Emânî Mehmed Çelebi was a sixteenth-century secretary and poet from the Culğazâde family of Amasya who, after serving for about ten years as a secretary in the Amasya divan of Şehzade Mustafa (Prince Mustafa), died around 958 (1551). The only source that introduces him is the Amasya Tarihi of Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar. Hüsameddin describes him as a secretary who caught the prince's attention with his fine hand, a master of the divanî script and a poet, and also counts him among the prince's confidants (musahip). No entry belonging to this man has been found in the biographical anthologies of poets (tezkire), and his poems have not come down to us.

Hüsameddin's Entry

Hüsameddin introduces the poet in the seventh volume of the Amasya Tarihi, in the section on natives of Amasya whose names begin with the letter "elif":

Emânî Mehmed Çelebi-Kâtib Amasyalıdır. Culğazâde Hâce Resûl Çelebi bin Mehmed Çelebi mahdûmudur. Bade't-tahsîl ümerâdan iken Şehzâde Sultân Mustafa bin Sultân Süleyman Hân Amasya'ya vâlî olup geldikde intisâb etdi. Şehzâde hatt ve kitâbetini takdîr edib dîvân kâtibi yaptı. On yıl kadar şehzâde-i müşârün-ileyhin dîvânında kâtib olduğu halde 958 hudûdunda vefât etdi. Edîb, şâir, kâtib, hatt-ı dîvânîde mâhir idi. Birâderi kudâtdan Mustafa Çelebi'dir.

In modern English the entry reads: The secretary Emânî Mehmed Çelebi is a native of Amasya. He is the son of Hâce Resul Çelebi of the Culğazâde family; Resul Çelebi was the son of Mehmed Çelebi. After completing his education, while he was among the beys, he attached himself to Şehzade Sultan Mustafa, son of Sultan Süleyman Khan, when the prince came to Amasya as governor. The prince, appreciating his handwriting and his skill as a secretary, made him divan secretary. After serving as secretary in the prince's divan for about ten years, he died around 958. He was a man of letters, a poet and a secretary, and a master of the divanî script. His brother is Mustafa Çelebi, one of the judges.

The site's rendering of the entry and its notes can be read in the Hüsameddin encyclopedia.

Life

There is no information about Emânî's date of birth, his teachers or his youth. According to the genealogy Hüsameddin gives, his father was Resul Çelebi, known by the title "Hâce", and his grandfather Mehmed Çelebi; the family name "Culğazâde" does not occur anywhere else in Hüsameddin's work. The most striking expression in the entry is the sentence saying that after completing his education Emânî was "ümerâdan", that is, among the class of beys. It cannot be determined from the text whether this description, unusual for a divan secretary, means that he held a military fief or that he was in the service of one of the beys in Amasya.

Şehzade Mustafa's arrival in Amasya changed Emânî's life. The prince, admiring his handwriting and his secretarial work, took him into his own divan as a secretary. Divan secretaries were the officials who drew up the correspondence, orders and records of the prince's administration of the province; "hatt-ı dîvânî", the divanî script, is the ornate official hand, difficult to read, used in this correspondence. In the third volume, where he describes the prince's circle in Amasya, Hüsameddin mentions Emânî, together with Edâyî Bey and Zamânî Mahmud Çelebi, among the poets "zümre-i küttâbdan", from the body of secretaries, who were the prince's confidants. Accordingly, Emânî entered the prince's close circle as much through his conversation as through his pen.

His date of death is given by Hüsameddin only approximately, as "around 958". According to the entry "Mustafa Çelebi" by Şerafettin Turan in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the prince was sent to Amasya on 21 Safer 948 (16 June 1541); the time from that date to 958 (1551) agrees with Hüsameddin's words "about ten years". Hüsameddin himself, however, places the prince's arrival in Amasya in 945 (1538); on this reckoning "about ten years" reaches around 955 and does not match exactly the date of death he gives. In either case Emânî died before the prince was killed in 1553 and did not see the days of the "fetret", the turmoil that followed.

Connection with Amasya

Emânî Mehmed Çelebi's connection with Amasya rests on Hüsameddin's entry. Hüsameddin explicitly counts him a native of Amasya and mentions his family and his brother; his known career as a secretary was also spent in the prince's Amasya divan. Şehzade Mustafa's literary circle in Amasya, together with the other poets named here, is described in the article Şehzade Mustafa (Muhlisî): His Poems and the Poets of His Amasya Circle. For the prince's life, see the article Şehzade Mustafa.

His Poetry

The poems of Emânî Mehmed Çelebi have not come down to us. Hüsameddin says that he was a poet and a man of letters, but does not quote even a single couplet of his. There is no record that he had a divan or any other work.

The State of the Sources

Emânî lives only in Hüsameddin's records, and it is not known on which document Hüsameddin based this information. In the tezkires examined there are two poets with the pen name (mahlas) Emânî, and both are distinct from this man. The first Emânî of Âşık Çelebi, Kınalızâde and Beyânî is a poet from Istanbul who served as a treasury secretary in the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent and was one of the confidants of the chief treasurer İskender Çelebi; Âşık Çelebi relates that during the Baghdad campaign he was among the secretaries who incurred İbrahim Pasha's anger and had their stipends cut, that he recovered his stipend with a short poem (kıta) he wrote, and that he later withdrew into retirement and took on the trusteeship of an endowment in Salonica. The second Emânî is a secretary-poet from Rusçuk named Mustafa. No connection of either with Amasya or with Şehzade Mustafa is recorded.

In the entry on Şehzade Mustafa in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü (Dictionary of Names in Turkish Literature), the list of the prince's poets given on the basis of Haluk İpekten's work does not include the name Emânî. Emânî Ahmed Çelebi of the Dördüncüzâde, whom Hüsameddin gives in the same volume immediately after this entry, is another secretary-poet of Amasya who died in 1058 (1648).

Chronology

21 Safer 948 (16 June 1541): Şehzade Mustafa is sent from Manisa to Amasya; shortly afterwards Emânî becomes a secretary in his divan.

Around 958 (1551): Emânî Mehmed Çelebi dies.

27 Şevval 960 (6 October 1553): Şehzade Mustafa is killed at the Aktepe camp near Konya Ereğlisi.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Books

Online sources