In the middle of the fourteenth century the interior of Anatolia lived in the political vacuum left by the disintegration of Ilkhanid rule. The Eretnid principality, centred on Sivas and Kayseri, filled that vacuum for a time, but after its founder's death authority no longer rested in a single hand and was scattered among the emirs. In Amasya the foremost of these emirs was Hacı Şadgeldi. For nearly twenty years he governed the city as a de facto independent ruler, gathered scholars around him, had the citadel and the mint repaired, and brought paper production to the city. His life ended in the autumn of 1381, after his struggle with Kadı Burhaneddin. What remained was a tomb, a mosque, a few inscriptions and the preface of a Persian work. To tell his story one has to piece these scattered traces together, because no single chronicle or biography narrates him from beginning to end.

His Name and Identity

In the sources he appears as Hacı Şadgeldi Pasha or simply "Hacı Şadgeldi". Modern accounts give his full name as "Hacı Seyfeddin Şadgeldi Padişah"; in the preface to one of Cemâleddin al-Aksarâyî's works he is called "Emir of Amasya, Shamsuddin Ahmed al-Hajj Şadgeldi Pasha, son of Kutlu Shah". The inscription on the left side of his sarcophagus reads "Zayn al-Hajj Şâdgeldi Pasha". The variety of these names for one and the same person shows that titles and epithets were used loosely in the sources of the period. The title "Pasha" became common in later accounts; the inscriptions show that in his own day he was known as "emir" and "emir-i kebir" (grand emir).

Studies based on Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar's Amasya Tarihi report that he was born and raised in Amasya, studied under Mevlânâ Fahreddin İlyas, and was a fellow student of Cemâleddin al-Aksarâyî under the same teacher. He belonged to the Shafi'i school. This matters for understanding who later took part in his council and which authors wrote under his patronage: Şadgeldi was an emir who came from within the scholarly milieu, was educated, and was accustomed to learned gatherings.

The Son of Kutluşah

His father, Hacı Kutluşah, was an emir who had taken charge of Amasya during the Eretnid period. Amasya was given to Kutluşah in 1347, after the death of Zeyneddin Tüli Bey, and his sphere of influence at times stretched from Sivas and Tokat to Kayseri and Konya. Kutluşah's eldest son Şahabeddin Ahmed Şah became emir of Amasya in mid-1352; in 1356 the former emir Şücaaddin Süleyman Bey seized the city by force, and Ahmed Şah took it back in 1358. The city had thus changed hands several times even before Şadgeldi arrived, and had experienced a local version of dynastic rivalry.

The sources disagree about Kutluşah's origins. One account describes him as the slave and adopted son of Taceddin Altunbaş of the Anatolian Seljuks; another study identifies Şadgeldi's paternal grandmother as Altunbaş's daughter, which would make him a relative of the Seljuks on his father's side. According to a note in Yasar's text, Kutluşah was the slave of Şâdî Bey, the former emir of Amasya. Kadı Burhaneddin's having propaganda spread in his own army that Şadgeldi was a "son of a slave" rested on this very debate over genealogy. No firm judgment is possible on the matter; one can say only that the enemy used the dispute as a political weapon. Three sons of Kutluşah are known: Şahabeddin Ahmed Şah, Hacı Şadgeldi and Bedreddin Gazan Şah. His brother Şerefeddin Togan Şah was the emir of Turhal, on the Amasya border.

The Eretnid State and the Age of the Emirs

To understand Şadgeldi's rise one must look at the structure of the state in which he lived. The Eretnids were a principality that the Uyghur-descended Alâeddin Eretna effectively founded after 1335, while acting as deputy for the Ilkhanid governorship of Anatolia; centred on Sivas and Kayseri, it continued the Seljuk and Ilkhanid tradition in its political, military and administrative organisation. After Eretna's death the struggle for power between his sons Cafer and Mehmed weakened the state. After Mehmed Bey, his thirteen-year-old son Alâeddin Ali Bey was placed on the throne. According to the TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam, state authority could not be established under this incapable young ruler, and the emirs one by one began to act on their own: Hacı Şadgeldi in Amasya, Mutahharten in Erzincan, Tâceddin in Niksar, Hacı İbrâhim in Sivas, Şeyh Necib in Tokat and Kılıcarslan in Şarkîkarahisar. Only the emirs in Kayseri remained nominally loyal to Ali Bey.

The same entry lists the consequences of this rivalry plainly. Unity and solidarity were broken, peace and order disappeared, and intellectual and cultural life faded; because of the raids of the Turkmen and Mongol tribes, part of the population migrated to Aleppo, Antep and western Anatolia. In the midst of this disorder, Şadgeldi's Amasya was one of the centres that tried to build an order of its own, and that order rested largely on the emir's choices in learning and building.

Şadgeldi's name appears in the TDV entry on Kadı Burhaneddin in connection with another event as well. In 1365 Eretnid Mehmed Bey was killed by his own emirs, Hacı Şadgeldi, Hacı İbrâhim and Kılıcarslan, which led to great disorder in the country. The author of the entry, Abdülkerim Özaydın, notes that Kadı Burhaneddin also fell under suspicion in this affair, but that his role could not be established with certainty. This record explains why Şadgeldi was seen not merely as a provincial emir but as one of the direct actors in the state's internal struggle.

His Rise to the Emirate

While fighting the Karamanids, Kutluşah appointed his eldest son Ahmed Şah to Sivas and Şadgeldi to the emirate of Amasya. The date is August-September 1359. It is reported that the Karamanids defeated and killed Kutluşah and his son Ahmed Şah, and that Gazan Şah, the emir of Kayseri, fled to Jerusalem. With Kutluşah dead and the army far away, Alâeddin Ali Bey, son of Şücaaddin Süleyman, the former emir of Amasya, seized the city; Şadgeldi withdrew and went to his uncle in Turhal.

This temporary exile was short. According to the history published by the Governorship of Amasya, Şadgeldi appears as emir of the city for the second time in 1362, after the Kaynar Incident. Another source writes that he regained the administration a few months later and that his second period began in 1361; the sources thus differ by one year on the date (1361 or 1362). According to a study based on the account in Amasya Tarihi, Şadgeldi marched on Ali Bey with the force he had gathered in Turhal and took Amasya back.

Seeing the weakening of Eretnid rule, the emir began at this point to act on his own. In the account given by the Governorship, the weakness of the sultans and their fondness for pleasure and ease shook state authority and made the officials in office susceptible to the idea of independence; Şadgeldi too acted on his own in these years, and later proclaimed his principality. The sources give 1360 and later years as the date of independence. Since no explicit document of a "declaration" exists, it is more accurate to regard this as a gradual break than to pin it to a single date.

The Emir Who Expanded His Borders

Finding the land of Amasya insufficient, Şadgeldi turned to neighbouring regions. One study writes that he brought the fortress of Osmancık, İskilip and Sinop under his administration; another record mentions Çorum and İskilip. Tâceddin Bey, known around Samsun as "Canitli", was also his subordinate. This rapid expansion angered the Eretnid sultan. According to one account, Alâeddin Ali Bey set out to punish Şadgeldi but caught the plague at Artukabad (today the Artova district of Tokat) and died, and his body was taken to Tokat. The TDV gives Alâeddin Ali Bey's death as 1380 and does not mention the place of death. His seven-year-old son Mehmed II was placed on the throne, and with Kadı Burhaneddin's approval Kılıcarslan, of the Seljuk dynasty, was appointed regent. The struggle against Şadgeldi soon became Kadı Burhaneddin's business.

Those who fled the Eretnid dynasty also took refuge in Amasya. In Yasar's biographical records it is related that Mehmed Bey of the Eretnid dynasty fled in 782 (1380-81), when Kadı Burhaneddin took Sivas, and took refuge with the "Grand Emir of Amasya, Hacı Şâdgeldi Pasha", and that he became the son-in-law of Şadgeldi's son Ahmed Pasha. This act of refuge is a small but meaningful detail showing Amasya's political weight in the region.

Council and Scholars

Şadgeldi's government did not rest on a purely military structure. A record giving the administrative staff of his second period reports that Sirâceddin Muhammed Bey, emir of Niksar, was made vizier, that Cemâleddin al-Aksarâyî was appointed judge of Amasya, and that Hacı Sinâneddin Yusuf of the Gümüşlüoğlu family was appointed treasurer. It thus appears that the emirate approached a classical state order, with offices such as vizier, judge and treasurer.

Cemâleddin al-Aksarâyî is the most brilliant name in this staff. Having studied under the same teacher as the emir, Aksarâyî was appointed to the judgeship of Amasya and to a professorship at the Dâr al-Ilm when Şadgeldi came to power. When the military judge (kadıasker) of Amasya, Pîr Nizâmeddin Muhammed Cürcânî, died in 768 (1366-67), the post of kadıasker was given to him as well. Aksarâyî wrote his work al-As'ila wa'l-Ajwiba in Persian for Shamsuddin Ahmed al-Hajj Şadgeldi Pasha, son of Kutlu Shah, the Emir of Amasya, at his suggestion and with the local population in mind. The choice of Persian is explained by the population's greater familiarity with that language; in this respect the work shows that learning in the emir's circle was conducted in Persian as much as in Arabic.

The second source that attributes a scholarly dimension to Şadgeldi is ed-Dürerü'l-Mensûre fi'l-Furû', a Shafi'i legal work whose author is unknown. According to Mehterhan Furkani's research, this work was written for a ruler who is not named in the preface, and there is no firm document about the ruler's identity. Yet its dedication to Şadgeldi, who ruled Amasya for more than twenty years, belonged to the Shafi'i school and was Aksarâyî's classmate, is presented as a "possible" hypothesis with "supporting clues". The value the emir placed on learning is documented; that he was himself the addressee or inspiration of a legal work is a strong conjecture and cannot be counted as certain knowledge.

The poets and writers of the age were also protected in Amasya. A compilation on the Kutluşah principality writes that the dynasty protected the poets and writers who came to Amasya, and that for this reason the written sources of the period speak of them as if they were great rulers.

Building Activity

According to the history published by the Governorship of Amasya, notable building activity took place in the city in Şadgeldi's time. In 1363 Amasya Citadel was repaired, the old mint was renewed and a paper factory was built; in 1372 some building units consisting of a mosque, a madrasa and a soup kitchen (imaret) were constructed. Because the source reporting this does not specify the founder of each building separately, one should avoid treating them one by one as the emir's personal endowments; all of them nevertheless date from his time. The repair of the citadel served defence, the mint economic independence, and paper production the material needed for learning and for the council's scribes; these three functions match the needs of an independent emirate.

The Saraçhane (Şadgeldi Pasha) Mosque

The Saraçhane Mosque, which stands today on Ziya Paşa Boulevard in the city centre, was built, according to the Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, in 1372 by Şadgeldi Pasha, Emir of Amasya. In the early period the mosque was known as the Şadgeldi Pasha Mosque after its founder; because of the saddlers' shops around it, it has been called the Saraçhane (saddlers' market) Mosque since the time of Çelebi Mehmed. The building was originally square in plan with a single dome; a room was later added and the plan became rectangular. Rubble stone and brick were used together, and it has a cylindrical brick minaret. Its last-congregation porch on the north has seven bays, the interior is decorated with painted work (kalem işi), and the domes are covered with tiles. The mosque has undergone many repairs down to the present.

The Fountain Inscription

Another document that mentions the emir is a fountain inscription. According to the text as read by Uzunçarşılı, the fountain was built in the time of Şadgeldi Pasha by the judge of Amasya, Mehmed b. İmâd b. Mehmed al-Kâdî, in 779 AH (1377-78). The inscription contains the phrase "al-Amir al-kabir al-Hajj Shad Geldi Pasha, may his rule endure". The fountain is not counted as Şadgeldi's own work; it was built by a judge under his administration and has carried the emir's title down to us as a written document.

The Reckoning with Kadı Burhaneddin

The rival who determined Şadgeldi's fate was Kadı Burhaneddin, who as Eretnid regent in time founded a state of his own. According to the TDV, Kadı Burhaneddin, born on 8 January 1345, was the son of the judge of Kayseri; he had studied in Damascus and Cairo and, returning to Kayseri in 1364, was appointed judge of the city. His recovery of Kayseri from the Karamanids opened the way to the vizierate in 1378, and he soon took the administrative and military powers into his own hands. After the death of Alâeddin Ali Bey in 1380 the popular council first made Kılıcarslan regent; Kadı Burhaneddin eliminated him on 9 February 1381, then removed his chief rival, Hacı Şadgeldi, the ruler of Amasya, and in the autumn of the same year proclaimed his sovereignty at Sivas, having the khutba read and coins struck in his name.

Yasar's account gives the details of this conflict. When his illness eased, Şadgeldi took command of the army, advanced toward Sivas and went as far as Artukabad. Kadı Burhaneddin gathered his allies and came out against him. On one hand he sent envoys and letters as though seeking peace and kept Şadgeldi occupied; on the other he sent men into his army to spread the propaganda that "Şadgeldi is a slave's son, a man of unknown lineage". According to the same source, in his reply to Şadgeldi's envoy Kadı Burhaneddin rejected the proposal to seat the young prince on the throne jointly, reminding him that the very man who had killed the prince's grandfather and dragged his father from city to city was Şadgeldi himself. This reply shows that the killing of Mehmed Bey in 1365 was still being used as a political card years later.

The effect of the propaganda was quickly seen. According to Yasar, dissension arose in Şadgeldi's army, the Çonkar and Kara Tatar groups left the army, and its morale was broken. The notables and scholars of Amasya tried to prove that these words were baseless and that Şadgeldi's lineage was respectable; but Şadgeldi did not see any trace of the calls he expected from the notables of Sivas, fell ill again, and took his army back to Amasya.

He then invited the lords of Erzincan, Canik, Karahisar-ı Şarkî, Kayseri and Kastamonu to an alliance against Kadı Burhaneddin. According to the source, Bayezid Bey, ruler of Kastamonu, was stronger than the others; Cüneyd Bey, governor of Kayseri, was Kadı Burhaneddin's greatest enemy. In the council he consulted, the military judge Cemâleddin Aksarâyî, the mufti İzzeddin Muhammed Amâsî and other scholars and emirs said that fighting at once would not be right. Their reasoning was clear: if the aim was to make Ali Bey's child, who had not yet reached adolescence, an emir, then the wealth and lives to be spent would be a pity; if the aim was to take Sivas entirely, the war should be delayed until conditions matured. "The harm of haste is great," they said. The scholars and emirs were against rushing into war without preparation.

The outcome was his defeat and death in battle. The TDV entry on Kadı Burhaneddin records that Şadgeldi was attacked and "defeated and killed"; the compilation on the Kutluşah principality writes that in 1381 he led the lords who declared war on Kadı Burhaneddin but was defeated and killed in the first clash. One study states that Şadgeldi was killed in Tokat; the sources differ on the place of his death, and the site is not certain.

His Tomb

The emir was buried in Amasya, in the Halifet Gazi Cemetery. The Şadgeldi Tomb in the cemetery lies today opposite the Halifet Gazi Tomb, southwest of the Kadılar Tomb. According to the Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, it was built in the fourteenth century as an iwan-type, rectangular, cut-stone, vaulted structure, and closely resembles the Kadılar Tomb.

It is recorded that the tomb holds the graves of eight other people besides Şadgeldi, and that nearly all of the graves have marble sarcophagi bearing inscriptions. Uzunçarşılı read the inscriptions. The text on the right side of Şadgeldi's sarcophagus calls him "al-sa'id, al-shahid, al-maqtul" (fortunate, martyr, slain); on its left side it reads "Zayn al-Hajj Şâdgeldi Pasha"; and at the foot stone the date 783 AH (1381-82) is read. Rather than taking the building to have been constructed in 1382, it is correct to read this date on the foot stone as the date of death.

His Son Ahmed and the End of the Emirate

When Şadgeldi was killed, his son Fahreddin Ahmed Bey (Ahmed Pasha) took his place. Ahmed, who sought support from Bayezid the Cripple of the Candarids to avenge his father, was defeated in 1383-84 according to the TDV; in 1384 Kadı Burhaneddin marched on Amasya and routed the emirate repeatedly. According to Yasar, Bayezid, ruler of Kastamonu, was Ahmed Bey's father-in-law. The compilation on the Kutluşah principality gives the in-law relationship for Şadgeldi himself; because the TDV and Yasar give it for Ahmed, that version is adopted here.

Ahmed Bey's struggle with Kadı Burhaneddin continued; in 1394 Kadı Burhaneddin marched on Ahmed Bey, emir of Amasya, and "burned and destroyed everywhere". Studies say that Ahmed offered to give Amasya to the Ottomans in return for a sanjak, and that the city therefore came under Ottoman administration in 1393; another source writes that the emirate of the Şadgeldi line ended in 805 AH (1403). The sources differ on the date (1393 or 1403). Kadı Burhaneddin himself had been taken captive in 1398 by Karayülük Osman Bey of the Akkoyunlu and killed before the walls of Sivas; thus Şadgeldi's greatest adversary had himself died on the battlefield seventeen years after Şadgeldi's death.

The fate of the Aksarâyî family is also tied to the emir's death. Yasar's records state that Aksarâyî's son Alâeddin Ali fled from Amasya to Bursa with his father in 783 and became a professor there. Şadgeldi's death meant the dispersal not only of a dynasty but also of the scholarly circle that had gathered around him.

His Place in the Memory of Amasya

Şadgeldi Pasha is remembered as a representative of one of the last independent periods of Amasya before the Ottomans. After him Amasya went on as the city that Bayezid the Thunderbolt took, the centre that Çelebi Mehmed fought over, and, in the following century, the sanjak of the princes. The emir's name lives on in three places in the city today: in the old name of the Saraçhane Mosque on Ziya Paşa Boulevard, in the tomb in the Halifet Gazi Cemetery, and in the preface of Aksarâyî's Persian work. The body of surviving documents is limited and does not suffice to reconstruct his life in every detail; yet the main outline is clear. He was an emir squeezed between powerful neighbours, who endowed his city with a school, a mosque, a mint and a paper workshop, based his government on the opinion of scholars and judges, and was finally defeated by the strongest rival of his time.

Chronology

1347: Hacı Kutluşah is appointed to the emirate of Amasya.

1359 (August-September): Şadgeldi is appointed emir of Amasya by his father Kutluşah.

1361: Alâeddin Ali Bey seizes Amasya; Şadgeldi leaves the city.

1361-1362: Şadgeldi retakes Amasya and becomes emir for the second time (the date is 1361 or 1362, depending on the source).

1363: Amasya Citadel is repaired, the old mint is renewed, and a paper factory is built.

1365: Eretnid Mehmed Bey is killed by his emirs Hacı Şadgeldi, Hacı İbrâhim and Kılıcarslan (TDV).

768 AH (1366-67): Pîr Nizâmeddin Cürcânî dies; Aksarâyî is appointed kadıasker.

1372: Buildings consisting of a mosque, a madrasa and an imaret are constructed; the Saraçhane (Şadgeldi Pasha) Mosque is dated to this year.

779 AH (1377-78): A fountain is built in the time of Emir Şadgeldi by the judge Mehmed b. İmâd.

9 February 1381: Kadı Burhaneddin kills Kılıcarslan.

1381 (autumn): Şadgeldi is killed in battle with Kadı Burhaneddin.

783 AH (1381-82): The date on the foot stone of his sarcophagus.

1384: Kadı Burhaneddin repeatedly defeats the emir of Amasya (TDV).

1393: Amasya comes under Ottoman administration (in some sources the end of the emirate is 1403).

Sources

Primary sources

  • Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar, Amasya Tarihi (Amasya Municipality e-book edition, vols. 1 and 3). amasya.bel.tr
  • Study of the inscriptions and tombs of Amasya in the Amasya University social sciences research publication (based on Uzunçarşılı's readings of the inscriptions). amasya.gov.tr

Academic studies

  • Abdülkerim Özaydın, "Kadı Burhâneddin", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Kemal Göde, "Eretnaoğulları", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Mehterhan Furkani, "Siyasî ve İlmî Bir Kişilik: Amasya Emiri Hacı Şadgeldi Paşa ve ed-Dürerü'l-Mensûretü fi'l-Furû' Adlı Eserin Kendisine Nispeti", Uluslararası Amasya Âlimleri Sempozyumu, 2017; also the passages in İslam Düşüncesinde Eleştiri Kültürü ve Tahammül Ahlakı.
  • "Cemâleddin el-Aksarâyî'nin Hadisçiliği: el-Es'ile ve'l-Ecvibe Örneği", Siirt Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi.
  • Selim Özcan, "Amasya'da Sancak Beyliği Yapan Şehzadeler Döneminde Amasya Şehri", DergiPark.

Official sources

  • Governorship of Amasya, "Selçuklu Dönemi" (amasya.gov.tr).
  • Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, "Saraçhane Camii" and "Şadgeldi Türbesi", Kültür Portalı (kulturportali.gov.tr). kulturportali.gov.tr

Other sources

  • "Kutluşahlar Beyliği: Şadgeldiler", Arkeolojik Haber.

Online sources