Abdîzâde Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar · İKİNCİ BÂB · BİRİNCİ FASIL
Encyclopedia · History of Amasya, Volume 7, p. 286 • Edited by: Prof. Dr. Safi ARPAGUŞ- Prof. Dr. Ahmet Hakkı TURABİ
Köprülüdür. Ulemâdan Kara Müderriszâde Abdullah Efendi bin Fâzıl Ahmed Efendi’nin mahdûmudur. Köprü Çelebisi demekle meşhûr, Osmâncıklı es-Seyyid el-Hâc Mustafa Efendi’den ikmâl-i tahsîl edib Köprü’de dersiam, Abdülkerîm Ağa müderrisi, 1148’de Köprü Müftüsü oldu.
Ba’dehû azl ve nasb edilerek on yıl kadar Köprü Müftülüğünü îfâ edib 1163’de vefât etdi. Meşâhir-i ulemâdan fâzıl, müttâki bir zât idi. Mahdûmu Abdullah Efendi kendisinden evvel vefât edib hafîdi İshak Efendi ma’rûfdur. [75]
He was from Köprü. He was the son of Kara Müderriszâde Abdullah Efendi, son of Fâzıl Ahmed Efendi, one of the scholars. After completing his studies under Osmancıklı Seyyid Hacı Mustafa Efendi, known as Köprü Çelebisi, he gave public lessons (dersiâm) in Köprü, became müderris (madrasa professor) at the madrasa of Abdülkerîm Ağa, and in 1148 [1735-36] became mufti of Köprü.
Afterwards, dismissed and appointed again, he served as mufti of Köprü for about ten years and died in 1163 [1749-50]. He was one of the well-known scholars, a learned and God-fearing man. His son Abdullah Efendi died before him, and his grandson İshak Efendi became a well-known figure.
The place Hüsameddin calls "Köprü" is today the Vezirköprü district of Samsun. In the Ottoman period it was a kaza attached to the sanjak of Amasya. At the end of the 19th century the eight kazas of the sanjak of Amasya were Amasya centre, Merzifon, Vezirköprü, Osmancık, Gümüşhacıköy, Lâdik, Havza and Mecidözü. So both Köprü and Osmancık, mentioned in the entry, lay within the same sanjak in which the scholars of Amasya moved. The older name of the settlement appears in some sources as Gedikara or Gedegra. The name Vezirköprü took hold in the 17th century, after Köprülü Mehmed Pasha, who had ties to the region, became grand vizier, and after his family had a han, madrasa, mosque and bridge built there. The Taşhan and the Taşmedrese (Fazıl Ahmed Pasha Madrasa) are examples of these that still stand today.
The Köprülü family's tie to this kaza is firm: the grand vizier Köprülüzâde Fâzıl Mustafa Pasha was born in 1637 in the kaza of Köprü in Amasya. The "Fâzıl Ahmed Efendi" who is the father of the Abdullah Efendi mentioned by Hüsameddin is a different person from the grand vizier Fâzıl Ahmed Pasha; no information about a relationship between the two was found in the sources read.
The history of Vezirköprü reaches back far before the Ottomans. Research at Oymaağaç Mound in the district has led to assessments that Nerik, one of the sacred cities of the Hittites, was located there; in the Esen neighbourhood there are rock tombs said to date from the Paphlagonian period. Among the buildings of the Ottoman period are the Taşhan, the Taşmedrese and the Kale Mosque, which the Köprülü family gave to the town; the Fazıl Ahmed Pasha Madrasa is also mentioned as a library. Mustafa Pasha went to Istanbul with his father at the age of four, received a madrasa education, and in 1070 [1660] was taken into palace service; in May 1683 he was raised to third vizier, later became grand vizier, and in February 1691 carried out a reform of the jizya tax by decree.
The career described in the entry is a typical provincial path in the Ottoman scholarly class: first to study under a teacher, then to give public lessons in one's home town, then to serve as a müderris in a madrasa, and finally to be appointed mufti. The waiting of madrasa graduates in line for posts as müderris or kadı (judge), and the experience they gained in the meantime, was part of the scholarly class's mülâzemet system; the dismissal and reappointment ("azl ve nasb") the text mentions is likewise an ordinary consequence of this system of appointments.
Whether Osmancıklı Hacı Mustafa Efendi, named as his teacher, was himself called "Köprü Çelebisi" is not clear from the text; the sentence can be read in two ways. In addition, the phrase "müderris of Abdülkerîm Ağa" seems to mean a madrasa in Abdülkerîm Ağa's name, but no information about the location or founder of this madrasa was found in other sources. The grandson İshak Efendi appears in the book as a separate entry under the heading "İshak Efendi-Müftizâde".