Eyüb Sabrî was a poet who lived in Merzifon in the middle of the nineteenth century and left a divan behind him even though he died at the age of twenty-four. He wrote ghazals, kasides and kalenderîs in aruz (quantitative metre) as well as koşmas and semais in syllabic metre, and he stood at the centre of the poetry gatherings that made Merzifon a stopping place for the minstrels of the period. Most of what is known about him rests on Orhan Bilgin's book Merzifon'lu İki Şair (Eyüb Sabrî-Hıfzî), published in 1992, and on the entry in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü (Dictionary of Names in Turkish Literature) that draws on it. Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar's Amasya Tarihi contains no entry under his name. Hıfzî of Merzifon, who appears in the same book, is treated separately in this category.

His Life

Eyüb Sabrî was born in Merzifon in 1259 (1843). His father was Hacı Hâfız Hasan Efendi. The family was an old and well-rooted lineage known in Merzifon as the Sâdibeyzâde; its descent is traced to Sheikh Abdürrahîm-i Rûmî, the celebrated fifteenth-century Sufi, that is, to Rûmî Abdürrahîm of Merzifon. In his childhood and youth he studied at the madrasas of Merzifon and Amasya and, following the teaching methods of the time, learned Arabic and Persian well. He is reported to have taken up poetry at an early age and to have gathered his poems into a divan when he was twenty-three.

One of the most important events of his life was his meeting with Ziya Pasha during the latter's term as mutasarrıf (district governor) of Amasya and the close friendship that grew between them. Ziya Pasha stayed in Amasya for about two years in the mid-1860s and was transferred to the governorship of Canik in 1865; Sabrî was then in his early twenties. The pasha's work in the town is described in the site's article Ziya Pasha's Amasya: Traces of a Poet Governor. According to Bilgin, this friendship had a profound effect on the poet's literary personality. The second figure who influenced him was Nûrî of Tokat, the famous folk poet. Sabrî is known to have invited Nûrî to Merzifon often and to have held conversations and poetry contests (müşaere) with him.

The poet died in 1283 (1866), when he was only twenty-four. His grave lies in Merzifon near the tomb of Sheikh Abdürrahîm-i Rûmî. Despite his early death he appears to have founded a family: the entry in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü on the poet and lawyer Berin Taşan names Eyüb Sabrî as Taşan's ancestor three generations back and gives his year of death as 1867. Metin Hakverdioğlu, who published the Merzifon Cönkü, likewise presents Sabrî as a poet raised by Merzifon's well-known Taşan family. The epithet Sâdibeyzâde and the surname Taşan must be the names of the same family in two different periods; this is an inference.

His Connection with Amasya

Sabrî's connection with Amasya comes from his birthplace, Merzifon, and from his studies at the madrasas of Amasya. Merzifon was then a district (kaza) of the sanjak of Amasya. His friendship with Ziya Pasha also falls in the years when the pasha was mutasarrıf of Amasya. Hakverdioğlu writes that because Merzifon was a staging post on the roads in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it became a meeting place for poets and lovers of poetry, and that figures such as Dertli, Emrah of Erzurum, Nûrî of Tokat and Âşık Ömer answered the invitations of Merzifon poets such as Eyüb Sabrî. In this respect Sabrî also appears as a host who carried weight in the literary life of the town.

His Poetry

The poet's only known work is his Divan. His poems were gathered into a divan in 1309 (1893), some twenty-seven years after his death, by Bayramzâde Yusuf Sıdkî Hoca. Orhan Bilgin published the critical text of the divan, of which four manuscripts have been identified. This text contains 1 kaside, 10 kıt'as, 1 müstezat, 34 ghazals, 2 müseddes, 1 müsebba, 24 müfreds, 1 semai, 1 müseddes semai, 11 kalenderîs, 28 koşmas and 1 satranç. This distribution shows the poet moving freely between divan poetry and folk poetry. According to Hakverdioğlu, the divan also includes a poem with the redif (refrain word) "Ohannes"; it can be read as a reflection in verse of the daily life of Merzifon, where the Armenian population was large.

Hakan Yekbaş says that in the poems he wrote in aruz Sabrî used the conventional images (mazmun) and figures of speech with ease but kept feeling and thought in the foreground, and that the same quality can be seen in his poems in syllabic metre. Local elements, proverbs and folk idioms appear here and there in his poems. According to Yekbaş, the poet holds a distinct place through the sincerity of his ideas and the charm of his style, even though he died young.

Sabrî's poems also passed from hand to hand in Merzifon. In the manuscript miscellany that Hakverdioğlu acquired for his own library and named the Merzifon Cönkü, a separate ghazal section is devoted to Sabrî, and eight of his poems in aruz are recorded: four kalenderîs, two ghazals and two semais. Hakverdioğlu thinks the cönk was compiled by a Merzifon poet from Sabrî's literary circle, most probably Fethî. Only the first couplets of these poems are published in the article; the page of each in Bilgin's edition is also given.

In this category all of Sabrî's accessible texts are given on separate pages, with the original text, a modern rendering and commentary. The ghazal "Men ki ser-gerdân-ı aşkım hîç kârım kalmadı", which Yekbaş quotes as a sample, is complete. Of the eight poems from the cönk only the opening couplets are in our hands: the kalenderîs "Yandım o perî peykere hayfâ ele geçmez", "İncitme beni ey güzelim cevriňi az it", "Misliň bulamam ey güzelim dehrde teksin" and "Yâ Rab bu kuluň fevz ü felâh semtine varmaz", the ghazals "Âh kim sevdim diyü ol mâh-rûy-ı enveri" and "Her gören ol dilberi tagyîr-i ahvâl eylemiş", and the semais "Severseň ger dilâ bir dilber-i derdân-ı devrân sev" and "Aceb bir ben miyim dûçâr olan efgâna bilmem ki". The full texts of these poems are in Bilgin's book; no online copy of the book could be found.

The State of the Sources

The sources available for Sabrî's life are Vehbi Cem Aşkun's Merzifon Şairleri of 1937 and Bilgin's book of 1992; neither could be consulted directly, and the information has been taken from Yekbaş's entry and Hakverdioğlu's article. There are small differences among these sources. Yekbaş gives the year of death as 1283 (1866), while the Berin Taşan entry says 1867; since the hijri year 1283 runs from May 1866 to May 1867, the two dates may point to the same year.

A more serious difficulty concerns the name given as the poet's teacher. Yekbaş writes that Sabrî became a disciple of Sheikh İsmâil Sirâceddîn-i Şirvânî, who is buried in Amasya, learned poetry and literature from him and received a licence (icazet) from him. Yet İsmail Sıracüddin Şirvânî died in Amasya on 17 Ramadan 1264, that is, at the end of the summer of 1848; Sabrî was five years old at that date. The record in this form therefore does not fit the chronology. One might suppose that the poet studied with another Şirvânî teacher trained in the sheikh's circle in Amasya and that the two names were later confused; this is only a possibility and has not been confirmed by a source.

The pen name Sabrî was common in Amasya, and Hüsameddin's book includes other persons who bore it. Eyyûb Sabri Efendi-Pelidzâde, born in 1278 (1861) in the Üçler quarter of Amasya and died in 1323 while a teacher at the rüşdiye (middle school) of İnegöl, is a different person despite the similar name, and he is not presented as a poet. Sabrî Mehmed Efendi of the Sarı Ahmedzâde family, who lived in the eighteenth century, and the calligrapher Mustafa Sabrî, Hüsameddin's writing teacher, should not be confused with the poet of Merzifon either.

Chronology

1259 (1843): Eyüb Sabrî is born in Merzifon.

1264 (1848): Sheikh İsmail Sıracüddin Şirvânî, named as his teacher, dies in Amasya.

1865: Ziya Pasha is transferred from the governorship of Amasya to Canik.

1283 (1866): Sabrî dies in Merzifon at the age of twenty-four.

1309 (1893): Bayramzâde Yusuf Sıdkî Hoca gathers the poet's poems into a divan.

1992: Orhan Bilgin publishes the critical text of the divan.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Books

Online sources