Certain poetry anthologies contain poems recorded under the name Kadrî; Hüsameddin came across them but could not establish whether they belonged to Abdülkâdir Efendi, preacher of the Saraçhane Mosque in Amasya. That reservation is the crux of the short entry in which he introduces him as "a scholar and a poet with the pen name Kadrî." Abdülkâdir Efendi inherited the preachership from his father and later held the lecture chair of the same mosque; he died in Receb 1200 (May 1786). No poem can be attributed to him with certainty today.

The Entry in the History of Amasya

The reservation stands in Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar's entry Abdülkâdir Efendi-Hatîbzâde:

Amasya'da Saraçhâne Câmii hatîbi Hâfız Mehmed Efendi'nin oğludur. Tahsîl-i ulûm ederek ders-i âm ve pederinin irtihâlinde Saraçhâne hatîbi ve ba'dehû câmi-i mezkûrun kürsî şeyhi olduğu halde 1200 senesi recebinde vefât etdi. Âlim ve "Kadrî" mahlasıyla şâir idi. Ba'zı mecmualarda Kadrî'nin eş'ârına tesâdüf edildiyse de bunun olduğu anlaşılamadı. Oğlu Mehmed Saîd Efendi hatîb oldu.

The passage in plain English: he was a son of Hâfız Mehmed Efendi, preacher of the Saraçhane Mosque in Amasya. Having pursued his studies, he became a licensed lecturer; on his father's death he became preacher of the Saraçhane, and afterwards holder of the lecture chair of that mosque, in which post he died in the month of Receb 1200. He was a scholar and a poet with the pen name "Kadrî." Although poems of Kadrî were found in some anthologies, it could not be established that they were his. His son Mehmed Saîd Efendi became a preacher.

His Life

Every post Abdülkâdir is known to have held was in one mosque. The Saraçhane Mosque, properly the Şadgeldi Pasha Mosque, was built in the fourteenth century by Hacı Şadgeldi Pasha, emir of Amasya, and came to be called Saraçhane after the saddlers' shops around it. Abdülkâdir's father Hâfız Mehmed Efendi was its preacher; the son, having finished his madrasa studies and become a licensed lecturer, took over the same post on his father's death. The preacher delivered the Friday and festival sermons, and the office often passed from father to son within one family; the family surname "Hatîbzâde," the preacher's sons, comes from this.

Abdülkâdir later became holder of the lecture chair of the same mosque. Such chair-holders gave religious counsel to the congregation from a raised seat in the mosque and read commentary and hadith; whether he held this post together with the preachership is not clear from the entry. He died in Receb 1200, that is, between 30 April and 28 May 1786, while holding the chair. His son Mehmed Saîd Efendi also became a preacher; Hüsameddin does not repeat the mosque's name, but family custom suggests that he too mounted the Saraçhane pulpit.

A Family of the Same Name

Elsewhere Hüsameddin records another Hatîbzâde family linked to the Saraçhane preachership. The calligrapher Seyyid İbrahim Efendi was a son of "el-Hâc Mehmed Efendi, preacher of the Saraçhane"; he learned calligraphy in Istanbul from Kettânîzâde Ali Efendi and died of plague in 1168 (1754-55). Hüsameddin notes that his full brother, Hatîbzâde Seyyid Hacı Ömer Efendi, who was preacher of the Saraçhane that same year, inherited his estate.

Abdülkâdir's father is called "Hâfız Mehmed," the father of İbrahim and Ömer "el-Hâc Mehmed." The two Mehmed Efendis who preached at the same mosque could be one and the same man, a single preacher known by turns for having memorised the Qur'an and for having made the pilgrimage; in that case Abdülkâdir would be the brother of the calligrapher İbrahim and of Ömer. Hüsameddin, however, draws no such link. Nor can the order in which Ömer, preacher in 1168, and Abdülkâdir, preacher after his father's death, held the office be worked out from the entries. The kinship remains a possibility.

His Poetry

The pen name Kadrî must derive from the name "Abdülkâdir"; this closeness of name and pen name confirms the record itself, but is not enough to identify the author of the anthology poems. Anthologies often record a poem under the pen name alone, and a common pen name such as Kadrî was used by many Ottoman poets; Hüsameddin's reservation springs from a difficulty familiar to anyone who searches these collections. He saw the poems but did not copy them, nor did he say in which anthologies they appeared. No poem that certainly belongs to Abdülkâdir Efendi has been found.

Chronology

1168 (1754-55): The calligrapher Hatîbzâde Seyyid İbrahim Efendi dies in Istanbul; his brother Ömer Efendi is preacher of the Saraçhane that year.

Receb 1200 (May 1786): Kadrî Abdülkâdir Efendi dies as holder of the lecture chair of the Saraçhane Mosque.

Bibliography

Online sources