Museum for the 500th anniversary of his death.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Other sources

Online sources