Hubbî Ayşe Hatun was one of the most influential women at the Ottoman court in the second half of the sixteenth century, and her verse earned her, in the judgment of the period's biographers of poets, first place among the women poets of her age. Her given name was Ayşe; the pen name "Hubbî" that she used in her poems eventually eclipsed it. She is known as the granddaughter of Şeyh Yahyâ Efendi of Beşiktaş, the foster brother of Süleyman the Magnificent. She grew up in the circle of Prince Selim, and when Selim became sultan she was his musahibe, that is, his companion in conversation and his confidante. In the years when her door became a regular stop for those seeking office and patronage, she is recorded as having helped many of her fellow townsmen rise through the ranks of the state.

Although she spent most of her life in Istanbul, her tie to Amasya is stated plainly in the sources. Kâtib Çelebi calls her a native of Amasya, and Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar gives her a separate entry under the epithet "Şeyhzâde" in the eighth volume of his Amasya Tarihi (History of Amasya), linking her family to a lineage of Amasya scholars. In other volumes of the same work, the names of Amasya scribes, treasurers and aghas who rose "thanks to" or "through the efforts of" Ayşe Hubbî appear one after another. These records are rare documents showing by what means a woman living in the inner world of the palace kept up her ties with her hometown.

Much of what is known of her life comes from the sixteenth-century biographical dictionaries of poets (tezkires), above all Âşık Çelebi's Meşâirü'ş-şuarâ and Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi's Tezkire. The family and marriage details given by Hüsâmeddîn, however, contradict these tezkires in places. No document has been found that fixes the year or place of her birth with certainty, and the date of her death varies in the sources between 1590 and 1591. Most of her works have been lost, and not a single copy of the long narrative poem attributed to her has survived. What remains are a few ghazals, couplets and fragments of narrative verse preserved in the tezkires, together with a treatise on holy war (ghaza) that has come to light in recent years.

Her Name and Pen Name

The sources agree that the poet's name was Ayşe. Kınalızâde opens his entry with the words "Hubbî: her name is Âişe." The pen name "Hubbî" is associated with the Arabic word hubbâ, meaning "much loved, much admired, beautiful", which is why the poet is generally known as Hubbî Hatun or Hubbî Kadın. The pronunciation of the pen name has itself been debated. Some argued that, since this pattern is common among Arab women's names, it ought to be read "Hubbâ", and in certain older reference works the name does appear as "Ayşe Hubbâ Hatun".

Hüsâmeddîn rejects this reading. In his view the name, with the first letter vowelled with "u" and the "b" doubled, is "Hubbî", meaning "pertaining to love"; it does not follow the pattern of "zübbâ" as some writers of his own day claimed. As evidence he cites an Arabic couplet that Nev'îzâde Atâyî placed in his biography of Mehmed Efendi, the family member known as the "Hubbî Mollası"; the word "hubbî" at the end of the couplet implies that the name was pronounced in this way. The poet's own use of the pen name in the vocative form "Hubbiyâ" in her couplets also supports this reading.

In Hüsâmeddîn's entry the name is given as "Hubbî Âişe Hâtun (Şeyhzâde)". The epithet "Şeyhzâde" points to her descent from Şeyh Yahyâ Efendi, who was himself known among his contemporaries as "Molla Şeyhzade".

Her Family and Her Ties to Amasya

That Ayşe Hubbî was the granddaughter of Şeyh Yahyâ Efendi of Beşiktaş is repeated in most sources, beginning with Kınalızâde, who introduces her as "the illustrious granddaughter of the late Şeyh Yahyâ". Recent studies of Yahyâ Efendi's life, however, report this kinship with caution, as something "that is related"; documentation on the sheikh's family circle is quite limited.

Hüsâmeddîn sets out the kinship in more detail. According to his account, Ayşe's father was Yahyâ Efendi bin Abdurrahman Çelebi of Amasya, a paternal cousin and also the son-in-law of Yahyâ Efendi of Beşiktaş. Her father served as a qadi and is remembered as one of the praiseworthy judges. Her mother was Râbia Hatun, daughter of Yahyâ Efendi of Beşiktaş. In this construction Ayşe belongs to the same family on both her father's and her mother's side.

The family's connection with Amasya has also been discussed through Yahyâ Efendi's origins. Yahyâ Efendi was born in Trabzon in 1495, where his father Şâmî Ömer Efendi was then serving as qadi. His mother Afîfe Hatun also nursed Süleyman, the son of the city's sanjak governor Prince Selim, the future Selim I (Selim the Grim), so that Yahyâ Efendi and Süleyman the Magnificent became foster brothers. Gelibolulu Mustafa Âlî, however, records in his Künhü'l-ahbâr that Yahyâ Efendi's father was from Amasya. Hüsâmeddîn likewise states that Yahyâ Efendi was a native of Amasya, and that this is written plainly in the el-Ikdü'l-Manzûm. This family tradition is one basis for regarding Ayşe Hubbî as an Amasya native; Kâtib Çelebi's note "of Amasya" in his Keşfü'z-zunûn forms the second and older one.

This tie also explains her place at court. According to Hüsâmeddîn, her mother Râbia Hatun, being the daughter of the sultan's foster brother, was regarded as Süleyman's "niece by milk kinship" and was a lady whose word carried weight in the palace. Süleyman is known to have addressed Yahyâ Efendi as "elder brother" and to have visited him from time to time at his dervish lodge in Beşiktaş. By the standards of the time, there was nothing unusual in a daughter of such a family being taken into the palace.

The question of Ayşe's birthplace remains open. The note "of Amasya" in Kâtib Çelebi and Hüsâmeddîn may mean that she was born in the city, but it may equally express her membership of an Amasya family. Although some compilations in foreign languages state that she spent part of her childhood in Amasya, no contemporary document confirming this has been found. Nor is there any record of her year of birth in the sources.

Her Upbringing at Court

According to Hüsâmeddîn's account, Ayşe was taken into the palace in her youth thanks to her mother's standing there, and was educated within it. She later stayed with Hürrem Sultan, Prince Selim's mother, and in this way grew up together with Selim. The two read and wrote together; in Hüsâmeddîn's words Ayşe was "almost like a foster sister to Sultan Selim". The same author writes that Selim's mother loved her beauty and good breeding dearly, called her "my daughter" and treated her as her own child, and he bases this on the words of Nev'îzâde Atâyî.

The breadth of her education can be seen from her poetry and from the praise bestowed on her. Hüsâmeddîn describes her as "learned, virtuous, a poet and a woman of letters", and says she was versed in the literatures of Arabic, Persian and Turkish, and closely acquainted with history and with muhadarat, the stock of witticisms and anecdotes that made up the culture of polite conversation. That she knew Arabic well enough to write poetry in it is clear from the macaronic (mülemma) ghazal, mixing Arabic and Turkish lines, that she composed as a reply (nazire) to a poem by Murad III. The text of this ghazal was included in the nineteenth century in Mehmed Zihni's Meşâhîrü'n-nisâ, a well-known encyclopedia of famous women.

Hüsâmeddîn's account presents certain difficulties of chronology. Yahyâ Efendi was born in 1495 and Prince Selim in 1524. Since it seems difficult for a granddaughter of Yahyâ Efendi to have been Selim's contemporary, the possibility should not be ruled out that the phrase "growing up together" was used in a broader sense, to describe her closeness to Selim in his youth and his years as a sanjak governor.

Her Marriage and Where the Sources Diverge

Ayşe Hubbî's marriage is the subject on which the sources diverge most sharply. According to the records of Âşık Çelebi and Kınalızâde, the poet was married to Şemsî Çelebi, the tutor of Prince Selim. Kınalızâde introduces her as "the wife of Şemsî Çelebi, who was the tutor of Sultan Selim Han son of Sultan Süleyman while he was a prince", and states that her closeness to Selim arose through this marriage. Modern scholarship identifies this man as Akşemseddinzâde Şemseddin Çelebi, author of the Tabakât-ı Hanefiyye, and accepts that he died in 957 (1550). According to Âşık Çelebi, two sons and a daughter were born of this marriage.

According to the same sources, the man who married this daughter was Vüsûlî Mehmed Efendi, one of the scholars and poets of the age. Vüsûlî was born in Istanbul in 930 (1523-24); his father Abdullah Ağa was Prince Selim's chief gatekeeper (kapıcıbaşı). Because he was Hubbî Hatun's son-in-law, his contemporaries called him the "Hubbî Mollası", the Hubbî judge. That a woman's name should be given as a nickname to a judge is regarded as a weighty proof of her influence.

Hüsâmeddîn, however, paints a different picture. According to him, Ayşe married Şemseddin Mehmed Efendi, son of Abdullah Ağa, Selim's chief gatekeeper and favourite in the sanjaks. He writes that Abdullah Ağa's son was also among the prince's favourites, and that the marriage took place at Abdullah Ağa's request to Selim's mother. He says that the same man became famous as the "Hubbî Mollası" and served four times as qadi of Istanbul and once as chief military judge (kazasker) of Anatolia. These details match the life of Vüsûlî Mehmed Efendi exactly: his father was Abdullah Ağa, and he was four times qadi of Istanbul and once kazasker of Anatolia. The man Hüsâmeddîn presents as her husband is, according to the tezkires, the poet's son-in-law.

The contradiction is plainly visible within Hüsâmeddîn's own entry; on the same page, in his quotation from Kınalızâde, Şemsî Çelebi is named as the poet's husband. This was also noted by Mücahit Kaçar, who published Hüsâmeddîn's account. Kaçar points out that Hüsâmeddîn names Mehmed Efendi rather than Şemsî Çelebi as Ayşe Hubbî's husband and that on this point he contradicts the tezkires. The testimony of the contemporary tezkires and the dates in Vüsûlî's biography make the tezkires' account the more reliable one.

One detail that Hüsâmeddîn relates about this marriage nevertheless deserves attention. According to him, after the death of Selim II a serious coolness arose between the poet and the "Hubbî Mollası", and the rift between them came close to separation. Hüsâmeddîn bases this on a sentence in Nev'îzâde Atâyî's biography of Vüsûlî: fortune, as faithless as a worldly woman, had at first offered him a pleasant life, but in the end became the cause of hardship and a mortal enemy. In Hüsâmeddîn's view, the fact that Mehmed Efendi's career stopped short of the office of şeyhülislam and the chief judgeship of Rumelia was connected with this coolness. Because of the problem of identity described above, it remains unclear whether this relationship was one between husband and wife or between mother-in-law and son-in-law.

In Prince Selim's Circle

After her husband's death in 1550, Ayşe Hubbî kept up her bond with Prince Selim. According to one account, she was for a time in his harem. During his father's lifetime Selim served in princely sanjaks such as Konya, Manisa and Kütahya; Hüsâmeddîn's description of Abdullah Ağa as "chief gatekeeper in the sanjaks" suggests that the families around the poet were also present at these provincial courts. Kınalızâde writes plainly that Ayşe Hubbî had a place in Selim's company as companion and boon companion: she was Selim's "musâhib ü münâdim" and attended his felicitous palace.

As a woman who drew attention by her closeness to the ruler and by her beauty, it was inevitable that gossip should arise about her. Some foreign studies report that this gossip took the form of rumours linking her with certain members of Selim's entourage. The poet is said to have composed the following couplet in reply to these rumours:

Râsttır reftârımız mânend-i mîl-i tûtiyâ
Biz hezâran dîde-i mahmûra girmiş çıkmışız

The couplet is built on the image of the kohl stick. The stick that applies kohl enters and leaves thousands of languid eyes, yet its path is always straight and it harms no eye. With this subtle image the poet defends the uprightness of her conduct even as her name was on everyone's lips. The general tendency of the tezkires, too, is to praise her virtue.

Musahibe of Selim II

When Selim II came to the throne in 974 (1566), Ayşe Hubbî became "musâhibe-i şehriyârî", the sultan's companion. Hüsâmeddîn describes this period as the most brilliant years of her life: she attained influence and favour almost like a princess of the blood, and her door became a source through which petitioners and suppliants reached high office. The whole of Selim's reign counts as an age of good fortune for her as well.

Kınalızâde describes this influence in more literary language. According to him, when Selim became sultan the poet's door turned into "the refuge of young and old alike", and because her intercession was never turned away she acquired great prestige. Here Kınalızâde refers to her with the phrase "şefî'-i üryân". As Hüsâmeddîn explains, the term is used when the intercessor is a woman, and its origin lies in a couplet by the Arab poet al-Farazdaq: the intercessor who comes to you adorned and clothed is not like the intercessor who comes to you naked, that is, with no shield at all. Hüsâmeddîn does not neglect to note that Nev'îzâde's continuation of the Şakâik contains a record pointing to the contrary.

The most concrete sign of the poet's influence is the career of her son-in-law. With Selim's accession, Vüsûlî Mehmed Efendi became qadi of Bursa in 974 (1566), and six months later, in June 1567, qadi of Istanbul. In December 1568 he rose to the office of kazasker of Anatolia. He was dismissed because of a complaint against him, but when his innocence was established he was appointed qadi of Istanbul for a second time in June 1571. The sources attribute this rapid rise to his being Hubbî Hatun's son-in-law. Vüsûlî is also known for the Selimnâme he wrote in honour of Selim II.

Patron of the People of Amasya

Hüsâmeddîn makes a particular point of the fact that the poet's favour at court reflected on her fellow townsmen as well: "In the shadow of her good fortune many people of Amasya attained rank and prosperity." In the biographical volumes of Amasya Tarihi, records that give substance to this sentence are found scattered here and there. They show how Ayşe Hubbî served as a bridge for young men from Amasya who came to Istanbul and entered the palace and financial bureaus.

Sünbül Hâcezâde Ali Efendi was born in the Hızır Paşa quarter of Amasya; his father was Hâce Sünbül Ahmed Efendi. He went to Istanbul and entered the finance bureau, and after training there he became an accountant "thanks to the sultan's companion Ayşe Hubbî Hatun of Amasya", and in 982 (1574) he was appointed second treasurer (defterdar). Hüsâmeddîn adds that because in those same years the chief treasurer was Lâlezâr Mehmed Çelebi and the treasurer of Anatolia was Oğlan Memi Çelebi, the poets of the day were prompted to write witty verses on "the tulip, the hyacinth and the boy".

Hacı Beyzâde Hamza Paşa belonged to one of the old-established families of Amasya; his elder brother was the treasurer Edâî Bey. In his youth he came to Istanbul and, "attaching himself to Ayşe Hubbî Kadın of Amasya", entered the bureau of the Imperial Council (Divân-ı Hümâyûn). He was trained in the inner palace (Enderun) and won the favour of Murad III; he became first a scribe of the imperial kitchen and then a scribe of the Imperial Council. At the beginning of 988 (1580) he became chief of the scribes (reisülküttap), and in Şaban of the same year chancellor (nişancı), reaching one of the highest secretarial offices of the state.

Hacı Hamza Beyzâde Bâlî Paşa was likewise the son of Mehmed Çelebi, administrator (mütevelli) of the Hacı Hamza Bey Mosque and its pious endowment (waqf). "Thanks to Ayşe Hubbî Kadın of Amasya, companion of Sultan Selim II", he entered the Galatasaray palace school and was educated there. Known for his fine handwriting, Bâlî copied in 989 (1581), at the Galata Palace, the literary treatise Âb-ı Hayât by Hızır Bey of Amasya, signing it at the end "Bâlî bin Mehmed Amasyavî".

The story of Çakalzâde Sinâneddin Yûsuf Paşa shows how the poet's patronage intersected with an unhappy memory of Amasya. In his youth Sinâneddin had joined the household of Şehzade Mustafa (Prince Mustafa), sanjak governor of Amasya, and was among the scribes of his council. When Prince Mustafa was put to death in Şevval 960 (1553), he went to Istanbul and joined the finance scribes. While serving as a scribe of the poll tax (cizye), he became an accountant and treasurer of Anatolia "through the efforts of the sultan's companion Ayşe Hubbî Hatun". In 994 (1586) he moved to the treasurership of Aleppo, followed by the treasurership of Adana, the governorship-general of Maraş in 997 (1588-89), then Konya, and in 1001 (1593) the governorship-general of Sivas.

Çoban Çavuş Süleyman Ağa, son of Ramazan of Amasya, served several times as tax collector (muhassıl) and deputy governor (mütesellim) of Amasya, and then, "in the shadow of the favour of the sultan's companion Hubbî Ayşe Hatun of Amasya", became chief of the palace messengers (çavuşbaşı) in 996 (1587-88), commander of the left-wing salaried cavalry (ulûfeciyân-ı yesar ağası) in 997, and chief armourer (cebecibaşı) in 998 (1589-90). Bahşîzâde Abdurrezzâk Efendi, after going to Istanbul, reached the Chief Black Eunuch Habeşî Mehmed Ağa and the Chief White Eunuch Gazanfer Ağa "through Ayşe Hubbî Kadın of Amasya, the companion of Sultan Murad", and through their efforts he became a candidate (mülazım) under the sultan's imam Abdülkerim Efendi and began his career as a madrasa teacher.

Some of these later records fall towards the end of Murad III's reign. In one place Hüsâmeddîn writes that Ayşe Hubbî lost her former influence after Selim's death, yet elsewhere he calls her "the companion of Sultan Murad" and speaks of her mediation in appointments of the late 1580s. This shows that, although her influence at court lost the brilliance of Selim's reign, it did not come to an end altogether. Some studies also count her among the influential musahibes at the court of Murad III.

Râziye Hatun and the Family of Prince Mustafa

The most moving example of Ayşe Hubbî's intercession, from the point of view of Amasya's history, is related in Hüsâmeddîn's entry on Râziye Hatun. According to Hüsâmeddîn, Râziye Hatun was the daughter of Prince Mustafa, sanjak governor of Amasya, and was born in Amasya in 947 (1540-41). When her father was put to death near Ereğli in Şevval 960 (1553), she was taken to Istanbul with her mother and for a time lived and grew up in the house of Şeyh Yahyâ Efendi of Beşiktaş.

According to what is related from Nev'îzâde Atâyî, Süleyman the Magnificent, just as he had sent Prince Mustafa's mother Mâhidevran Sultan away from the palace, refused to admit the prince's wife and this daughter to the imperial harem; he rejected the intercession of his foster brother Yahyâ Efendi on their behalf and even dismissed Yahyâ Efendi from his teaching post. That Yahyâ Efendi wrote a petition to Süleyman asking for Mâhidevran Sultan to be readmitted to the palace, and was removed from his post because of it, is also recorded in other sources on the sheikh's life.

In 964 (1556-57) Râziye was married to Kaya Bey of Amasya, one of the sheikh's close disciples. According to Hüsâmeddîn, when Selim II came to the throne in 974 (1566), Râziye and her mother were admitted to the imperial harem at the petition and intercession of his companion Ayşe Hubbî Hatun of Amasya, and her husband Kaya Bey became a beylerbey (governor-general). It thus appears that the intercession in which Yahyâ Efendi had failed was achieved thirteen years later by his granddaughter. Râziye Hatun later had a mansion built near Yahyâ Efendi's lodge and lived there; she died in Zilkade 1005 (1597) and was buried beside the lodge. Hüsâmeddîn adds that Râziye, too, was a companion of Murad III and an influential woman to whom the notables of the age turned.

Under Murad III

Selim II died in Şaban 982, December 1574, and was succeeded by his son Murad III. According to Hüsâmeddîn, Ayşe Hubbî preserved her good fortune in the new reign under the protection of the Valide Nurbânû Sultan, but lost her former influence. Even so, the queen mother's influence and favour continued to be a support for her to the end of her life.

The career of her son-in-law Vüsûlî reflects this change as well. Retired in February 1575, two months after Selim's death, Vüsûlî was appointed qadi of Istanbul for a third time five years later, in July-August 1580. In April 1587 he was appointed to the same post for a fourth time, and he was dismissed in March 1589. He died shortly afterwards, in Receb 998 (May 1590). His tomb is in Eyüpsultan. Vüsûlî built the mosque at Tophane known today as the Fındıklı Mosque, a work of Mimar Sinan, together with a bathhouse, and a small mosque and a school at Parmakkapı.

Her Poetry

Among the women poets of her time, Ayşe Hubbî is the one who received the clearly highest assessment from the period's biographers. In the Meşâirü'ş-şuarâ, after listing the women poets of Iran and the Ottoman lands by name, Âşık Çelebi places Hubbî above them all and states that she wrote poetry in every genre. Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi calls her the "first and foremost" of the women who occupied themselves with poetry, the "finest poet and most eloquent" of that company. In Kınalızâde's most frequently quoted words, her verse does not bear "a girl's pattern" but is "quite manly"; she is unique among her kind.

The description "manly" (merdâne) became the feature emphasized in all later assessments of Hubbî. By it the tezkire writers meant that her poetry was written in the strong, tradition-bound idiom used by male poets, rather than in the emotional and ornate language thought to be peculiar to women poets. Gelibolulu Mustafa Âlî's Künhü'l-ahbâr and Nev'îzâde Atâyî's Zeyl-i Şakâik are also among the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources that mention the poet.

Kınalızâde writes that the poet had ghazals, kasides (odes) and mesnevis (narrative poems). The tezkires say that she had enough poems to make up a divan (a collection of poems); yet no copy of such a divan is known, and the verses recorded in the sources are limited. The couplets that Kınalızâde quotes under the heading "on the desire for prayer" open with an allegory likening prayer to the story of the sale of Joseph: "Duâ temsîli Yûsuf gibidir hem / Kim ana müşterîdir halk-ı âlem".

Cemşîd ü Hurşîd

The narrative poem cited in the sources as Hubbî's greatest work bears the title Hurşîd ü Cemşîd or Cemşîd ü Hurşîd. Kınalızâde writes that it exceeded three thousand couplets and contained "a great many rare and subtle things". The same story was also treated in Turkish literature by poets such as Ahmedî, Cem Sultan and Abdî, who lived in the reign of Selim II; the first version of the tale is by the Persian poet Salman Savaji (Selmân-ı Sâvecî).

To this day no copy of Hubbî's narrative poem has been found. Only the twenty-seven couplets quoted by Âşık Çelebi and the single couplet given by Kınalızâde are known from the work. Kâtib Çelebi, moreover, noted that the Cemşîd ü Hurşîd which the tezkires attribute to Hubbî Hatun of Amasya might in fact belong to Ahmedî. Combined with the fact that the work has not been found, this note makes the question of Hubbî's narrative poem one of the open questions of literary history.

İmâdü'l-Cihâd

The only independent work now accepted with certainty as Ayşe Hubbî's is a treatise called İmâdü'l-Cihâd, which is never mentioned in the tezkires. The first to draw attention to it was Müjgân Cunbur, who was cataloguing the manuscripts of the National Library in Ankara during work on the Union Catalogue of Manuscripts in Turkey. Cunbur introduced this small copy, registered as Manuscripts A 3987 in the National Library and bearing no colophon, at the Ninth Turkish History Congress held in Ankara on 21-25 September 1981; her paper was published in 1988. Cunbur published five ghazals and several fragments of narrative verse from the poems at the end of the copy, and discussed the possibility that the treatise and the poems in it belonged to Hubbî.

The National Library copy of the treatise consists of nine sections. In a note at its end the translator says that, while on a campaign, he had translated the work from Arabic into Turkish in three days from the book on holy war by Imam al-Dimashqi, in order to earn the blessings of some of the ghazis, and asks the reader to excuse the faults of its expression as due to the fatigue of the campaign. This note is followed, under the heading "Der medh-i gazâ" (In Praise of Holy War), by ghazals bearing the pen name Hubbî. Ghazals written on the theme of ghaza and holy war are very rare in classical Ottoman (divan) poetry.

In 2017 Cihan Okuyucu identified a fuller copy of the work, registered under the title Fezâil-i Cihâd, among the uncatalogued Turkish manuscripts of the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. This copy of sixty-one leaves was, according to its colophon, transcribed in 1080 (1669-70) by Derviş Mustafa Mevlevî es-Sarâyî. Mücahit Kaçar of Amasya University compared the two copies at the International Symposium of Amasya Poets held in Amasya in 2018, and concluded that the Ankara copy is the first draft of the work and the Paris copy its final form, expanded into twelve chapters. A couplet in the Paris copy containing the phrase "in the age of Han Selim" shows that the work was written in the reign of Selim II (1566-1574).

Kaçar states that the work is not a direct translation of Imam al-Dimashqi's Meşâriu'l-eşvâk but a compilation-translation drawn from this book and from other authoritative works. Bâkî had also translated the same Arabic source into Turkish under the title Fezâil-i Cihâd. In the example in which Kaçar compares the same story in the two translations, Hubbî's language appears more ornate and heavier, Bâkî's plainer. In the poems set within the treatise, Hubbî uses a tone that praises courage and valour, in keeping with the idiom the tezkires called "manly", and states her pen name openly.

Her Death and Her Tomb

The date of Ayşe Hubbî's death is given differently in the sources. Mehmed Süreyya's Sicill-i Osmânî says that she died in the middle of Murad III's reign. In Bursalı Mehmed Tâhir's Osmanlı Müellifleri the year of death is given as 998 (1589-90), and most modern studies take this date as the basis. Hüsâmeddîn, however, gives the year 999 (1590-91) and writes that the poet died "a year after her husband". Considering that Vüsûlî Mehmed Efendi, whom Hüsâmeddîn calls her "husband", died in Receb 998, this date is consistent within his own account.

There are also two different records concerning her burial place. In one sentence Hüsâmeddîn writes that the poet was buried in the tomb of her grandfather Yahyâ Efendi in Beşiktaş, and immediately afterwards states that "she lies in the tomb her husband had built for her in Eyüp". The general view is that the poet rests in her own tomb in Eyüp.

The Tomb of Hubbî Hatun stands in Eyüp, on the street itself, where Feshane Avenue meets Kızıldeğirmen Street. It is a building of cut stone on an octagonal plan, covered by a lead-sheathed dome. On every face except the door front there is a pointed-arched window in the lower row, while in the upper row only two faces have a window each. The place where the inscription should stand above the wooden door is empty. The tomb, which contains a single wooden cenotaph, was restored in 1942. The archive of Reşad Ekrem Koçu's İstanbul Ansiklopedisi also holds texts prepared on both the tomb and the poet.

Her Place in Amasya's Memory

Ayşe Hubbî is remembered among the women poets associated with Amasya together with Zeyneb Hatun and Mihrî Hatun, who lived before her. Whereas the poetic lives of Zeyneb and Mihrî were directly connected with the princely courts in Amasya, Hubbî's poetry developed at the palace in Istanbul. What binds her to Amasya are the origins of her family and the fellow townsmen she raised up in her own day.

Because Hüsâmeddîn's entry on the poet appears in the eighth volume of Amasya Tarihi, which long remained unpublished, it entered literary scholarship late. The entry was first quoted in full in Mücahit Kaçar's 2018 paper. In this way, local information on Hubbî's family circle in Amasya and on the help she gave her fellow townsmen was brought together with the literary information coming from the tezkires.

No building in Amasya bearing the poet's name or known to have been built by her is mentioned in the sources. Her traces in the city have survived in the life stories of the Amasya natives who rose in Istanbul under her patronage, and in the pages of Hüsâmeddîn, who collected those stories.

Chronology

1495: Şeyh Yahyâ Efendi, known as her grandfather, was born in Trabzon.

1524: Prince Selim (Selim II), in whose circle Ayşe Hubbî grew up, was born.

957 (1550): According to the tezkires, her husband Akşemseddinzâde Şemseddin (Şemsî) Çelebi died.

960 (1553): Prince Mustafa was put to death; according to Hüsâmeddîn, his daughter Râziye Hatun settled in Yahyâ Efendi's house in Istanbul.

974 (1566): Selim II came to the throne; Ayşe Hubbî became the sultan's companion. According to Hüsâmeddîn, Râziye Hatun was admitted to the imperial harem in the same year through her intercession. Her son-in-law Vüsûlî Mehmed Efendi became qadi of Bursa.

1567: Vüsûlî Mehmed Efendi was appointed qadi of Istanbul (June).

1566-1574: According to a couplet in the Paris copy, İmâdü'l-Cihâd was written in these years.

1571: Şeyh Yahyâ Efendi died in Beşiktaş (4 May).

982 (1574): Selim II died and Murad III came to the throne (December); Ayşe Hubbî lost her former influence. In the same year Sünbül Ali Efendi of Amasya became second treasurer thanks to her.

988 (1580): Hamza Paşa of Amasya, raised under her patronage, became chief of the scribes and chancellor.

989 (1581): Bâlî of Amasya, who had entered Galatasaray thanks to her, copied Hızır Bey's Âb-ı Hayât.

996-998 (1587-1590): With her support, Çoban Çavuş Süleyman Ağa of Amasya became chief of the palace messengers, commander of the left-wing salaried cavalry and chief armourer.

998 (1590): Vüsûlî Mehmed Efendi died (May). According to most sources, Ayşe Hubbî also died in this year.

999 (1590-91): The date of death given by Hüsâmeddîn.

1080 (1669-70): The Paris copy of İmâdü'l-Cihâd was transcribed by Derviş Mustafa Mevlevî.

1942: Her tomb in Eyüp was restored.

1981: Müjgân Cunbur introduced İmâdü'l-Cihâd at the Ninth Turkish History Congress (the paper was published in 1988).

2017: Cihan Okuyucu identified the Paris copy of the work.

2018: Mücahit Kaçar presented his paper comparing the two copies in Amasya and published Hüsâmeddîn's entry.

Bibliography

The following sources were used in this article:

  • Mustafa İsmet Uzun, "Hubbî Hatun", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (TDV Encyclopedia of Islam), vol. 18, Istanbul 1998, pp. 265-266 (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • "Vüsûlî Çelebi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • "Yahyâ Efendi, Beşiktaşlı", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Hasan Aksoy, "Cemşîd ü Hurşîd", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 7, p. 342 (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar, Amasya Tarihi, e-book edition by the Municipality of Amasya: volumes 6-8 (vol. 8, entries "Hubbî Âişe Hatun-Şeyhzâde" and "Bâlî Paşa-Hacı Hamza Beyzâde"); volumes 9-12 (entries "Râziye Hâtun", "Hamza Paşa-Hacı Beyzâde", "Sinâneddîn Yûsuf Paşa-Çakalzâde", "Sünbül Ali Efendi-Sünbül Hâcezâde", "Süleyman Ağa-Çoban Çavuş" and "Abdurrezzâk Efendi-Bahşîzâde").
  • Mücahit Kaçar, "Hubbî Hatun'un İmâdü'l-Cihâd İsimli Eseri", Uluslararası Amasya Şairleri Bilim Şöleni Bildiriler Kitabı (Proceedings of the International Symposium of Amasya Poets, ed. M. Fatih Köksal, Sibel Murad, Mevlüt İlhan), Amasya 2018, pp. 167-175.
  • Müjgân Cunbur, "İmâdü'l-Cihâd ve XVI. Yüzyıl Kadın Şairlerinden Ayşe Hubbî Kadın", IX. Türk Tarih Kongresi Bildiriler, vol. II, Ankara 1988, pp. 901-913 (as cited by Uzun and Kaçar).
  • Reşad Ekrem Koçu, İstanbul Ansiklopedisi archive, typescript text for the entry "Hubbî Hatun" and the clipping titled "Osmanlı Tarihinin Güzel Kadınları: Hubbî Hatun" (Kadir Has University and Salt, istanbulansiklopedisi.org). istanbulansiklopedisi.org
  • "Hubbi Hatun", English Wikipedia article (auxiliary source).

Online sources