Figânî İshak Çelebi was a poet who lived in Amasya in the first years of the sixteenth century and was well known in the city's literary circle during the governorship of Şehzade Ahmed (Prince Ahmed). Almost everything we know about his life rests on Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin Yasar's Amasya Tarihi (History of Amasya). Hüsâmeddin counts him among the "meşâhîr-i şu'arâ", the famous poets, traces him to the Torumtay line, one of the noble families of Amasya, presents him as the companion of Murad, Prince Ahmed's eldest son, and relates that he was slandered and hanged because of an epic he wrote against the Shiite propaganda in the city. Most of the local sources Hüsâmeddin used are lost today; Figânî's story should therefore be read as the account of a single author, though it must also be granted that this account conveys the tensions of those years in the city with great vividness.

For most readers the name Figânî recalls another poet in Ottoman literature. Ramazan Figânî of Trabzon, who rose to fame in Istanbul under Süleyman the Magnificent and was executed in 1532, is a different person from this poet of Amasya; the biographical dictionaries of poets also know a third Figânî, called "Figânî-i Kadîm". That all three died on the gallows, together with the meaning of the pen name, "lament, wailing", has turned the name into a strange community of fate. No poem by Figânî of Amasya has survived. What remains is a single quatrain bearing his name, composed after his death by another Amasya poet, and the titles of his lost works.

Name and Family

Hüsâmeddin gives the poet's full name as "Figânî İshâk Çelebi bin Mehmed Çelebi". Nothing else is known about his father Mehmed Çelebi. His year of birth is also unknown; but judging from the fact that by the early 1500s he served as a companion in a princely court and was famous enough for his verse to be recited among the people, he must have been born in the second half of the fifteenth century. This is only a conjecture and rests on no document. The title "Çelebi" was used in that period for educated men from the circles of the pen and of learning; that Hüsâmeddin calls him "Figânî Bey" in another entry likewise points to the family's standing in the city.

The phrase Hüsâmeddin uses for Figânî, "of the descendants of Torumtay, a noble house of Amasya", ties the family to the city's Seljuk past. Seyfeddin Torumtay was a Seljuk emir who served as governor of Amasya in the thirteenth century; he built the Gökmedrese, and his tomb, dated 677 (1278-1279), still stands in the street that bears his name. The Torumtay name remained alive in the city in later centuries. Hüsâmeddin mentions Torumtayzâde Sirâceddin Muhammed Çelebi, vizier of Ahmed Bey, emir of Amasya, at the end of the fourteenth century, who travelled as far as Bursa to secure Ottoman protection; the Torumtay Tomb also appears as the burial place of the infant sons of Prince Alâeddin, who was strangled in the reign of Murad II. A madrasa bearing the Torumtay name was still teaching in the city in the sixteenth century. Through which branch Figânî was connected to this line, however, is not recorded.

A further clue to the family's place in the city comes from events after Figânî's death. Hüsâmeddin states that Muslihzâde Abdurrahman Çelebi, the kadı (judge) of Amasya, was related to Figânî by "karâbet-i sıhriyye", that is, by marriage, and adds that the poet's relatives were "many, and rather influential" people. The Muslihzâdes were one of the oldest learned families of Amasya. Abdurrahman Çelebi was the son of Şemseddin Mehmed Çelebi, a former chief military judge of Anatolia; he had taught at the Atabey Madrasa in Amasya and then at the Rahmaniye Madrasa in Merzifon, become kadı of Amasya around 891 (1486), been dismissed in the incident of 896, and after the judgeships of Ankara and Sivas returned to Amasya a second time around 905. The endowment of the bathhouse he built in the Fethiye quarter passed to his sons, so that the bath came to be called the "Kadı Hamamı" and his sons "Kadızâde". Figânî's kinship with such a family shows that he belonged to an old Amasya house with close ties to the city's learned and notable circles.

The Court of Prince Ahmed at Amasya

Prince Ahmed, son of Bayezid II, was appointed sanjak governor of Amasya when his father came to the throne in 1481 and governed the city for more than thirty years, until 917 (1512). Hüsâmeddin regards the Amasya years of Bayezid II and then of Ahmed as the most brilliant age of the city's literature, and when he lists the poets who emerged in this period he names Figânî together with Tâcî, Âfitâbî, Kutbî, Münîrî, Câferî and Sa'dî. Mihrî Hatun is likewise known to have won fame in this literary milieu that formed around the prince's court.

In Hüsâmeddin's account, however, this brilliant assembly is the stage of an increasingly bitter internal conflict. According to him, Prince Ahmed felt a strong attachment to Iranian scholars, and especially to Persian sayyids. His physician Kutb-ı Şirvânî and his chancellor Ahmed-i Câmî exalted Persian literature and Persian notables in the prince's eyes. When news reached Amasya in 908 (1502-1503) that Shah Ismail had advanced as far as Erzincan and was calling the people to Shiism, Kâsım Pasha, the vekil-i saltanat who managed the prince's affairs, said openly that favouring the Persians so much was dangerous. The Persians not only contradicted him but tried to have him executed; Kâsım Pasha fled Amasya early in 909 and took refuge with Prince Selim at Trabzon. His successor Sinan Pasha handed the trusteeship of the sultanic endowments to Hibetullah Efendi, one of the Persian scholars. According to Hüsâmeddin this flight cowed the city's notables and opened a wide field to the Persians.

This division within the court was reflected in the language of the poets. In 910 (1504-1505) the prince's companions included three Amasya scholars called the "Şemsler" because they shared a name: Mahmud Çelebizâde Şemseddin Ahmed, Müeyyedzâde Şemseddin Ahmed and Çakal Kadızâde Şemseddin Ahmed. The poets praised them as the "Suns". Facing them were, among the Persians, the physician Kutb-ı Şirvânî, the master musician Hâce Kutbeddin Mahmud and the madrasa teacher Kutbeddin Îsâ; these were called the "Poles". Hüsâmeddin writes that the rivalry between the Suns and the Poles gave rise to many conceits in the poets' verse. We do not know from his own poetry on which side Figânî stood in this contest, but later events show clearly that he stood with the local circle.

In the same years the question of cursing Muawiya and his like came to be openly debated in the city. Şeyhşâdili Muhyiddin Mehmed Efendi, teacher at the Hızır Pasha Madrasa and preacher of its mosque, opposed it with all his strength and spoke cutting words about Prince Ahmed. For this he was dismissed from his post and early in 911 (1505) expelled from Amasya and sent to the Atabey Madrasa in Kastamonu. According to Hüsâmeddin, the influence of the Persian scholars silenced the local ulema, but at the same time, by breaking Prince Ahmed's prestige, it was turning the Turks of Amasya towards Prince Selim. Figânî's story is the second and far bloodier link in this rupture.

The Circumcision Festival of 911 and the Poets of Amasya

In 911 (1505-1506) Prince Ahmed, with his father's permission, held a great circumcision festival for his sons. The governors of the neighbouring sanjaks were invited and Amasya was decorated from end to end. İdris-i Bitlisî described the festival in detail in his Heşt Bihişt and also wrote a spring ode for it. Hüsâmeddin relates that at that time the best-known poets in Amasya were, among the Turks, Çeşmî, Şermî, Figânî, Kâmî, Melîhî, Münîrî and Mihrî, and among the Persians, Basîrî, Penâhî and Kutbî. The author also weighs them briefly: the most pleasure-loving was Melîhî of Tokat, the most well-mannered Şermî, the most learned Münîrî, and the most remarkable Mihrî Hatun. These poets wrote odes congratulating the festival and received generous rewards. No poem that Figânî wrote for the occasion has survived.

Another aspect of the festival matters for understanding Figânî's story. Hüsâmeddin gives the names of Prince Ahmed's four sons as Murad, Alâeddin, Süleyman and Osman. The circumcision of Murad and Alâeddin had been held earlier, in 896 (1490-1491); according to the author both princes were married by 911. Those circumcised at this second festival, Hüsâmeddin supposes, must therefore have been Süleyman and Osman together with Murad's sons Mehmed and Kâsım and Alâeddin's son Orhan. Hüsâmeddin attributes the Persians' great delight to Prince Ahmed's weakness: in his view, once Ahmed became sultan, Anatolia could easily fall into the hands of Shah Ismail, whose propaganda the Persians were spreading.

His Literary Circle

In the volumes of Hüsâmeddin's Amasya Tarihi devoted to individuals, Figânî's name also appears in the lives of other poets, and these lines show in which assembly he lived. Çeşmî Mehmed Çelebi of Amasya, one of Prince Ahmed's chancery secretaries, was the son of Ali Çelebi, superintendent of the fountains built by Hâce Acem Ali Ağa. Interestingly, he had also received his education from Ebü'l-Hayr Efendi, teacher at the Hüseyniye and one of the Persian men of learning. According to Hüsâmeddin, Çeşmî became known through "musâhabât-ı edebiyye", literary conversations, with Mihrî, Figânî, Şermî, Şehrî and Münîrî, and won the prince's favour. When this assembly broke up with the prince's execution in 1513, he made his living as a scribe, and died after 927 (1520-1521).

One of Figânî's closest friends was Kara Hâfız Ali Çelebi. Having served in his youth as an assistant teacher at the Sultan Bayezid Madrasa, Kara Hâfız, thanks to his deep knowledge of Persian, had become teacher of the gılman, the young men in palace service, at the prince's court. Being a man inclined to poetry and prose composition, he had with Figânî a "sohbet-i kadîme ve müşâ'are", that is, a friendship of long standing and an exchange of verse. Müşâare was a game of the literary assembly in which poets answered one another in verse. One of Kara Hâfız's poems, a nazire (parallel poem) to Şeyhî's ghazal beginning "Aşkdır âfet-i akl ü secîdir rahat-ı rûh", is preserved in Münîrî's collection of prose compositions and in the Mecmaü'n-Nezâir. It is likely that Figânî too recited similar parallel poems in these assemblies; but none of them has reached us.

Another face of this circle is Bozacızâde Sünbül Ahmed Çelebi. Known by this nickname because he was blue-eyed, slender and tall, Sünbül Ahmed studied learning and the scribal art and became one of Prince Ahmed's chancery secretaries; and since his voice was as beautiful as he was, he entered the prince's assembly as a singer. Münîrî's "Sünbül ode" is about him. According to Hüsâmeddin, Sünbül Ahmed was one of the seven beauties mentioned in Figânî's şehrengiz. He fell from favour with the prince's execution in 1513 and died after 931 (1524-1525). It is thus possible to picture the world of Figânî's poetry as a court assembly in which Mihrî Hatun, Münîrî, Çeşmî and Kara Hâfız wrote parallel poems to one another, secretaries with fine voices served as singers, and poetry and friendship were interwoven.

Companion of Prince Murad

According to Hüsâmeddin, Figânî was the musahib, the companion, of Murad, Prince Ahmed's eldest son. The office of companion was given to men who stayed at the side of princes and kept them company with their conversation and learning. To be a prince's companion was both a mark of prestige and a position exposed to court intrigue; Figânî's end shows the second side clearly.

The sources disagree on Murad's age. Some give his year of birth as 1495; on that reckoning he would have been eleven or twelve at the time of the events that led to Figânî's death. Hüsâmeddin, however, places the circumcision of Murad and his brother Alâeddin in 896 (1490-1491) and writes that by 911 both were married and that Murad had sons named Mehmed and Kâsım. If this information is correct, Murad was a grown prince in 1507. The discrepancy also affects how the slander should be understood. In describing it, Hüsâmeddin says it was alleged that Figânî had an improper attachment and ill intent towards "şehzâde Murâd Beyzâde". Since elsewhere the author uses expressions such as "şehzâde Murâd Bey" for Murad himself and "Murâd Beyzâde Mehmed" for his sons, it is not certain whether the phrase refers to Murad or to one of his young sons. The text is open to both readings, and there is no other source against which to check it.

Shiite Propaganda and the Epic

The years in which Figânî lived were a period when the Safavid ruler Shah Ismail was rapidly gaining power in eastern Anatolia and Qizilbash propaganda was spreading around Amasya, Tokat and Çorum. According to Hüsâmeddin, while the prince was busy with festivities in Amasya, Shah Ismail attacked Erzincan. Abdurrahman Bey of Tokat, sanjak governor of Erzincan, asked Prince Ahmed for help and held out until it arrived, but when the force that came proved insufficient he fell fighting. Shah Ismail took Erzincan and marched on Tokat by way of the country south of Sivas; Ali Bey, son of Mehmed Pasha of Amasya and sanjak governor of Tokat, managed to halt him only with difficulty. The Persians and Shiites in Amasya greeted these events with rejoicing, quarrels broke out in the city, many Turks were insulted and religious feelings were wounded. Bringing these complaints to Prince Ahmed seemed impossible, because those around the prince kept such voices out. In this part of Hüsâmeddin's narrative the chronology is imprecise; Cavit Güzel dates Shah Ismail's capture of Erzincan to 1501, which means the tension described had begun some years before the festival of 911.

It was in this atmosphere that Figânî, in Hüsâmeddin's words "with the aim of making these matters known to Sultan Ahmed", wrote "an epic in the guise of a satire" reviling the Shiites and the Persians. The epic began to be recited among the people and angered the Shiites. Its text has not survived; neither its metre nor its length is known. Cavit Güzel, in his article on the minstrel-style epic tradition of Amasya, regards this record as the earliest information that can be established about the tradition of the destan in the city. In Güzel's view, the fact that Figânî was a well-known poet, that the epic was composed on a current event and that it was sung among the people suggests that the work had a structure and function similar to the epics produced in the minstrel tradition. That a divan poet voiced a political grievance through an epic circulating in the streets, rather than in the closed assembly of the court, also shows how wide an audience poetry could reach in the Amasya of the time. Ümit Erkan, who has studied the account of Shiism in Hüsâmeddin's work, likewise mentions the recitation of Figânî's satires against the Shiites among the people as part of this process when discussing the rise of Shah Ismail and the influence of the Persians who came to Amasya.

Slander and Execution

As Hüsâmeddin tells it, the Persians could not stomach the epic. Together with a person whom Prince Ahmed trusted above all others, they fabricated the charge that Figânî had an improper attachment and ill intent towards Murad Beyzâde, and made the prince believe it. No inquiry was held into Figânî's case. The poet was hanged in the month of Shawwal of the year 912, that is, in February-March 1507. In telling this story Hüsâmeddin calls the poet "bîçâre", the wretched one; in the entry on the kadı Muslihzâde he writes that the execution was "groundless", and in the entry on Kara Hâfız he describes his death as "şehâdet", martyrdom. These words clearly reflect the author's view of the event.

On the date of the execution there is a small discrepancy between Hüsâmeddin's own volumes. In the third volume, which covers the period of Prince Ahmed, the date is given as Shawwal 912; in the entry on the life of the kadı Muslihzâde Abdurrahman Çelebi, however, the execution is placed in 911. Considering that the kadı died in Dhu al-Hijjah 912 and that his illness began after the Figânî affair, Shawwal 912 fits the sequence of events better. Güzel also gives the poet's death as 1507.

Hüsâmeddin believes that a quatrain by Çeşmî Çelebi of Amasya, found in a biographical dictionary of poets that came into his hands in Amasya, was "most probably about Figânî":

Hazînim durmayıp ağlar dü-çeşmim
Boğup âhım gelûmu makta' etdi
Bu kalbin nâlesi ağlatdı halkı
Figânî göklere yükseldi gitdi

In plain English the quatrain says that the sorrowful two eyes weep without ceasing, that the sigh has choked and cut the throat, that the heart's lament has made the people weep, and that the "lament" has risen to the skies and gone. In the last line the word "figânî" can be read both as "my lament" and as the poet's pen name; the quatrain's connection with Figânî's death rests on this pun. One may also suspect that Çeşmî's own pen name is hidden in the words "dü-çeşm" (two eyes) in the first line. Since Çeşmî is known to have sat in the same assembly as Figânî, reading it as an elegy for a friend makes sense. Even so, that the quatrain was really written for Figânî is Hüsâmeddin's own conjecture; the name and copy of the biographical dictionary are not given. The poet of the quatrain is Çeşmî; it cannot be counted among Figânî's own poems.

Echoes of His Death

According to Hüsâmeddin, Figânî's execution provoked a deep reaction in Amasya. The kadı Muslihzâde Abdurrahman Çelebi already found the favour the prince showed the Persians excessive. He fell ill both from what had befallen the poet, his relative, and from the bitter words the people directed at him for failing to prevent it; he spoke harshly about Prince Ahmed and died in Dhu al-Hijjah 912, and was buried beside his grandfather. Müeyyedzâde Şemseddin Ahmed Efendi was appointed in his place. The kadı's sons Mehmed, Mahmud and Seydi Ahmed could not remain in Amasya and fled to Trabzon, to Prince Selim. Hüsâmeddin writes that the three brothers later rendered great services to Selim and all three rose to the rank of pasha.

According to the author, the Figânî affair seriously damaged Prince Ahmed's standing in the eyes of the people while emboldening the Iranians at his court. The poet's relatives believed that the person who had carried the slander to the prince was Acem Sinan Efendi, mufti of Amasya and teacher at the Sultaniye. Early in the year 913, that is, in the summer of 1507, Sinan Efendi was found suddenly dead in his bed one night. Koca Emîr İbrahim Efendi, teacher at the Hatuniye Madrasa in Tokat, came as mufti in his place. Hüsâmeddin relates this death immediately after the Figânî affair, but draws no link between them and says nothing about its cause. Figânî's old friend Kara Hâfız Ali Çelebi was also removed from the court because he was so deeply affected by the poet's death. He became known through public lectures, was appointed teacher at the Torumtay Madrasa after Prince Ahmed's death in 1513, and died around 935 (1528-1529). That his oldest friend should teach in a madrasa bearing the name of the family to which Figânî belonged is a small but striking coincidence.

Hüsâmeddin presents the Figânî affair as one of the first great ruptures in the Sunni-Shiite tension that shaped Prince Ahmed's last years in Amasya. In 915 (1509-1510) a bloody clash broke out in the city between Sunnis and Shiites, after which some of the notables of Amasya took refuge with Selim at Trabzon. In 1511 the Şahkulu revolt engulfed the region around Amasya, and in Muharram 918 (1512) the forces of Zünnûn Halife raided the city. After Selim's accession and Prince Ahmed's death, a decree that arrived in 919 (1513) ordered an investigation of what had happened in Amasya; the physician Kutb-ı Şirvânî, one of the leading figures of the prince's Persian circle, was hanged at the end of this inquiry. Recent studies of the Qizilbash movements in Amasya also trace this process through archival documents. Hüsâmeddin's comments, which severely criticise Prince Ahmed and the Iranians at his court, are his own assessment and do not appear with the same frankness in other sources; the details of the Figânî affair, too, cannot be verified from any other source.

The Şehrengiz and His Lost Works

No divan, small divan or even a single ghazal by Figânî has come down to us. The works recorded as his can be grouped under three headings: the epic reviling the Shiites and the Persians, an ode of congratulation that he apparently wrote for the festival of 911, and a şehrengiz describing the beauties of Amasya. Not one of these works is known by its text, by a single couplet or by a manuscript copy. For this reason no sample of Figânî's poetry can be given; it is uncertain to which Figânî the poems signed "Figânî" in poetry anthologies belong, and none of them can be attributed to the Amasya poet.

The information about the şehrengiz rests on a single sentence that Hüsâmeddin writes in his tenth volume when introducing Bozacızâde Sünbül Ahmed Çelebi: Sünbül Ahmed was "one of the seven beauties mentioned in Figânî Çelebi's Şehrengiz". The şehrengiz is a verse genre that describes the beauties of a city, its natural and historical attractions, and the people who had won fame in its arts and trades. In these works poets, after describing the city's merits, quarters and buildings, portrayed the beauties one by one with puns suited to their names and occupations. The first şehrengiz poems in Turkish literature are held to have appeared at the beginning of the sixteenth century; Mesîhî's şehrengiz on Edirne is thought to be the first and Zâtî's work on the same city the second, and both belong to the reign of Bayezid II. The name of the genre itself comes from a couplet by Mesîhî.

If Hüsâmeddin's information is correct, an Amasya şehrengiz that must have been written before 1507 would rank among the earliest examples of the genre, perhaps in the same generation as Mesîhî. But no copy of the work is known. Sixty-eight şehrengiz poems have so far been identified, whether surviving in text or known only by name; the cities for which they were written include many places, above all Edirne, Istanbul and Bursa, but Amasya is not among those listed. That Figânî's şehrengiz included a secretary such as Sünbül Ahmed, who entered the prince's assembly, suggests that the work too was written within this court circle, perhaps for the assembly; this is a conjecture. The encyclopaedia entry on the genre names an "İshak Çelebi" among the sixteenth-century authors of şehrengiz. The best-known poet of this name is Kılıççızâde İshak Çelebi of Skopje, who lived under Bayezid II and Süleyman the Magnificent; there is no record linking the İshak Çelebi of that list with Figânî İshak Çelebi of Amasya. Figânî's şehrengiz remains one of the local sources that Hüsâmeddin saw but that can no longer be traced.

The State of the Sources

Figânî's life rests on a handful of records that cannot be called independent of one another. All of them come from Hüsâmeddin's pen: the narrative of events in the third volume on the period of Prince Ahmed, his name among the poets, the entries on Çeşmî and Kara Hâfız in the eighth volume, the entry on Sünbül Ahmed in the tenth and the entry on the kadı Muslihzâde in the eleventh. Hüsâmeddin does not always say where he took his information from. He quotes Çeşmî's quatrain from "a biographical dictionary of poets that came into my hands in Amasya", but does not give its title. He says that the information on Kara Hâfız was taken from a work entitled Hulâsatü'l-Ahbâr by his grandson Âşık Mehmed Çelebi. No copy of this work has been found in the sources we examined either.

The classical biographical dictionaries of poets contain no entry devoted to Figânî of Amasya. The gifts that Mihrî Hatun, who lived in Amasya in the same period, received for the odes she sent to Bayezid II are recorded in the sultan's register of gifts with dates ranging from 1505 to 1512; no such archival record has been found for Figânî in the publications we examined. The loss today of a large part of the local endowment deeds, anthologies and family records on which Hüsâmeddin's work relied limits what can be said about Figânî to his account.

Not to Be Confused with Figânî of Trabzon

The poet referred to as "Figânî" in encyclopaedias and literary histories is Figânî of Trabzon, whose real name was Ramazan. Thought to have been born around 1505, this poet became known in Istanbul, used the pen name Hüseynî in his early poems, and won fame with the sûriyye ode he recited at the circumcision festival held in the summer of 1530 for the sons of Süleyman the Magnificent. When a Persian couplet thought to have been said about the statues that Grand Vizier İbrahim Pasha had brought from Buda and set up in the Hippodrome was attributed to him, he was seized at Tahtakale, taken to the landing stage and, most probably in the spring of 1532, hanged there. His poems, consisting of eight odes, one hundred and seven ghazals and two tahmîs, were published by Abdülkadir Karahan as a small divan. Figânî İshak Çelebi of Amasya, by contrast, must already have been dead by the time the Trabzon poet was born. The two must not be confused; the poems of Figânî of Trabzon do not belong to Figânî of Amasya, and there is no separate entry for the Amasya poet in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi.

The classical biographical dictionaries, however, know yet another poet, called "Figânî-i Kadîm" (the old Figânî) or "Figânî-i Karamânî" to distinguish him from Figânî of Trabzon. According to Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi and Beyânî, who abridged his work, this poet belonged to the class of secretaries and, as chancery secretary to Prince Abdullah, son of Bayezid II, wrote poems in his praise. Latîfî says that he had a divan, an İskendernâme in the metre of the Şehnâme and a Leylî vü Mecnûn in the metre of the Heft Peyker; none of the three survives today. The biographers note as a strange coincidence that he too, like Figânî of Trabzon, was sent to the gallows "like Mansur" through the trickery of "ashâb-ı garaz", ill-intentioned men. Kınalızâde adds that he died young and that his poems were not of a quality to win fame. The couplet the biographers ascribe to this poet, "Yaşum merdümlerin çeşmüm tutardı bunca izzetle / Yolunda sâ'il olmışdur yürür şimdi mezelletle", and the ghazal quoted by Latîfî beginning "Âh kim dilber sana dil virmiyeydüm kâşki" belong to Figânî-i Kadîm. Gelibolulu Mustafa Âlî also counts a Figânî among the poets of the reign of Bayezid II.

Whether the two Figânîs who lived in the same period, moved in princely circles and were hanged as a result of slander were one and the same person is a tempting question. Yet the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü gives Figânî-i Kadîm's birthplace as Karaman, Prince Abdullah whom he served died in 1483, and the biographers mention no connection of his with Amasya or with Prince Ahmed's circle. Nor do the descriptions match: the poet whom the biographers say "did not win fame" and the Figânî of Amasya whom Hüsâmeddin counts among the "meşâhîr-i şu'arâ". Hüsâmeddin, for his part, does not mention this information from the biographical dictionaries. With the sources at hand it cannot be said that the two were identical; the couplets of Figânî-i Kadîm therefore cannot be ascribed to the Amasya poet, and the possibility can only be discussed in the light of new documents.

Chronology

886 (1481): Prince Ahmed became sanjak governor of Amasya on the accession of his father Bayezid II.

896 (1490-1491): According to Hüsâmeddin, a circumcision festival was held in Amasya for Prince Ahmed's sons Murad and Alâeddin (some sources give Murad's year of birth as 1495).

Early 909 (1503): Kâsım Pasha, the vekil-i saltanat who opposed the favour shown to the Persians, fled Amasya and took refuge with Prince Selim at Trabzon.

Early 911 (1505): The preacher Şeyhşâdili Muhyiddin Mehmed Efendi, who opposed the cursing of Muawiya, was expelled from Amasya.

911 (1505-1506): Circumcision festival in Amasya for Prince Ahmed's sons and grandsons; Hüsâmeddin counts Figânî among the city's well-known poets who celebrated it with odes.

Shawwal 912 (February-March 1507): Figânî was hanged without inquiry after being slandered over his epic satirising the Shiites (911 in another of Hüsâmeddin's entries).

Dhu al-Hijjah 912 (April-May 1507): Figânî's relative Muslihzâde Abdurrahman Çelebi, kadı of Amasya, died; his sons fled to Trabzon, to Prince Selim.

Early 913 (summer 1507): The mufti Acem Sinan Efendi, suspected of carrying the slander to the prince, was found dead in his bed.

1513: Death of Prince Ahmed; Figânî's friend Kara Hâfız Ali Çelebi became teacher at the Torumtay Madrasa.

919 (1513): After an investigation ordered by Selim's decree, Prince Ahmed's physician Kutb-ı Şirvânî was hanged in Amasya.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

  • Cavit Güzel, "Amasya'da Âşık Tarzı Destan Geleneği", Uluslararası Türkçe Edebiyat Kültür Eğitim Dergisi, 9(3), 2020, pp. 1089-1105. amasya.bel.tr
  • Ümit Erkan, "Abdîzâde Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar'ın Amasya Tarihi Eseri Bağlamında Anadolu'da Şiîlik", Uluslararası Amasya Sosyal Bilimler Araştırmaları Sempozyumu-I: Abdizâde Hüseyin Hüsameddîn Yasar & Amasya Tarihi, Program Kitapçığı ve Özetler, Amasya: Amasya Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2024. amasya.bel.tr
  • Merve Karakulak, "XVI. Yüzyılda Amasya'da Kızılbaşlık Hareketlerinin Toplumsal Yansımaları", Türk Kültürü ve Hacı Bektaş Velî Araştırma Dergisi, no. 109, 2024. https://doi.org/10.60163/tkhcbva.1383381
  • İ. Güven Kaya, "Figânî'nin Ölümü ve Taşlıcalı Yahya Bey'in Bir Şiiri", Atatürk Üniversitesi Türkiyat Araştırmaları Enstitüsü Dergisi, no. 34, Erzurum 2007, pp. 47 ff.
  • Fatih Tığlı, "Klasik Türk Edebiyatı Şehrengiz Bibliyografyası", Çukurova Üniversitesi Türkoloji Araştırmaları Merkezi.
  • Abdülkadir Karahan, "Figānî", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 13, İstanbul 1996, pp. 57-58. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/figani
  • Bayram Ali Kaya, "Şehrengiz", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 38, İstanbul 2010, pp. 461-462. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/sehrengiz
  • İsmail E. Erünsal, "Mihrî Hatun", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 30, Ankara 2020, pp. 37-38. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/mihri-hatun
  • Hamdi Savaş, "İshak Çelebi, Kılıççızâde", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 22, İstanbul 2000, pp. 528-529. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/ishak-celebi-kiliccizade

Books

Online sources