Abdîzâde Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar · İKİNCİ BÂB · BİRİNCİ FASIL
Encyclopedia · History of Amasya, Volume 7, p. 299 • Edited by: Prof. Dr. Safi ARPAGUŞ- Prof. Dr. Ahmet Hakkı TURABİ
Havzalıdır. Emîr-i meşhûr Celâleddîn Şâh Melik bin Mehmed bin Kunduz Bey’in oğludur. Buna Kunduzoğlu da denmişdir. Emîr Kemaleddîn İsmâil Bey olup pederinin Amasya ve havâlisini istilâsı zamanında Canik emîri ve sevâhil kumandânı oldu. Kendisine Emîrü’s-sevâhil dendi.
679 senesi evâilinde pederinin Amasya‘da mahsûren vefât etdiği esnâda Emîr Seyfeddîn Torumtay ile muhârebeler etdi. Bir müddet Canik, Havza ve havâlîsini elinde tutabildi. 682’de Emîr Boğa’nın elinde maktûlen [117] vefât etdi.
He was from Havza. He was the son of the famous emir Celâleddîn Şâh Melik son of Mehmed son of Kunduz Bey. He was also called Kunduzoğlu. His name was Emîr Kemâleddîn İsmâil Bey. When his father seized Amasya and its surroundings, he became emir of Canik and commander of the coast. He was called Emîrü's-sevâhil (Emir of the Coasts).
At the beginning of 679 [1280], when his father died under siege in Amasya, he fought battles with Emîr Seyfeddîn Torumtay. For a time he was able to hold Canik, Havza and the surrounding area. In 682 [1283-84] he died, killed at the hands of Emîr Boğa.
Emîr Seyfeddîn Torumtay, shown in the text as İsmâil Bey's opponent, was a commander who served in Amasya as governor in Seljuk service. He is the man who had the Gökmedrese Mosque in Amasya built; the building was used both as a mosque and as a madrasa, and the adjoining tomb, decorated with purple-turquoise tiles and glazed bricks, gave it the name "Gök" (sky, blue). The waqf deed Torumtay had drawn up is dated 665 (1266-67), so the building was completed by this year at the latest. He lies in a tomb he had built himself, near the mosque, dated 677 (1278-79). Since the conflicts Hüsameddin describes fall around 679 (1280), it is understood that Torumtay was alive and in office at that time; but this inference rests on the text, and no source giving Torumtay's date of death was found.
In the period when Kunduzoğlu lived, the Anatolian Seljuk state had come under Mongol domination after the defeat at Kösedağ in 1243. The vizier Mühezzebüddin Ali, who was then in Amasya, went with the city's judge to the camp of the Mongol commander Baycu Noyan and made a peace on condition that 360,000 dirhams, 10,000 sheep, and 1,000 cattle and camels be given each year. It is not surprising that regional beys acted on their own in these years of weakened central authority; but since no source was found on the political line followed by Kunduzoğlu and his son, Hüsameddin's account could not be verified.
Canik is the name given to the area around today's Samsun and was one of the sanjaks of the province of Rum in the Ottoman period. Havza is a district in the interior of Samsun, about 84 kilometers southwest of the provincial center. It is noted that sources on the administrative situation of Havza in the Seljuk and beylik periods are limited. In the Ottoman period it was recorded as a settlement attached to the Canik sanjak, and at the end of the nineteenth century it was counted among the eight districts of the sanjak of Amasya. The sources also note that Amasya Castle was in a position controlling the Samsun-Tokat road; the area Hüsameddin lists as "Canik, Havza and its surroundings" lies on this line running from Amasya to the Black Sea.
Havza has the Yörgüç Pashazade Mustafa Bey Mosque, dated to the early fifteenth century. The stone-arched Kurt Bridge over the Tersakan stream is thought to belong to the Seljuk or beylik period. These buildings are traces of the period after the events Hüsameddin describes, or close to them; no direct link to Kunduzoğlu İsmâil Bey can be drawn, but they show the settled life of the region in those ages.
Searches turned up no information on Kunduz Bey, on Celâleddîn Şâh Melik's seizure of Amasya, on Kunduzoğlu İsmâil Bey, or on Emîr Boğa who killed him. The dates and events in the text rest on Hüsameddin's record.
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