What places Kemâlî Ahmed Çelebi, a son of the chief treasurer Mahmûd Çelebi, among the poets is one subordinate sentence tacked onto the end of someone else's entry in the History of Amasya. Having described Cemâlî Mehmed Çelebi, elder or younger brother of Kemâlî, Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar adds "Birâderi Kemâlî Ahmed Çelebi de şu'arâdandır", "his brother Kemâlî Ahmed Çelebi is also among the poets", and breaks off there. All that follows from it is that Kemâlî's father was Mahmûd Çelebi of Amasya, one of the chief treasurers of Süleyman the Magnificent's reign, and that he wrote verse in the middle of the sixteenth century. His dates, his occupation and his place of residence go unrecorded, and nothing he wrote has survived.

Hüsameddin's Record

The entry in which Kemâlî's name occurs is the one headed "Cemâlî Mehmed Çelebi-Defterdârzâde" in the eighth volume:

Amasya'nın Yenice karyesinde bir câmi ve mektebi ve İstanbul'da bir câmi' ve dârü'l-hadîsi olup 953'de vefât eden bâş-defterdâr Amasyalı Yenicelizâde Mahmûd Çelebi bin İskender Çelebi mahdûmu ve Amasyalı Hüsâm Bey'in kerîmezâdesidir. İstanbul'da tahsîl-i ma'ârif edib Dîvân-ı Hümâyûn kalemine girdi. Orada tefeyyüz ederek sadâret tezkirecisi olup 981'de vefât etdi. Kâtib, şâir, letâ'ife mâ'il bir zât idi. Birâderi Kemâlî Ahmed Çelebi de şu'arâdandır.

In English translation: He was the son of Yenicelizâde Mahmûd Çelebi of Amasya, chief treasurer, who had a mosque and a school in the village of Yenice near Amasya and a mosque and a house of hadith in Istanbul and who died in 953, and a grandson through his mother of Hüsâm Bey of Amasya. He studied in Istanbul and entered the chancery of the Imperial Council, rose there to be secretary of memoranda to the grand vizier and died in 981. He was a secretary and a poet, fond of witticisms. His brother Kemâlî Ahmed Çelebi is also among the poets.

Family

Everything known about Kemâlî's family comes from his brother's entry. His father Mahmûd Çelebi served as chief treasurer under Süleyman the Magnificent and died in 953 (1546); he is very probably the same man as Nazlı Mahmud Çelebi, founder of the Defterdar Mosque in Eyüp. Hüsameddin makes him a son of Yenicelizâde İskender Çelebi, Süleyman's executed chief treasurer, but elsewhere gives information that casts doubt on this link: he writes that İskender Çelebi had two sons named Ahmed and Mehmed and that he could not find their descendants. That the two brothers bore these names suggests that Hüsameddin may have confused İskender's sons with those of Mahmûd Çelebi. A fuller discussion of the father's identity and of this contradiction will be found under Cemâlî Mehmed Çelebi (Defterdârzâde).

The closeness in sound and sense of the names Kemâlî and Cemâlî suggests that the two brothers chose matching pen names, or that these names were given within the family; the entry offers no explanation, and that "Kemâlî" was a pen name can be inferred only from the similar use in his brother's name. Which of the two was the elder is not known either.

Poetry

Nothing of Kemâlî Ahmed Çelebi's poetry has been found. Hüsameddin, who calls him a poet, does not say where he had this from. Metin Hakverdioğlu, too, counting the poets of the eighth volume, records Kemâlî beside Cemâlî as a separate name.

The State of the Sources

The tezkire of poets written by Beyânî Mustafa at the end of the sixteenth century also has a Kemâlî with the byname "Defterdârzâde". According to Beyânî's "Kemâlî" entry, this poet's name was İsmâil and he was known as "Defterdârzâde"; he is described as merry and open-hearted, fond of conversation with friends, free of any wish for office, a reciter of the Mesnevî, and two couplets of his are quoted. Beyânî does not say which treasurer he was the son of or where he came from. Because his name is given as İsmâil, nothing supports merging him with Hüsameddin's Kemâlî Ahmed Çelebi, and the two couplets in the tezkire cannot for that reason be credited to the Kemâlî of Amasya.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Online sources