The sixteenth-century divan poet Hayâtî is introduced in the biographical anthology of poets (tezkire) that Latîfî completed in 1546 as one of the poets and notables of the age, from Merzifon in the province of Anatolia; he is remembered for a joke he played on a friend with the pen name Postî and for a single opening couplet. Âşık Çelebi and Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi, on the other hand, tell the long story of a poet with the pen name Hayâtî whose given name was Mehmed, the son of Fârsî Muslihüddin Halife, imam of the Sultan Selim Mosque, and the brother of Ali Çelebi, nicknamed "Memâtî." Kınalızâde places the opening couplet that Latîfî gives to Hayâtî of Merzifon in the entry on this second Hayâtî, and Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar, in his Amasya Tarihi, combines the two records and lists the poet as a treasury official (defterdar) from Merzifon named "Hayâtî İsa Çelebi." The question of identity is examined below by setting out what each source says. The five poetic fragments attributed to the poet appear on separate pages in this category.

Hüsameddin's Record

In the ninth volume of Amasya Tarihi, among three people of Amasya who bore the pen name Hayâtî, Hüsameddin introduces the poet as follows:

Hayâtî İsa Çelebi-Defterdâr Merzifonludur. Ulemâdan Musliheddîn Halifenin mahdûmudur. Evâil-i hâlinde İstanbul'a gidip Ramazânzâde Mehmed Bey'e intisâb ve ilm ü edeb iktisâb edib Maliye kalemine girdi. Burada tefeyyüz edib Haleb'de zeâmet defterdârı oldu. Ba'dehû Karaman defterdârı olup sonra ma'zûlen İstanbul'a geldi. Bu esnâda bir nev-civânın aşkına mübtelâ olup hayli zaman menkûbâne yaşadı. 990 hudûdunda vefat etdi. Edîb, şâir, latîfe-gû idi. Eş'ârı letâfetten hâlî değildir. Şu matla'ı meşhûrdur. Yâr eğer arz-ı 'izâr eyleye gülzâra gele / Çâk ede gonce yakasını ve gülzâra gele. Birâderi Memâtî Ali Çelebi de şâir idi.

In English the record says: Hayâtî İsa Çelebi is from Merzifon and is the son of Muslihüddin Halife, one of the ulema. At the outset of his career he went to Istanbul, attached himself to Ramazanzâde Mehmed Bey, acquired learning and refinement, and entered the finance bureau. Rising there, he became defterdar of the zeamet fiefs in Aleppo and then defterdar of Karaman, and on his dismissal returned to Istanbul. At this time he fell in love with a beautiful youth and for a long while lived in misery. He died around 990 (1582). He was a man of letters, a poet and a wit, and his verse is not without grace. After these words Hüsameddin records the poet's famous opening couplet and notes that his brother Memâtî Ali Çelebi was also a poet, then retells in his own words the joke on Postî related by Latîfî. The full text of the entry in the Hüsameddin encyclopedia is published separately on the site.

Latîfî's Hayâtî of Merzifon

The earliest and only tezkire record that ties Hayâtî to Merzifon is Latîfî's. Latîfî places him in Merzifon in the province of Anatolia, counts him "among the poets of this age" and "among the class of notables and men of learning." Saying that his verse does not stray beyond the bounds of elegance and the circle of beauty, and that its worth can be judged from the following opening couplet, he gives a single couplet. He then tells a well-known joke. Hayâtî had an old friend, a scholar named Postî; their temperaments agreed and they used to trade jests. One day Hayâtî wrote out a paper in the form of a request for a legal opinion (fetva) and sent it to Postî: "Is the hide of a dog or the hide of a pig made clean by tanning or not? Answer and earn merit." The joke plays on the word "post," hide, in his friend's pen name. Postî's answer came back with the same play: "Its hayât (life) is unclean, and its memât (death) too." The phrase, while carrying the legal sense that the animal is impure both alive and dead, takes aim at once at Hayâtî's pen name and at his brother's nickname "Memâtî."

This reply recorded by Latîfî is the strongest sign that the two records belong to the same person. That Postî used the word "memât" alongside "hayât" seems to show that he knew his correspondent had a brother nicknamed Memâtî. This observation is ours and is not made in the sources. Kınalızâde's position is plainer: he puts Latîfî's opening couplet at the end of the entry on the Hayâtî whose brother was Memâtî, and so counts the two poets as one.

His Life According to Âşık Çelebi and Kınalızâde

According to Âşık Çelebi's Meşâ'irü'ş-Şu'arâ, completed in 1568, Hayâtî was the son of Fârsî Muslihüddin Halife, imam of the Sultan Selim Mosque. His name was Mehmed Çelebi and his pen name Hayâtî ("of life"); for this reason the wits gave his brother Ali Çelebi the nickname Memâtî ("of death"). Âşık Çelebi describes the two brothers as good-natured, well-mannered, witty men who understood poetry and loved company. For a long time in Istanbul Hayâtî served as secretary of the privy household expenditure and of the endowments of the public kitchens, and the elegant house he had built near the Sultan Selim bath became a meeting place for poets and men of taste. He then went to the Arab provinces, to Damascus and Aleppo, made a good deal of money, returned once more to the lands of Rum and built houses with gardens near Eyüp Sultan. He opened his door to the young men of the city and to friends of an amorous disposition, and spent summer and winter in pleasure.

As Âşık Çelebi tells it, after a time Hayâtî entered the Naqshbandi path, then became a Mevlevi, and began to compose his ghazals in the mystical manner as well. Later, however, he fell for a young man named Saraç Ramazan, ran through everything he owned, and his house was bought by the chancellor (nişancı) Celâlzâde. He himself took ship for Egypt, secured there a few akçes from the cevâlî revenues, enough to live on, and lived with his brother now in Mecca and Medina, now in Jidda, now in Egypt. Âşık Çelebi says that at the time he was writing he had heard that Hayâtî was content with little, while Memâtî had become superintendent (emin) of Jidda and was a man of great wealth and standing. The tezkire that Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi completed in 1585-86 gives the same story in shorter form but adds its end: Hayâtî died while he was in Mecca, when his brother was superintendent of Jidda. Âşık Çelebi reports that as he boarded the ship the poet recited the couplet "Ṣaldum engine göñül zor ḳanı şâh oñara"; Kınalızâde, for his part, writes that he set out on his journey saying, "Sabrum dükendi lâzım olupdur bana sefer" (my patience is spent, I must take to the road).

State of the Sources and the Question of Identity

The records on Hayâtî do not fully agree. Latîfî counts the poet as being from Merzifon but names neither his given name, nor his father, nor his brother. Âşık Çelebi and Kınalızâde give his father, his brother and his life story in detail but say nothing at all of Merzifon; Âşık Çelebi says only that the brothers returned from the Arab lands "to Rum, which was their homeland." Kınalızâde's giving Latîfî's opening couplet to this Hayâtî shows that he merged the two records. Hüsameddin then takes the Merzifon information from Latîfî and the father and brother from the other tezkires, and adds the attachment to Ramazanzâde, the defterdar posts in Aleppo and Karaman and a death date around 990. His naming the poet İsa rather than Mehmed, and the defterdar posts, do not appear in the tezkires we have examined; Hüsameddin does not cite a source for this information.

Yunus Kaplan, who wrote the entry in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, treats Latîfî's Hayâtî as a separate poet and regards Latîfî as the only tezkire writer to give information about him. On the basis of the blessing "rahmetullâhi aleyh" (God's mercy upon him) in the heading of the entry in Latîfî's edition, he concludes that the poet died before 1546, when the tezkire was written. This inference would rule out his being the same person as the Hayâtî whom Âşık Çelebi reports as alive in 1568. Since the same blessing also stands in the headings of neighbouring entries in the edition, this conclusion about the date of death should be treated with caution. Reşad Ekrem Koçu, too, in the entry he wrote for the İstanbul Ansiklopedisi, describes Hayâtî of Merzifon on the basis of Latîfî alone and notes that he should not be confused with other poets of the same pen name. In one manuscript of Âşık Çelebi's tezkire, on the other hand, the entry opens with the words "Hayâtî fakîr bildügüm ikidür. Birisi…" (the Hayâtîs I know are two; one of them…).

There are thus two views. According to the first, Latîfî's Hayâtî of Merzifon and Mehmed Çelebi Hayâtî, brother of Memâtî, are different people, and the link with Merzifon belongs only to the former. According to the second, as Kınalızâde and Hüsameddin accepted, the two are one; in that case it may be supposed that the family of the poet who grew up in Istanbul came from Merzifon, and that the poet recorded by Latîfî later lived the life Âşık Çelebi describes. Postî's reply, with its use of the word "memât," supports the second view. The pen name Hayâtî was also used by other poets in the sixteenth century. The Hayâtî Çelebi of Istanbul whom Latîfî mentions immediately afterwards is another poet, who appears in Kınalızâde under the name Hayâtî Beg and belonged to the cavalry (sipahi) corps. Hayâtî Ebûbekir Efendi of Merzifon, whom Hüsameddin mentions on the same page, was a madrasa teacher who died in 1068 (1657-58) and should not be confused with this poet; the record on him is published separately on the site.

Poetry

No divan or other work by Hayâtî is known. The judgement of the tezkire writers is favourable. Latîfî finds his poems elegant and fine, Âşık Çelebi speaks of a period when he composed his ghazals in the mystical manner and in the style of the people of inner truth, and Hüsameddin says that his verse is not without grace. Five fragments have come down to us. The opening couplet "Yâr eger 'arz-ı 'izâr eyleye gülzâra gele," given by Latîfî and repeated by Kınalızâde and Hüsameddin, is a couplet on beauty which says that if the beloved came to the rose garden and showed her cheek, the rosebud would tear open its collar. The two couplets of a Turkish ghazal quoted by Âşık Çelebi draw on the story of Shirin and Farhad. Two Persian couplets in the same source describe the lover becoming dust and earth on the beloved's path. The couplet "Ṣaldum engine göñül," which Âşık Çelebi has the poet recite on his voyage to Egypt, and the line "Sabrum dükendi lâzım olupdur bana sefer," which Kınalızâde puts in his mouth, may be added to these fragments, though it is not clear whether they are Hayâtî's own words or words he recited. These five fragments are given on separate pages in this category with the original text, an English rendering and commentary. Because the Turkish ghazal, the Persian couplets, the voyage couplet and the line are attributed only to Mehmed Çelebi Hayâtî, who is taken to be the same person as Hayâtî of Merzifon, their attribution also depends on the question of identity.

Family and Circle

According to Âşık Çelebi and Kınalızâde, the poet's father was Fârsî Muslihüddin Halife, imam of the Sultan Selim Mosque in Istanbul; Hüsameddin calls him only "Musliheddin Halife, one of the ulema." His brother Ali Çelebi was known by the nickname "Memâtî," which the wits gave him to match his elder brother's pen name, and became superintendent of Jidda. Hüsameddin says that he too was a poet. The house at Eyüp and the gatherings near the Sultan Selim bath described by Âşık Çelebi place Hayâtî within the circle of poets and men of taste in Istanbul. Postî, mentioned by Latîfî, was one of the poet's old friends.

Chronology

953 (1546): Latîfî completes his tezkire, recording Hayâtî as being from Merzifon and as one of the poets of the age.

976 (1568): Âşık Çelebi completes Meşâ'irü'ş-Şu'arâ, writing that he has heard Hayâtî is living with his brother in the Hejaz and Egypt.

c. 990 (1582): The poet's death according to Hüsameddin.

994 (1585-86): Kınalızâde completes his tezkire, recording that Hayâtî died in Mecca.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Books

Online sources