One of the most voluminous works of classical Turkish literature came from the pen of a poet from Amasya. Münirî Amâsî composed the Siyer-i Nebî, a verse biography of the Prophet Muhammad, in seven volumes, 866 folios and roughly 32,000 couplets, which makes him the author of the longest versified siyer known in Turkish literature. He spent almost his entire life in Amasya. He kept company in the salon of Şehzade Ahmed, son of Bayezid II, served as chancellor (nişancı) in the prince's divan, and left behind a Turkish and Persian collection of poems as well as a masnavi called Mihr ü Müşterî. Information about his life is scanty and the sources disagree on many points; the account below states these disagreements openly.

His Name and Family

In the autograph copy of his Mihr ü Müşterî, the poet's name is recorded as "Münîrî b. Mehmed." Because he was from Amasya he is known by the nisba Amâsî or Amasyevî. His name appears in rather tangled form in the sources. In Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin Yasar's Amasya Tarihi he is called Münîrî Mehmed Çelebi and Münîrî Efendi, and when Yasar lists the prince's divan staff he writes "chancellor Münîrî Çelebi son of Yusuf." Latîfî, Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi, Gelibolulu Âlî, Kafzâde Fâizî and Tayyarzâde Atâ mention him but say nothing about his name. Bursalı Mehmed Tahir, the author of Tuhfe-i Nâilî and Osman Fevzi Olcay, author of Amasya Meşâhiri, record the name as İbrahim Çelebi. Present-day scholars regard this as a mistake: the man known as İbrahim Çelebi must be another poet, Belgradlı Münîrî, who lived about a century later.

His father's name also varies between sources. According to research based on the note in Mihr ü Müşterî, his father was Mehmed Efendi, who served as chancellor among the Erkân-ı Divan under Bayezid II; an in'âmât (gratuity) register studied by İsmail Erünsal supports this. Hüsâmeddin Yasar, by contrast, calls the poet "Münîrî Mehmed Çelebi son of Yusuf Çelebi." This discrepancy has not been resolved, and it does not seem possible to pass a firm judgment on the poet's lineage. His date of birth is likewise unknown.

From Sipahi to Chancellor

Statements in Münîrî's Mihr ü Müşterî show that before becoming a chancellor he served for a long time as a sipahi (cavalryman) in the Ottoman army. For this reason scholars regard the poet as belonging both to the learned (ilmiyye) and to the military (askeriyye) class. It is also noteworthy that in verse 431 of the same work he says he wrote in every style of calligraphy. Sheikh Hamdullah of Amasya (d. 1520), regarded as the founder of the Ottoman calligraphic school, was the calligraphy teacher of Bayezid II and his companion during his princely years and his reign, and trained many students, among them princes, statesmen, scholars and poets. Scholars suppose that Münîrî was one of them; but this is an inference from the poet's own words and from the calligraphic circle of the city, not a direct record.

According to Hüsâmeddin Yasar, Münîrî became Şehzade Ahmed's chancellor in 910 (1504-1505), when the chancellor Şemseddin Ahmed Çelebi died. Yasar describes him as one of the "great scholars and men of letters" of Amasya, and lists him again as chancellor in the divan staff of 915 (1509-1510). The same staff included the vizier and lala Yularkısdı Sinan Paşa, the armourer Mahmud Bey, the emîr-i divan Bâlî Bey and the treasurer Mehmed Çelebi. The TEİS entry, drawing on Yasar, likewise reports that the poet served as chancellor in the prince's divan between 1504 and 1509. The chancellor was the official who drew the tughra on formal documents such as decrees and charters and supervised the form of correspondence; that Münîrî had a strong inşâ pen, that is, a command of official and literary letter writing, fits this post.

In Şehzade Ahmed's Circle

Ahmed, who served as prince-governor in Amasya, gathered a large circle of poets, scholars and artists around him during his governorship. Münîrî is among the best-known members of this circle. Almost all biographical works list him among the poets, accomplished men and mystics of Şehzade Ahmed's time. Latîfî describes Münîrî as "one whose nature embraced many sciences through the abundance of his learning and knowledge," that is, as someone whose talent extended over many fields thanks to the breadth of his knowledge. Some sources rank his learning above his poetry.

The circumcision festival that Şehzade Ahmed held for his sons in 1505 (911) is described in Amasya Tarihi as one of the liveliest scenes of the city's poetic life. The emirs of the surrounding region were invited, the city was decorated, and the poets wrote qasidas to congratulate the prince and received heavy rewards. According to Yasar's list, the well-known Turkish poets of Amasya in those days were Çeşmî, Şermî, Figânî, Kâmî, Melîhî, Münîrî and Mihrî Hâtun, and among the Persian poets Basîrî, Penâhî and Kutbî. Yasar writes that among them the greatest drinker was Melîhî of Tokat, the best mannered was Şermî and the most learned was Münîrî Efendi. This line also shows that Münîrî was in Amasya at that date.

In the prince's circle there was also a tension between Turkish and Persian elements. Yasar sets the companions named Şemseddin, called the "Şemses," against the circle of Iranian origin called the "Kutbs"; poets praised the Şemses as the "Suns." Münîrî's years as chancellor fall within this atmosphere. As Yasar reports, Münîrî in his Mecmûa describes Câmî Ahmed Efendi, an influential figure of Amasya, as "learned, a poet, a man of letters and self-admiring," and calls Ebû Tâlib Çelebi, of Iranian origin, a cheerful, witty man who took offence easily. These notes suggest that the work was a kind of witness document for the Amasya of its day; but it is no longer extant.

Münîrî's literary influence in Amasya can also be traced through his students. According to Yasar, Celîlî Mehmed Çelebi (Pîr Sun'ullâhzâde) studied the literary and religious sciences with Mevlânâ Münîrî Çelebi in Amasya, joined the poets as a müderris in the time of Şehzade Ahmed, was rewarded with the Atabey Gazi Madrasa when Sultan Selim came to Amasya in 920 (1514), and died in Amasya in 943. Cenânî Hüseyin Çelebi (Rıdvânzâde) learned various scripts from the calligrapher Abdullah Efendi and literature from Münîrî Efendi, became known as the prince's divan secretary, and was executed in Zilhicce 918, a month after the prince's own execution. Again according to Yasar, Münîrî wrote a "Sünbül qasida" for Sünbül Ahmed Çelebi (Bozacızâde), one of the seven beauties named in Figânî's Şehrengiz, who entered the prince's gatherings as a singer thanks to his beautiful voice. Yasar also records that Yakub Efendi of the Yakubzâde family of Amasya engaged in a poetic contest (müşaare) with Münîrî in Arabic and Persian literature.

The Divan

Münîrî's divan, made up of Turkish and Persian poems, was completed in 1502. Three copies are known: one in Istanbul University Library (Turkish Manuscripts, no. 5580), and two in the Vatican Apostolic Library (Turco, no. 230) and the Austrian National Library (no. 654). The copyist of the Istanbul manuscript was Sultan Murad III. The total volume of the book is about 4,000 couplets. It contains twenty-nine qasidas, two masnavis, two tercî-i bends, a Persian tahmîs on Hâfız-ı Şîrâzî, a murabba-ı mütekerrir, 150 Persian and 330 Turkish ghazals, a Persian chronogram quatrain, nine single couplets, seventeen riddles (muamma) and twenty-one tuyuğs. Latîfî and Kınalızâde write that the poet had a "Turkish and Persian divan," but no separate Persian divan has been found. The Persian divan in question is thought to be the Persian poems of divançe size found together with the Turkish divan.

The masters who influenced his poetry have been identified one by one in research. In his Turkish qasidas traces of Bursalı Ahmed Paşa and Edirneli İvazpaşazâde Atâî can be seen, in his Persian qasidas those of Zahîr-i Fâryâbî and Selmân-ı Sâvecî. In his Turkish ghazals Ahmed Paşa, Şeyhî and Ahmedî are influential; in his Persian ghazals, Hâfız-ı Şîrâzî, and seventeen Persian ghazals were written directly as nazîres to Hâfız. In the masnavi field he calls Ahmedî and Şeyhî "the elders of this art." Two qasidas, one Persian and one Turkish, which he laid out in the shape of a tree, he named "müşeccer." Among his Turkish ghazals there is also an elifnâme. The tuyuğ was a form not much favoured by Anatolian poets, so the twenty-one tuyuğs Münîrî wrote are especially noteworthy.

Although he wrote in almost all the forms of divan poetry, he is accepted to have been most successful in the ghazal. Many archaic words appear in his works. His style is warm and easy; instead of long chains of genitive compounds he prefers the paired compounds common in Turkish. He is skilled in the tradition, begun by Necâtî Bey and continued by Zâtî, of placing local expressions, proverbs and popular idioms into verse. He also stands out in the art of cinas (punning); he used every kind of pun in his works, and it is fitting to call him a "master of cinas." That he wrote nazîres to sixty-four poets in Edirneli Nazmî's Mecmaü'n-Nezâir and to fifty-one in the Pervâne Bey Mecmuası allows him to be regarded also as a nazîre poet. Hüsâmeddin Yasar likewise notes that the Mecmaü'n-Nezâir of Sipahi Nazmî Çelebi (d. 955) mainly collects the nazîres of Amasya poets, and that it contains a fair number of poems by "the famous Münîrî of Amasya."

As an example from the divan, the opening couplet of a ghazal published in Ersen Ersoy's doctoral study may be given: Her ki bu silsile-i zülf-i dü-tâdan dem urur / Sanma âlemde kim ol bâd-ı hevâdan dem urur. The rest of the ghazal strings together classical ghazal images such as tress, breath, zephyr and reed flute; it is an example of a style that is plain in language and rich in wordplay.

Mihr ü Müşterî

Münîrî's second major work is the verse translation Mihr ü Müşterî. It is a Turkish rendering of the Persian masnavi of the same name by Şemseddin Muhammed Assâr-ı Tebrîzî (d. 1382). It is an allegorical story whose heroes take their names from heavenly bodies, Mihr (the Sun) and Müşterî (Jupiter). It is regarded as the most famous of the Turkish verse Mihr ü Müşterî masnavis and is chronologically the second translation. The work consists of 6,011 couplets and is written in the "mefâ'îlün mefâ'îlün fe'ûlün" metre. One of its two known copies is the autograph, completed on 9 Şevval 892 (28 September 1487), and is kept in the British Library (Or., no. 7742). The other copy is in the Millet Library (Ali Emîrî Efendi, Manzum, no. 1185). Ayten Akmandor prepared a doctoral dissertation on the work (1983).

The autograph is also an important document for Münîrî's life; the lines that reveal the poet's name, his father's name, his knowledge of calligraphy and his sipahi past are found there. An elegy in the Divan gives a painful glimpse of his life as well. In this elegy Münîrî writes that in the plague of 887 (1482) he lost two children, Ali and Ferah, a week apart. According to the sources, the poet lived a troubled life, was not appreciated enough because he was little known, and complained of his fortune in his writings.

The Verse Siyer-i Nebî

The work that chiefly secures Münîrî a place in literary history is the Manzum Siyer-i Nebî, written in masnavi form. It is arranged in seven volumes and contains 32,475 couplets on 866 folios (TEİS gives about 33,000 couplets). This size makes it the longest versified siyer known in Turkish literature. The only known copy is in the Topkapı Palace Museum Library (Koğuşlar, nos. 994-995). Mustafa b. Hacı Muhammed b. Mahmud copied it in 930 (1523-1524); the work itself is thought to have been completed before 1502. Münîrî says he wrote it expecting nothing from anyone, only to earn God's approval and the Prophet's intercession; for this reason the book was dedicated to no statesman.

The structure of the Siyer-i Nebî follows the order of classical siyer narratives. The first volume, after sections on tawhid, munajat, the "reason for composition" and the "beginning of the book of siyer," opens with the account of the creation of Adam; the seventh volume ends with the conquest of Mecca and the death of the Prophet. In between, the life of Muhammad, the events that befell his family and companions, the struggle with the polytheists, miracles, the ascension, the hijra and the campaigns are told in a warm and fluent style. As his sources the poet names Ebü'l-Hasan el-Bekrî el-Kasasî, Ibn Ishaq, Ka'b al-Ahbar and, from Turkish literature, Kadı Darîr of Erzurum. The heroic tales of Islamic champions such as Ali and Hamza are brought to the fore. Anatolian customs and traditions are kept alive throughout the work, and proverbs and idioms are spread through the text. These features bring the work closer to a narrative the common people could follow than to a bookish siyer.

The sample passage published in Ümran Ay's doctoral thesis is useful for showing the narrative language of the work. In the section describing how Muhammad was sent to a teacher at the age of seven (couplets 2135-2277), his grandfather Şeybe takes the child to a monk so that he may learn the letters. The monk has him recite the basmala; the child asks for its meaning. The monk, not knowing it, loses his temper. Muhammad explains the meaning himself, astonishing the monk, and leaves with Şeybe; the story spreads through Mecca, and Abu Jahl, having seen what happened, is seized by envy. The passage is an example of the siyer tradition in which the Prophet is depicted from childhood as possessing extraordinary wisdom, and the couplets are written in a plain Turkish.

Four doctoral theses have been prepared on the whole of the Siyer-i Nebî. Ümran Ay (2007) studied the first volume, Reyhan Çorak (2010) the second and third, Mustafa Özkat (2011) the fourth and fifth, and Yılmaz Top (2011) the sixth and seventh, each preparing the text for publication together with a study. All four were carried out at the Institute of Turkic Studies of Marmara University. Thanks to these works the book has moved out of the state of a single manuscript copy and become a text that researchers can read.

Prose Works

Münîrî's prose works are not extant today. Regarding the Tezkiretü'l-Vekâyi' (Mecmû'a-i Târîhiyye) mentioned in Osmanlı Müellifleri and Amasya Tarihi, Yasar writes that he found the copy in Amasya in the house of Sheikh Alizâde Abdullah Efendi but that it later burned; it has also been reported that a part of it was in the Veliyyüddin Efendi Library. The second work is the Münşeât Mecmûası. According to Yasar, this collection contains the petitions and private letters written between 886 and 917 in the Hijri calendar (1481-1511) by Şehzade Ahmed, governor of Amasya, to his father Bayezid II and other statesmen; it was seen among the münşeât collections in the Veliyyüddin Efendi Library in Istanbul. Today this record cannot be traced. That the collection extends to 917 suggests that its compiler remained in Amasya, close to Şehzade Ahmed, until the prince's last years.

His Death and Tomb

The date and place of Münîrî's death are not clear in the sources. The date 1521 (927) is generally cited, but with a question mark beside it. Bursalı Mehmed Tahir's Osmanlı Müellifleri says that the poet died in Sofia in 927. The author of the TEİS entry says this information may have been confused with that on Belgradlı Münîrî İbrahim b. İskender er-Rûmî, and that what is said about the date and burial place should therefore be treated with suspicion. Evliya Çelebi, in his Seyahatnâme, when listing the shrines of Amasya, mentions Münîrî's tomb among the shrines of sultans, notables and scholars that he saw himself; he does not give a date of death. On the basis of this record it can be said that his grave is in Amasya, but there is no sound date for his death.

Amasya Tarihi, however, contains another trace of Münîrî's end. After the execution of Şehzade Ahmed in 918 (1512), during the investigation conducted in Amasya, it says "the chancellor Münîrî Efendi also died of fear during the inquiry"; in the same pages the former kadı of Amasya, Müeyyedzâde Şemseddin Ahmed Efendi, is said to have died of a ruptured heart during the raid. On the other hand, Yasar also records that "Mevlânâ Münîrî, among the poets of Amasya," composed a chronogram for the death of Gıyâseddin Efendi in early 927. If these two records speak of the same person they cannot be reconciled; according to the first the poet died around 1512, according to the second he was alive in 1521. It is not known whether there was another Amasya man of the same name. For this reason the date of death cannot be given as certain, and 1521 is cited only as a possible date.

His Place in Literary History

Modern assessments treat Münîrî both as a poet and as a historian. He is described as a poet who commanded Turkish and Persian, a man of eloquence mature enough to compile a divan, and a scholar versed enough in Islamic history to write the most voluminous verse siyer of classical Turkish literature. With his Divan, his Mihr ü Müşterî masnavi and his Siyer-i Nebî he deserves mention among the prolific (velûd) authors of classical Turkish literature. That he is not widely known can be put down to the lack of appreciation he received in his own time and to the fact that most of his manuscripts remained inaccessible for a long time. All the biographical works place him among the poets of Şehzade Ahmed's period, and the sources agree that he spent almost his whole life in Amasya.

Chronology

1482 (887): In the plague he loses two children, Ali and Ferah, a week apart (according to an elegy in the Divan).

1487 (9 Şevval 892, 28 September): The Mihr ü Müşterî masnavi is completed; the autograph is in the British Library.

Before 1502: The Manzum Siyer-i Nebî is thought to have been completed.

1502: The Turkish and Persian Divan is completed.

1504-1505 (910): According to Hüsâmeddin Yasar, he becomes Şehzade Ahmed's chancellor.

1505 (911): He is named among the Amasya poets at the circumcision festival held by Şehzade Ahmed for his sons.

1509-1510 (915): He appears as chancellor in Şehzade Ahmed's divan staff.

1511 (917): The last year covered by the Münşeât collection of Şehzade Ahmed's correspondence.

1512 (918): Execution of Şehzade Ahmed; according to Yasar, the chancellor Münîrî Efendi dies during the investigation.

1521 (927) [?]: Possible date of death cited in the sources; neither place nor date is certain.

1523-1524 (930): The only known copy of the Siyer-i Nebî is made.

Sources

Primary sources

  • Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin Yasar, Amasya Tarihi (vols. 1-4, 6-8 and 9-12; entries on Münîrî).

Academic studies

  • Ümran Ay, "Münîrî Amâsî", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, EK-2, Ankara 2019, pp. 337-338. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/muniri-amasi
  • Ersen Ersoy, II. Bayezit Devri Şairlerinden Münîrî: Hayatı, Eserleri ve Dîvânı (İnceleme-Tenkitli Metin), doctoral thesis, Marmara University, 2010.
  • Ümran Ay, Münîrî'nin Manzum Siyer-i Nebî'si, vol. 1 (İnceleme-Metin), doctoral thesis, Marmara University, 2007.
  • Ayten Akmandor, Divân-ı Münîrî (master's thesis, 1980) and Münîrî ve Mihr ü Müşterî Mesnevisi (doctoral thesis, 1983), Ankara University.
  • İsmail E. Erünsal, "Türk Edebiyatı Tarihi'nin Arşiv Kaynakları I: II. Bâyezid Devrine Ait Bir İn'âmât Defteri", Tarih Enstitüsü Dergisi, nos. 10-11 (1981).

Other sources

Online sources