Hasbî was a sixteenth-century poet from the town of Gediz in the province of Germiyan and the younger brother of the poet Keşfî. In the biographical anthologies of poets (tezkire) he is remembered above all for spending ten years in a dungeon because of an incident in which he became involved during İbrahim Pasha's vizierate, and for changing his pen name during that time to Habsî (the imprisoned one). Known to have attached himself to Şehzade Mustafa (Prince Mustafa), the poet wrote a long seven-stanza elegy on the prince's killing in 1553 and also composed a chronogram verse on his death. These two poems document his connection with the prince of Amasya and the fact that he lived on after 1553.

Hasbî's connection with Amasya is made through Prince Mustafa. The prince was sanjak governor (sanjak-bey) of Amasya from 1541 to 1553 and had gathered a wide circle of poets in the city. The Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü states that Hasbî attached himself to the prince; however, the sources do not explain when and where this attachment took place, or whether the poet went to Amasya.

Life

Âşık Çelebi, Kınalızâde and Gelibolulu Âlî present Hasbî as coming from the town of Gedus (Gediz) in Germiyan and as the younger brother of the poet Keşfî. Nothing is known about his education or profession. The best-known event of his life took place in the first years of the vizierate of İbrahim Pasha, grand vizier to Süleyman the Magnificent. According to Âşık Çelebi, Hasbî was present at a gathering in which a murder was committed and was handed over to the city police chief (subaşı) on the pasha's orders. While he was hung up by his arms and tortured he improvised the opening couplet "Derd-i dâg-ı ‘ışk kim itmez tahammül Kâf aña"; when the police chief's daughter died suddenly that same night, the police chief took this as a sign of his innocence and reported to the pasha that he could obtain no confession. On the way Hasbî struck a tree and injured his eye, and when the pasha asked "what happened to your eye" he replied, "My sultan, it did not like its place and wants to leave"; since this witticism displeased the pasha, he was imprisoned in the fortress known as the Ketayun Palace, opposite Üsküdar.

Hasbî stayed there for ten years and changed his pen name to Habsî. He sent the pasha qasidas from the dungeon, and the well-known poets of the day, Basîrî, Zâtî, Keşfî and Kandî, greeted the pasha on his way to the council and asked for his pardon. According to Âşık Çelebi, just as the pasha's heart had softened, some people said that the poets wished to frighten him with satire, and Hasbî was condemned to perpetual imprisonment. On the day İbrahim Pasha was killed, however, on 15 March 1536, he was released from the dungeon. When his brother Keşfî and then Keşfî's son Atâ died, all their wealth passed to Hasbî. Âşık Çelebi says that this wealth was tainted with unlawful gain, and relates that Hasbî died without spending a single coin of it and that the inheritance went to certain people in Gediz.

Hasbî's date of death is unknown. In the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, Mehmet Fatih Köksal states, from the fact that he wrote an elegy and a chronogram for Prince Mustafa, that he died after 1553. He writes that the record in the Sicill-i Osmanî and the Türk Dili ve Edebiyatı Ansiklopedisi that Hasbî was killed in the affair of Prince Mustafa therefore cannot be correct. The form Hasîbî given for the pen name in the Sicill-i Osmanî is also an error.

The Judgement of the Sources

The anthologists describe Hasbî's character in harsh terms. Âşık Çelebi writes that there was a streak of madness in him, that he was ignorant, frivolous, fond of drink and talkative, and that he composed every kind of verse but most of it was nonsense. Gelibolulu Âlî calls him "ol devr ‘ayyâşlarınuñ kallâşı vü evbâşı" (the rogue and rabble of the drunkards of that age). Kınalızâde, for his part, notes that because he composed so much his nonsense was also abundant, but that among it there were poems of true feeling, and he praises the murabba with the refrain "Hâlüme kâfirler acısun müselmân aglasun", written in the dungeon, as "hayli ‘âşıkânedür" (full of a lover's feeling). According to Köksal, Hasbî, who has no known book, has thirty-nine poems in Edirneli Nazmî's Mecma‘u'n-nezâ'ir and twenty-three in the Pervâne Bey Mecmuası.

His Poetry and Prince Mustafa

The elegy Hasbî wrote for Prince Mustafa is a muaşşer of seven stanzas in the metre "fâ’ilâtün fâ’ilâtün fâ’ilâtün fâ’ilün", and each stanza ends with the refrain "Âh Sultân Mustafâ eyvâh Sultân Mustafâ". In the first stanza every line ends with the prince's name. The elegy was published by Muvaffak Eflatun in 2016. The second stanza of the poem is almost identical to the second stanza of Kâdirî's elegy; this shared material is not discussed in the sources we examined. Hasbî also composed a seven-couplet chronogram verse on the prince's death. Kınalızâde quotes four couplets of the kıt'a, which Âşık Çelebi gives in full, and says that these chronograms turned out well. The phrase "tokuz yüz altmış" (960) in the kıt'a states the year of death openly.

The original texts of both poems, their English prose renderings and commentaries are published as separate articles in this category. Hasbî's dungeon murabba and his other couplets quoted in the anthologies have been left outside the scope of this work, as they have no connection with Amasya or Prince Mustafa. The other elegies are described in our article Elegies for Prince Mustafa, and the prince's life in the biography Şehzade Mustafa.

Chronology

15 March 1536: Released from the dungeon on the day İbrahim Pasha was killed.

960 (1553): Wrote his elegy and chronogram on the death of Prince Mustafa.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Âşık Çelebi, Meşâirü'ş-şuarâ, ed. Filiz Kılıç, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı, 2018 (e-book), pp. 264-265, entry "Hasbî".
  • Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi, Tezkiretü'ş-şu'arâ, ed. Aysun Sungurhan, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı, 2017 (e-book), pp. 289-290, entry "Habsî". https://ekitap.ktb.gov.tr/Eklenti/55834,kinalizade-hasan-celebipdf.pdf
  • Gelibolulu Mustafa Âlî, Künhü'l-Ahbâr'ın Tezkire Kısmı, ed. Mustafa İsen, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı (e-book), pp. 127-128, entry "Hasbî".

Academic studies

  • Muvaffak Eflatun, "Hasbî'nin Şehzade Mustafa Mersiyesi", 21. Yüzyılda Eğitim ve Toplum, 5(15), 2016, pp. 159-178 (as quoted in Hasar).
  • Recep Hasar, Türk Edebiyatı'nda Padişah ve Şehzade Mersiyeleri, MA thesis, Fatih Sultan Mehmet Vakıf Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, 2018, pp. 117-118, 120-121, 495-498. https://hdl.handle.net/11352/2746

Books

Online sources