Lütfullah Lutfî Bey was a statesman recorded as the treasurer (defterdar) of Şehzade Mustafa (Prince Mustafa) during the prince's governorship of Amasya (1541-1553). The only source that records him as a poet is Hüseyin Hüsameddin's Amasya Tarihi: Hüsameddin writes that the prince's chancellor (nişancı) Hamdî, his treasurer Lütfullah Lutfî Bey and his divan secretary Fazlî Çelebi were "şu'arâdan", that is, among the poets. In the sixteenth-century biographical anthologies of poets (tezkire) there is no entry devoted to Lutfî Bey; his name appears only in the entry on his son, the poet Kudsî Mehmed Çelebi, as his father. No example of his poetry has come down to us. Since many people bore the names Lutfî and Lütfullah in the same century, the question of which source describes whom is treated separately below.

Hüsameddin's Record

In the section on Şehzade Mustafa's arrival in Amasya, Hüsameddin lists the prince's love of literature and the poets around him as follows:

Şehzâdenin nişâncısı Elvân Çelebi ahfâdından "Nefîsoğlu" demekle meşhûr Tâceddîn Efendi mahdûmu Hamdî Hamdullâh Çelebi, defterdârı Lütfullâh Lutfî Bey, kâtib-i dîvânı Fazlî Çelebi şu'arâdan idi.

In English: The prince's chancellor Hamdî Hamdullah Çelebi, son of Tâceddin Efendi, known as "Nefîsoğlu" and a descendant of Elvan Çelebi, his treasurer Lütfullah Lutfî Bey and his divan secretary Fazlî Çelebi were poets.

This sentence is the only known testimony to Lutfî Bey's poetry. In the same passage Hüsameddin also names, separately from them, a Tayyibzâde Lutfî Efendi among the prince's companions (musahib). Since the two names appear in the same list with different titles, Hüsameddin evidently regarded them as two different people. Hüsameddin does not say whether Lutfî Bey was from Amasya, where he came from or what became of him after the prince's death.

His Trace in the Tezkires

In Âşık Çelebi's Meşâ'irü'ş-şu'arâ the entry on the poet Kudsî begins by introducing his father. Kudsî is the son of Lutfî Beg, who was raised within the sultan's palace, then became city commissioner (şehremini) and, after serving as treasurer of Sultan Mustafa, a sanjak governor; his name is Mehmed Çelebi. Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi gives the same information in his Kudsî entry and states the post more clearly: Lutfî Beg was raised in the imperial palace, became şehremini, and then, while treasurer of Şehzade Sultan Mustafa, passed to a sanjak governorship. Since Hüsameddin's "treasurer Lütfullah Lutfî Bey" and the tezkires' "Lutfî Beg, treasurer of Sultan Mustafa" point to the same office, it is highly likely that they are the same person. This identification is our inference; none of the sources combines the two pieces of information.

According to the tezkires, Lutfî Bey followed the career of statesmen of slave (kul) origin who were raised in the palace and rose through financial and administrative posts. The city commissionership belongs to Istanbul, the sanjak governorship to the time after he left the prince's side. Whether he became a sanjak governor while the prince was alive or after his death in 1553 is unclear. None of the biographers mentions Lutfî Bey writing poetry; that Âşık Çelebi and Kınalızâde treat only his son as a poet may indicate that the father's poetry was not thought noteworthy by them, or was unknown to them.

His Family

His son Kudsî Mehmed Çelebi first took up the path of learning and attached himself to the mufti Hace Çelebi Efendi, that is Ebussuûd Efendi, then, saying that "a son should follow his father's craft", turned to his father's path and the sipahi profession. According to Âşık Çelebi he first became a müteferrika, then treasurer of the pious endowments (waqf) of Egypt, and later treasurer of the timars of Sivas. Kınalızâde records that Kudsî, like his father, died after rising to a sanjak governorship. Kudsî's poems appear in the tezkires; these poems are his own, not his father's.

The State of the Sources and the Debate

Lutfî Bey's recognition as a poet rests entirely on Hüsameddin's single sentence. Hüsameddin does not name the source of this information; among the sources he uses for the prince's circle are Kemâleddin İbrâhim Efendi's Masârif-i Beytü'l-Mâl and the notes at the end of Sürûrî's Gülistân Şerhi, but it cannot be shown that Lutfî Bey's poetry comes from these. Whether Lutfî Bey had a pen name (mahlas) is also unknown; "Lutfî" here may simply be a shortened form of his name.

Because of the similarity of names, the chance of confusion with other Lutfîs is high. Describing Selim Çelebi, son of Keşfî Mehmed Çelebi of the Hızır Paşazâde family, Hüsameddin writes that he was the brother of "Küçük Lutfî Bey, one of the poets"; the father of Hızrî Mehmed Bey of the same family is also a Lütfullah Çelebi. Kınalızâde, for his part, mentions two brothers whose father had served as a treasurer, the "Lutfî Begzâdes" with the pen names Meylî and Neylî. The sources do not say whether these people were related to the prince's treasurer or to Kudsî. These names are mentioned here only to show the extent of the confusion. What is certain is that Hüsameddin counted the prince's treasurer as a poet and that the tezkires know this treasurer only as the father of a poet.

His Poetry

Lutfî Bey's poems have not come down to us. The tezkires examined (Sehî, Latîfî, Âşık Çelebi, Kınalızâde, Beyânî, Gelibolulu Âlî) record no couplet under his name, and Hüsameddin gives no example. For Prince Mustafa's circle in Amasya and the other poets in it, see our article Prince Mustafa (Muhlisî): His Poems and the Poets of His Amasya Circle, and for the prince's life the article Şehzade Mustafa.

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