Hubbî Hatun is the most frequently mentioned woman poet of sixteenth-century divan literature. Her real name was Ayşe; because she used in her poems the pen name Hubbî, from the Arabic word hubbâ, "much loved, much admired, beautiful", she is known as Hubbî Hatun, Hubbî Kadın or Ayşe Hubbî Hanım. Kâtib Çelebi records that she was from Amasya; this information is repeated by Bursalı Mehmed Tâhir and in Hüseyin Hüsameddin's History of Amasya. She spent most of her life in Istanbul, close to the court; she was in the inner circle of Selim II both in his princely years and in his reign, and was known as an influential woman.

The biographers also rank Hubbî highly as a poet. Âşık Çelebi places her above all the women poets of Iran and Rûm; Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi says that her words were "not a girl's embroidery but quite manly". She is reported to have had poems enough to make a divan and to have written a mesnevi of more than three thousand couplets; yet none of these works has reached us in full. What we have are fragments of the mesnevi preserved by the biographers, the holy-war poems in a work called İmâdü'l-cihâd introduced in recent years, and a few couplets. The details of her life are told in her biography in the Historical Figures section of our site; here the emphasis is on her poetry.

Life and Ties to Amasya

Hubbî was the granddaughter of Şeyh Yahyâ Efendi of Beşiktaş. According to Mustafa İsmet Uzun's entry in the TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam, she married Akşemseddinzâde Şemseddin Çelebi (Şems Çelebi, d. 957/1550), author of the Tabakāt-ı Hanefiyye and tutor to Selim II in his princely years, and had two sons and a daughter by this marriage. After her husband's death she kept up her ties with the prince; according to one account she entered his harem, and during Selim II's reign (1566-1574) she became his companion and one of the influential figures at court. Kınalızâde writes that when Selim became sultan, Hubbî's door became a place to which young and old alike resorted, and that her word, "like the intercession of one who comes unclothed", was never refused. Gelibolulu Âlî also records that after her husband's death she remained in the prince's harem and, when Selim became sultan, became his companion and confidante.

An example of Hubbî's influence is her son-in-law Vusûlî Mehmed Efendi. Kınalızâde relates that Vusûlî, son of Sultan Selim's chief gatekeeper, strengthened his privileges by marrying the daughter of Hubbî Kadın, the sultan's companion; Vusûlî rose as far as the judgeship of Istanbul and became known as "Hubbî Mollası". Various rumours also arose about Hubbî, who attracted attention by her closeness to the sultan and her beauty. Âlî records them as "according to some"; the TDV entry likewise states that Hubbî uttered the couplet "Râsttır reftârımız mânend-i mîl-i tûtiyâ" against this gossip. The sources differ on the date of her death: the Sicill-i Osmânî gives the middle of the reign of Murad III, the Osmanlı Müellifleri the year 998 (1590). Her tomb stands in Eyüp in Istanbul, where Feshane Street meets Kızıldeğirmen Lane; it is an octagonal building of cut stone with a lead-covered dome.

Hubbî's tie to Amasya rests on her lineage. Kâtib Çelebi states in the Keşfü'z-zunûn that she was from Amasya. Hüseyin Hüsameddin, in his History of Amasya, presents her as the daughter of Yahyâ Efendi bin Abdurrahman Çelebi of Amasya, a cousin and son-in-law of Yahyâ Efendi of Beşiktaş, and her mother as Râbia Hatun, daughter of Yahyâ Efendi of Beşiktaş. Hüsameddin's account conflicts with the biographical anthologies on some points. He gives Hubbî's husband as Şemseddin Mehmed Efendi, son of Abdullah Ağa, and says he rose to the judgeship of Istanbul and the chief judgeship of Anatolia; in the anthologies and in the TDV entry, however, this rise belongs to Hubbî's son-in-law Vusûlî Mehmed Efendi. Hüsameddin also writes that Hubbî grew up in the palace together with Selim II, was like a foster sister to him, that Selim II's mother loved her and called her "my daughter", and that "sâye-i ikbâlinde pek çok Amasyalılar devlet ü sa'âdete erdi", many people of Amasya attained rank and happiness in her shadow. He gives the date of her death as 999 (1590-91). Mücahit Kaçar, quoting this then unpublished text of Hüsameddin in 2018, pointed out that it conflicts at points with the anthologies. Another entry of Hüsameddin records that Bâlî bin Mehmed of Amasya entered the Galata Palace and was educated there "through Ayşe Hubbî Kadın of Amasya".

The reading of the pen name has also been debated. According to the entry in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü (Dictionary of Names in Turkish Literature), Mehmed Zihni argued that the word should be read "Hubbâ" because it is the name of Arab women, Ferid Kam shared this view, and there was a debate on the matter between them and Hüseyin Hüsameddin. Hüsameddin defends the reading "Hubbî".

Works

The anthologies say that Hubbî had poems enough to make a divan. Kınalızâde records that she had "gazeliyyât u kasâ'id ü mesneviyyât", ghazals, kasides and mesnevis, and Âşık Çelebi that she laboured at "every kind of poetry" and had ghazals, riddles (muamma), kasides and mesnevis. No manuscript of a divan, however, is known.

Hubbî's most frequently mentioned work is her mesnevi Cemşîd ü Hurşîd. Âşık Çelebi says that this work ran to more than three thousand couplets and contained many fine and subtle sayings; no manuscript of the mesnevi has been found to date. From the work, twenty-seven couplets quoted by Âşık Çelebi and one couplet cited by Kınalızâde are known. According to Hasan Aksoy's entry on Cemşîd ü Hurşîd in the TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam, Kâtib Çelebi recorded that this work, attributed in the anthologies to Hubbî Hatun of Amasya, might belong to Ahmedî. The fact that in the couplets quoted by Âşık Çelebi the speaker refers to herself in feminine adjectives, and that the pen name "Ḥubbiyā" occurs in Gelibolulu Âlî's text, supports the attribution of the work to Hubbî.

Hubbî's second work is İmâdü'l-cihâd. The anthologies do not mention it; Müjgân Cunbur introduced a 19-folio manuscript of it in the National Library in Ankara (Yazma Eserler A 3987) in 1981 and suggested that the work and the poems at its end might belong to Hubbî. In 2017 Cihan Okuyucu identified a second manuscript in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris; it was copied in 1080 (1669-70) by Derviş Mustafa Mevlevî es-Sarâyî. In 2018 Mücahit Kaçar compared the two manuscripts and, showing that the pen name Hubbî appears at the end of the poems in both, argued that the work certainly belongs to her. According to Kaçar, the National Library manuscript is a draft of the work and the Paris manuscript its expanded version in twelve chapters. The work gathers verses of the Qur'an, hadiths and stories on the merit of jihad; at the end of each section the subject is gathered up in verse, followed by a ghazal or a mesnevi. On the basis of the phrase "Hân Selîm devri", the age of Khan Selim, in the Paris manuscript, Kaçar thinks the work was written in the reign of Selim II.

Besides these, an Arabic-Turkish macaronic (mülemma) ghazal that Hubbî wrote as a response to a poem of Murad III appears in Mehmed Zihni's Meşâhîrü'n-nisâ. The five ghazals and the mesnevi fragments that Müjgân Cunbur published from İmâdü'l-cihâd in 1988 are also known; the holy-war ghazal given as an example in the entry in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü was probably taken from these texts as well. On our site, the poems of Hubbî that are accessible today, including the fragments of Cemşîd ü Hurşîd and the holy-war poems of İmâdü'l-cihâd, have been published in separate articles with their original texts, modern renderings and commentaries.

Literary Persona

Âşık Çelebi's entry on Hubbî is one of the longest assessments of women poets ever written. The biographer says that whoever, man or woman, unites in himself the perfections of humanity will excel among his kind; there are many women who compose poetry, but in metre, beauty of verse and refinement of expression Hubbî has no equal. He names the women poets of Iran, Cilâyî, Âfâkî, Cihan Hatun and Dilşad Hatun, and those of Rûm, Mihrî and Zeyneb, and describes in ornate language how all of them would fall behind Hubbî. Mihrî Hatun was from Amasya; Zeyneb Hatun too is associated with the poetic circle of Amasya. Kınalızâde counts Hubbî the first and foremost of the women who occupied themselves with poetry, "ol zümrenin fi'l-hakîka eş‘ar ü efsahı", truly the best poet and finest speaker of that company.

The biographers' epithet "merdâne", manly, points to the most distinctive feature of Hubbî's poetry. In the ghazals of İmâdü'l-cihâd Hubbî treats a subject rarely seen in divan poetry, holy war. She carries the familiar images of love poetry, the rose garden, light, kohl, the cupbearer of Kawthar and the cup of Cem, over to the praise of warriors and martyrs. In her poetry the dust of the warriors' road becomes kohl for the eye of the soul; the warrior's salve is his own blood. These poems show a woman poet stepping outside the sphere allotted to her to write on heroism and war.

The fragments of Cemşîd ü Hurşîd reveal another side. In the opening of the mesnevi Hubbî says that she has neither good works, nor wealth, nor the learning to write books that would keep her name alive after death, building the formula of modesty in a woman's voice: she calls herself "‘ācize, ḥaḳīre, ża‘īfe, ġarībe, faḳīre". In the couplets that follow immediately, however, she takes the common notion that women are "deficient in reason" and turns it to her own advantage: a scholar who enters into dispute with her earns her honour and himself shame. In the comparison of prayer she likens herself to the woman who came to buy Joseph with a few skeins of yarn. Among the descriptive couplets there are fine inventions telling how the water writes the verse of mercy and the wind expounds it, and how the sea puts on armour and foams with rage. These fragments are enough to understand why the biographers counted Hubbî the most masterly woman poet.

Examples of Her Poetry

Mesnevi: Olur her yılda zinde mürde ‘ālem

Olur her yılda zinde mürde ‘ālem
Gidince līk artuḳ gelmez ādem
Benem bir ‘ācize ḫār u ḥaḳīre
Ża‘īfe vü ġarībe vü faḳīre

Every year the world dies and comes to life again, but once a human being is gone he does not return; after saying that she has no work to keep her name alive, the poet presents herself as a helpless, lowly and humble woman, weak, a stranger and poor. The first and last couplets of the ten-couplet passage from the opening of Cemşîd ü Hurşîd (Âşık Çelebi, Meşâ'ir, p. 495).

Mesnevi: Bu lāzım mı ki sen monlā olasın

Bu lāzım mı ki sen monlā olasın
Cihānda cümleden dānā olasın
Saña daḫl itse bir ‘aḳl ile fā’iḳ
Saña faḫr u aña ‘ār ola lāḥıḳ

The poet tells herself that she need not be a great scholar; if someone superior in reason meddles with her words, honour falls to her and shame to the meddler. Âşık Çelebi presents these couplets as the place where the poet "consoled herself" (Âşık Çelebi, Meşâ'ir, pp. 495-496).

Mesnevi: Du‘ā temsīli Yūsuf gibidür hem

Du‘ā temsīli Yūsuf gibidür hem
Ki aña müşterīdür ḫalḳ-ı ‘ālem
Getürüp niçe rişte aña bir zen
Ḫarīdār oldı ol da cān u dilden

Prayer is like Joseph, and the whole world are its buyers; the poet likens herself to the woman who, when Joseph was put up for sale, came with a few skeins of yarn and became a buyer with all her heart. The couplets occur in Âşık Çelebi, Kınalızâde and Âlî; in Âlî's text the third couplet begins "Sen olduñ Ḥubbiyā" (Âşık Çelebi, Meşâ'ir, p. 496).

Mesnevi: Ṣular şūrīde-ḥāl olmışdı ġāyet

Ṣular şūrīde-ḥāl olmışdı ġāyet
Geçen aḥvāli eylerdi şikāyet
Ṣu raḥmet āyetin eylerdi taḥrīr
Nesīm ol āyeti eylerdi tefsīr

The running waters are agitated and distressed, their murmur complains of the past; the water writes the verse of mercy and the morning breeze expounds it. Âşık Çelebi gives these couplets under the heading "description of running water" (Âşık Çelebi, Meşâ'ir, p. 496).

Ghazal: Dâr-ı İslâmı münevver kıldı envâr-ı gazâ

Dâr-ı İslâmı münevver kıldı envâr-ı gazâ
Âlemi kılmış mu’attar bûy-i gülzâr-ı gazâ
San’atüm dedi gazâya Fahr-i âlem Hubbiyâ
Dâimâ meftûh ola gâzîlere kâr-ı gazâ

The lights of holy war have illumined the abode of Islam, and the scent of its rose garden has filled the world; the Prophet called holy war "my craft". The opening and closing couplets of the ghazal in the National Library manuscript of İmâdü'l-cihâd (Kaçar 2018, p. 173).

Couplet: Kuhl-i cândur Hubbiyâ hâk-i rehi gâzîlerün

Kuhl-i cândur Hubbiyâ hâk-i rehi gâzîlerün
Buldılar hakdan atâ bî-hadd ü pâyân gâzîler

The dust of the warriors' road is kohl for the eye of the soul; the warriors have found a boundless bounty from God. The value that divan poetry gives to the dust of the beloved's feet is here given to the warriors. The closing couplet of a ghazal in İmâdü'l-cihâd (Kaçar 2018, p. 172).

Ghazal: Iyd-ı ekberdür dem-â-dem her demi gâzîlerün

Gel nazar kıl sufiyâ âşık geçersin sen dahi
Kendü kanı Hak yolunda merhemi gâzîlerün

The poet addresses the Sufi: you too pass yourself off as a lover, but look at the warriors; on the path of God their salve is their own blood. The ghazal is given in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, most probably taken from the texts published by Cunbur (TEİS, entry on Hubbî).

Couplet: Râsttır reftârımız mânend-i mîl-i tûtiyâ

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

Our bearing is as straight as the kohl stick; we have gone in and out of a thousand languid eyes. According to the TDV entry Hubbî uttered this couplet against the gossip about her; the old source in which it occurs has not been identified (TDV, Hubbî Hatun).

Chronology

957 (1550): Death of her husband Şems Çelebi (Akşemseddinzâde Şemseddin Çelebi).

974 (1566): Accession of Selim II; Hubbî became the sultan's companion and confidante.

1566-1574: According to Kaçar, the period in which İmâdü'l-cihâd was written.

982 (1574): Accession of Murad III.

998 (1590): Her death according to the Osmanlı Müellifleri; Hüsameddin gives 999 (1590-91). Her tomb is in Eyüp.

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

2017-2018: Cihan Okuyucu identified the Paris manuscript of İmâdü'l-cihâd; Mücahit Kaçar compared and introduced the two manuscripts.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Âşık Çelebi, Meşâ'irü'ş-şu'arâ, ed. Filiz Kılıç, Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2018 (e-book), pp. 494-496, entry on ‘Â'işe Hâtûn.
  • Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi, Tezkiretü'ş-şu'arâ, ed. Aysun Sungurhan, Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2017 (e-book), pp. 287-288, entry on Hubbî; entry on Vusûlî.
  • Gelibolulu Mustafa Âlî, Künhü'l-ahbâr'ın Tezkire Kısmı, ed. Mustafa İsen, Ankara: Atatürk Kültür Merkezi, 1994, pp. 301-302, entry on Hubbî Hatun.
  • Abdizâde Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin Yasar, Amasya Tarihi 6-8. Cilt, ed. Songül Keçeci Kurt - Recep Orhan Özel - Metin Hakverdioğlu, Amasya: Amasya Belediyesi, 2022, pp. 562-564 (entry on Hubbî Âişe Hatun).

Academic studies

Books

Online sources