Münîrî was a divan poet who grew up during the years when Bayezid II and then his son Şehzade Ahmed (Prince Ahmed) governed the sanjak of Amasya, and who spent almost his whole life in that city. His real name is given differently in the sources: in the copy of his Mihr ü Müşterî translation written in his own hand he calls himself "Münîrî bin Mehmed", while Hüseyin Hüsameddin refers to him as "Münîrî Mehmed Çelebi bin Yûsuf Çelebi". He served as nişancı (chancellor) in Prince Ahmed's council, compiled a divan of Turkish and Persian poems, rendered a Persian romance in verse into Turkish, and is remembered as the author of the longest known verse biography of the Prophet in Turkish literature. The details of his life are given in his biography in the Historical Figures section; here the weight falls on his works and on the poems that can still be read today.

What makes Münîrî important for the literature of Amasya is more than the size of his output. His divan contains a Persian ghazal that prefers Amasya to the famous pleasure grounds of Shiraz, a mesnevi of eighty-one couplets describing a journey to Lâdik made in the company of Prince Ahmed, and a long elegy on the loss of two sons, one week apart, in the year 887. A lost prose work of his also became a source for the history of Amasya: Hüseyin Hüsameddin relied heavily on his historical miscellany when describing the Amasya of Prince Ahmed's time. The critical text of the divan was prepared by Ersen Ersoy as a doctoral dissertation in 2010 and published as an e-book by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in 2017; most of the examples below are taken from that edition.

Life and Years in Amasya

His date of birth is unknown. His pen name comes from the word münîr, "that which illuminates, gives light", and the poet uses both Münîr and Münîrî according to the demands of the metre. Ersoy does not regard it as a coincidence that the pen names of Âfitâbî and Mihrî, who lived in Amasya in the same years, are also connected with the sun; Latîfî, too, names the three poets together as fellow townsmen in his entry on Mihrî. There is confusion over his name. Bursalı Mehmed Tâhir, Osman Fevzi Olcay and Mehmet Nâil Tuman record him as "İbrâhim Çelebi"; Ersoy and Ümran Ay, author of the TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam entry, judge this name to be mistaken on the evidence of the colophon of Mihr ü Müşterî. His father's name also appears in two forms: Mehmed in the colophon, Yûsuf in Hüsameddin. The TDV entry, drawing on a register of royal gifts from the reign of Bayezid II, states that his father Mehmed Efendi served as nişancı in the imperial council.

He spent part of his early life in military service. From the couplet "Sipahilikde iş yok itmedügüm / Nedendür bilmezem bitmedügüm" in Mihr ü Müşterî it can be understood that, before becoming nişancı, he served for a long time as a sipahi (cavalryman). The line "N'ola olduňsa cihānda śāĥibü's-seyf ve'l-ķalem" in the divan likewise presents him as a man of both the sword and the pen. The fact that a poem of his is headed "Münîrî-i Kâdî" in a verse anthology of unknown compiler suggests that he may at one time have served as a kadı (judge). He says himself that he wrote in every style of calligraphy, and the presence of Şeyh Hamdullah in the same city in the same years has led to the conjecture that he was trained in the circle of that great calligrapher.

According to Hüseyin Hüsameddin's History of Amasya, Münîrî Mehmed Çelebi, "one of the great scholars and men of letters of Amasya", became Prince Ahmed's nişancı in 910 (1504-1505). In 915 (1509-1510), when the members of the prince's council are listed, "nişâncı Münîrî Çelebi bin Yûsuf" comes immediately after the vizier Yularkısdı Sinan Paşa. Describing the circumcision festivities held in Amasya in 911 for Prince Ahmed's sons, Hüsameddin lists the well-known Turkish poets of the city as Çeşmî, Şermî, Figânî, Kâmî, Melîhî, Münîrî and Mihrî, and adds: "Of these the greatest drinker was Melîhî of Tokat, the best mannered Şermî, and the most learned Münîrî Efendi." The same work reports that the poets presented odes at these festivities and received generous rewards.

What is known of his death is scanty and contradictory. Bursalı Mehmed Tâhir writes, without giving a source, that he died in Sofia in 927 (1520-1521). Evliya Çelebi, on the other hand, includes Münîrî's tomb among the shrines he saw with his own eyes in Amasya. Since there is no other trace of the poet ever going to Sofia, Reyhan Çorak considers burial in Amasya more likely. For this reason all studies give the date of his death with a question mark.

Works

The Divan. Three manuscripts of the divan, which contains both Turkish and Persian poems, are known: Vatican Library Turco 230, Austrian National Library 654 and Istanbul University Library TY 5580. The richest of these is the Vatican copy. The Istanbul University copy has a special value of its own: according to its colophon it was copied by Sultan Murad III in his own hand. A catalogue of the Topkapı Palace library dated 1503 shows that a divan of Münîrî was kept in Bayezid II's private library; the fate of that copy is unknown. From this Ersoy concludes that the divan was compiled before 1503, while the TDV entry states that it was completed in 1502. The text Ersoy established from the three manuscripts and from anthologies of parallel poems contains two mesnevis, two tercibends, twenty-nine kasides (odes), one tahmis, one murabba, 150 Persian and 330 Turkish ghazals, twenty-one tuyuğs, seventeen riddle poems (muamma), nine single couplets (müfred) and one chronogram, about 4,000 couplets in all. Fourteen of the odes are addressed to Bayezid II and seven to Prince Ahmed. Latîfî says that Münîrî had "two divans, Persian and Turkish"; no separate Persian divan has been found to date. Ayten Akmandor wrote a master's thesis on the Istanbul University copy in 1980.

Mihr ü Müşterî. This is a verse translation of the Persian mesnevi of the same name by Assâr of Tabriz (d. 1381). In this tale of love between Mihr, son of Shapur, king of Istakhr, and Müşterî, son of the king's vizier, the names of the characters are taken from the heavenly bodies. Münîrî added about a thousand couplets to an original of some 5,120 couplets, inserting eleven ghazals and many proverbs; the translation runs to 6,011 couplets. The copy written in the poet's own hand is in the British Library (Or. 7742) and, according to its colophon, was completed on 9 Şevval 892 (28 September 1487). The second copy is in the Millet Library among the verse works of the Ali Emîrî Efendi collection and lacks its ending. Ayten Akmandor wrote a doctoral dissertation on the work in 1983. In this mesnevi Münîrî calls Ahmedî and Şeyhî "the masters of this art", and he speaks of his own skill in calligraphy in the couplet "Hutûtun külline urdum kalem ben / Dahı bundan ilerü ne kılam ben".

The Verse Siyer-i Nebî. This is a seven-volume mesnevi in the metre mefâîlün mefâîlün feûlün, narrating the life of the Prophet from the creation of Adam to the conquest of Mecca and the Prophet's death. According to the TDV entry it fills 866 folios and 32,475 couplets; Çorak speaks of about 33,000 couplets. The only known copy is held in the Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Koğuşlar 994-995, and was copied by Mustafa b. Hacı Muhammed b. Mahmûd in 930 (1523-1524). The poet dedicated the work to no dignitary, saying that he wrote it solely for the pleasure of God and the intercession of the Prophet. Among his sources he names Abu'l-Hasan al-Bakri, Ibn Ishaq and Kadı Darîr of Erzurum. The entire work has been the subject of four doctoral dissertations at Marmara University: Ümran Ay (2007, vol. I), Reyhan Çorak (2010, vols. II-III), Mustafa Özkat (2011, vols. IV-V) and Yılmaz Top (2011, vols. VI-VII). Ersoy notes that there is no conclusive proof that the siyer belongs to Münîrî of Amasya; but since no other contemporary poet using the same pen name is known, and since its language, its fondness for punning and its use of proverbs match the divan and Mihr ü Müşterî, he regards the attribution as "very strongly probable".

Lost works. Hüseyin Hüsameddin writes that he saw Münîrî's historical miscellany of Prince Ahmed's era in Amasya, in the house of Şeyh Alizâde Abdullah Efendi, and a collection of his letters (münşeat) in the Veliyyüddin Efendi Library in Istanbul, and he adds with regret that the historical miscellany was later burned. Bursalı Mehmed Tâhir gives the title of this work as Tezkiretü'l-Vekâyi. Judgements taken from it can still be read in the pages of the History of Amasya devoted to Prince Ahmed's time: among them is Münîrî's description of the nişancı Ahmed Câmî Çelebi as "a learned man, a man of letters and a poet, but at the same time a bigoted and arrogant Persian", and his remark on Mîr Gıyâseddin, who had fled Shah Ismail and taken refuge in Amasya, that he was "a very difficult man, somewhat learned, very eloquent and skilled at winning people over". Ersoy reports that he could not find the collection of letters in what is today the Beyazıt State Library. As for the treatise on jurisprudence mentioned in Osmanlı Müellifleri, Ersoy considers it confused with a work belonging to a much later İbrâhim Münîrî.

Literary Character

The biographers of poets value Münîrî's learning but say that his fame remained limited. Latîfî counts him among the panegyrists of Sultan Ahmed and among "the accomplished and wise men of that age", adding "meşâhîr-i şu'arâdan olmaduġı ecilden ḫalḳ kemâlât u ma'ârifinden ġâfil idi": because he was not one of the famous poets, people remained unaware of his accomplishments. Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi is gloomier still: "Lâkin niçe zemândur ki kelimâtınun bedr-i münîri matla'-ı enzâr ve ufk-ı bâl-i erbâb-ı i'tibârdan gârib olmagla ednâ lem'ası zâhir ü sâkıb degüldür." In this sentence, which plays on the pen name, the bright full moon of the poet's words has long since set below the horizon where eyes rise and men of standing look, so that not even its faintest gleam can be seen. Evliya Çelebi, by contrast, introduces him as the sultan of the poets of his age and writes that he composed impromptu verse in Arabic, Persian and Turkish.

Latîfî also relates an anecdote about his gift for improvisation. When a poet named Nihâdî was punished with the cane for some offence, Münîrî at once spoke this couplet:

Degenek ḳıṣṣasını anmañ kim
Ṭoḳunur bir ucı Nihâdî Bege

Do not bring up the tale of the cane, for one end of it touches Nihâdî Bey. The couplet is a joke with a double edge, tying the words both to the tip of the cane and to the way that raising the matter would wound Nihâdî (Latîfî, KTB 2018, p. 495).

According to Ersoy's study, the form in which Münîrî truly excelled was the ghazal. The poet describes his own ghazals as "amorous" and "burning". Although he was not a mystical poet, he uses Sufi symbols; the influence of Hafiz of Shiraz is plain in his Persian ghazals. Ersoy has identified seventeen Persian ghazals as parallel poems (nazire) to Hafiz, and has shown that Münîrî wrote a tahmis on one of Hafiz's ghazals and scattered Hafiz's lines among his own couplets. In his Turkish ghazals the traces of Ahmed Paşa, Şeyhî and Ahmedî can be seen; in his Turkish odes those of Ahmed Paşa and İvazpaşazâde Atâî of Edirne; in his Persian odes those of Zahir of Faryab and Salman of Saveh. In his ode with the refrain "sun" he names both Atâî, who gave the first example of this refrain, and Ahmed Paşa, who made it famous. The presence in the divan of two "müşeccer" odes, written out in the shape of a tree, is also a sign of the interest of those years in the visual form of poetry.

Münîrî's poetry is notable for its plainness and its closeness to the spoken language. The TDV entry states that he was successful in the tradition, begun by Necâtî and continued by Zâtî, of using local expressions, proverbs and idioms; many archaic words occur in his poems. The most distinctive stylistic feature of all his works is his love of punning (cinas). Even the rhyme system of the Siyer-i Nebî is built largely on puns. On the other hand he is not considered very accomplished in the handling of prosody: Ersoy shows that shortenings of long syllables and forced lengthenings occur frequently in the divan. The ramal pattern fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilün is, as with the poets of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries generally, his most frequently used metre.

Münîrî's place among his contemporaries is best shown by the anthologies of parallel poems. Sixty-four of his ghazals appear in the Mecmau'n-nezâir compiled by Nazmî of Edirne in 1523, fifty-one in Pervâne Bey's anthology of 1560, and one in the Câmi'u'n-nezâir of Hacı Kemal of Eğridir, dated 1512. These figures place him among the poets most generously represented in such anthologies; he himself wrote parallel poems to Necâtî, Mesîhî, Ahmed Paşa, Cem Sultan, Nizâmî of Karaman and Cezerî Kâsım Paşa, who wrote under the name Sâfî. In the palace circle of Bayezid II and then of Prince Ahmed in Amasya he shared the same gatherings with Âfitâbî, Makâmî, Zeyneb Hatun and Mihrî Hatun. Comparing Mihrî's Lâdik murabba, Münîrî's Lâdik mesnevi and the two odes of Mûsâ Medhî of Lâdik, Avni Erdemir points out that these poems, born in the same literary circle, must have been written before 1511, when Prince Ahmed left Amasya.

Selected Poems

The texts below are taken verbatim from published editions. The poems of the divan are given in the transcription of Ersen Ersoy's 2017 edition, and the couplets from the Siyer-i Nebî in the form found in Reyhan Çorak's 2018 article. The paragraphs of meaning are explanations in plain modern language.

Ghazal: "Dökdi cevāhiri śu gibi çeşm-i eşk-bār"

Dökdi cevāhiri śu gibi çeşm-i eşk-bār
Gül-zār-ı kūyuňa getürince iki bıňar

Şehlā gözi füsūnına aldanma ey göňül
Miskīnligine mestüň iňen olmaz iǾtibār

Şeh-bāz-ı zülfüňi ki gönül ŧutdı cān virüp
Her gören eydür anı ki vallāh zihī şikār

Kirpüklerümi ķan ile taĥrīr içün ķomış
Naķķāş-ı śunǾ yüzümi itdükde zer-nigār

Bildüň dil-i raķībi urup ķatı göňlüňe
Seng-i miĥekle bes bilinür ķalb-i kem-Ǿayār

Yoķdur mecāl-i cān ki gide sīneden Münīr
Yoħsa helāk iderdi beni ġam hezār-bār

My weeping eye poured out its jewels like water when it brought two springs to the rose garden of your street. O heart, do not be deceived by the spell of the dark-grey eye; little trust can be placed in a drunkard's humility. The heart gave its life and caught the falcon of your locks; all who see it say, "By God, what a fine catch." When the painter of creation gilded my face with yellow, he left my eyelashes to write in blood. You came to know your rival's heart by striking it against your own hard heart; a debased coin is known by the touchstone. Münîr, the soul has no strength to leave the breast; otherwise grief would have destroyed me a thousand times. The opening couplet is the one Latîfî and Kınalızâde chose to introduce Münîrî in their biographical dictionaries; in Latîfî the second line reads "iki pıñar", in Kınalızâde "iki bekâr". In the fifth couplet the word "kalb", meaning both heart and counterfeit coin, is a typical example of the punning the poet loved. The second couplet is missing from the Vatican and Vienna copies (Ersoy 2017, pp. 263-264, Turkish ghazal 86; Latîfî, KTB 2018, p. 495; Kınalızâde, KTB 2017, p. 801).

Ghazal: "Śanmaň ki ġam-ı Ǿışķa bugün bāşlaruz biz"

Śanmaň ki ġam-ı Ǿışķa bugün bāşlaruz biz
Ferhād ile bu fende sebaķ-dāşlaruz biz

LaǾlüň var iken gevher aňan kimseyi ey dost
ǾUşşāķ arasında sürüben ŧāşlaruz biz

Bir ķaŧre şarāba virürüz naķd-i dü kevni
Meyħāne-i Ǿışķ içre o ķallāşlaruz biz

Nerd-i ġam-ı Ǿışķ içre metāǾ-ı dil ü cānı
Bir ad ile śarf idici evbāşlaruz biz

Mecnūn ile Vāmıķ gibi Ǿālemde Münīrī
Dīvānelerüz pes niçe yoldāşlaruz biz

Do not suppose that we have taken up the grief of love only today; in this art we were fellow pupils with Ferhad. O friend, while your ruby lips are here, we drive from among the lovers anyone who speaks of jewels and stone him. For one drop of wine we give the ready coin of both worlds; we are those penniless rakes of the tavern of love. In the backgammon of love's grief we are the vagabonds who stake the goods of heart and soul on a single throw. Münîrî, like Mecnun and Vâmık we are madmen in this world; we have long been their companions on the road. Ersoy counts this ghazal among the poems that give a clue to the poet's own character: here Münîrî portrays himself as a rake who sets no value on worldly goods and places love before everything. The ghazal is not found in the three manuscripts of the divan but only in Pervâne Bey's anthology; Ersoy included it in the text because no other poet using the same pen name is known up to 1560. The lengthening of the Turkish word "taş" (stone) for the sake of the metre in the second couplet is also cited as an example in Ersoy's study of prosody (Ersoy 2017, p. 288, Turkish ghazal 135; see also p. 12).

Persian Ghazal: "Leb-i laǾl-i şeker-ħāyet ki cān baħşed Mesīĥā-rā"

Be-meydān-ı Amāsiyye bi-yā Ĥāfız to ger ħˇāhī
Kenār-ı āb-ı Rükn-ābād u gül-geşt-i muśallā-rā

Zi-gül-rūyān-ı sünbül-zülf heme eŧrāf-ı vey pür şod
Nesīm-i śubĥ ez-ān āyed be-her sūyeş temāşā-rā

Following Ersoy's translation, the couplets mean: O Hafiz, if you long for the banks of the Ruknabad stream and the promenade of the Musalla, come to the square of Amasya. Because every side of it is filled with rose-faced beauties whose hair smells of hyacinth, the morning breeze comes to gaze on its surroundings. The Ruknabad stream and the Musalla promenade are two places named in a famous ghazal in which Hafiz praises Shiraz. Münîrî calls out to Hafiz, recalling his own line, and tells him that he can find the equal of these beloved places in Amasya. In the later couplets of the eight-couplet ghazal Amasya is likewise described as a place to which the morning breeze brings greetings from paradise and where houris come out to enjoy the view. This Persian poem, written as a nazire to Hafiz, is where Münîrî joins his devotion to Persian poetry with his love for his own city (Ersoy 2017, p. 134, Persian ghazal 2, couplets 4-5).

Mesnevi: "Der-taǾrīf-i Şehr-i Lādiķ ve Medĥ-i Sulŧān Aĥmed"

Meger vaķt-i seĥerde bir gün ey dil
Süvār oldı şeh-i devrān-ı pür-dil

Şeh-i çābük-süvār ol miŝl-i Ĥayder
Ki her işde aňa virmişdi Ĥay der

Aśıl maķśūda gelsün di Münīrī
N'ider görelüm ol bedr-i münīri

Bunı ben söyleşürken kendüm ile
Belürdi śanki cennet gendüm ile

Göründi bir güzel yir k'adı Lādiķ
Behişt-i Ǿadn anuň Ǿışķında sādıķ

Yetişmiş tāze güller deste deste
Her elden yetişür bir deste deste

Kenār-ı baĥre yetişdüň śanasın
Kişi hīc aňmaz anda ev śanasın

Nice gül gül-şen-i nīlūfer oldur
Hemān Mıśr-ı dile Nīl ü fer oldur

Biri Aķŧāġdur çarħ ile hem-ser
Görenler dir anı Allāhü ekber

One day at dawn, O heart, the bold-hearted ruler of the age mounted his horse. That nimble horseman, like Ali, had been granted the help of God the Ever-Living in every task. Münîrî, come to the real purpose and let us see what that shining full moon will do. While I was talking thus to myself, a paradise appeared, with fields of wheat. A lovely place came into view whose name was Lâdik; even the Garden of Eden is faithful in its love for it. Fresh roses have grown in bunches, and from every hand a bunch is held out. On the shore of the lake you would think you had reached the sea; there a man never thinks of his home. Many a rose garden there becomes a garden of water lilies; for the Egypt of the heart it is the Nile and its splendour. One of the mountains is Akdağ, standing level with the sky; those who see it cry "God is great". The mesnevi of eighty-one couplets describes how Prince Ahmed and his retinue mounted at dawn and reached Lâdik through forests and over steep passes, and then praises the lakes, mountains and beauties of Lâdik and the prince himself. The chosen couplets show Münîrî's love of punning plainly: Hayder and "Hay der" (the Ever-Living gave), Münîrî and "münîr" (shining), kendüm (myself) and gendüm (wheat), deste and deste (bunch), nîlüfer (water lily) and "Nîl ü fer" (the Nile and splendour) are bound together by likeness of sound (Ersoy 2017, pp. 113-119, Mesnevi 2, couplets 1-2, 20, 26-27, 29, 55, 57, 65).

Elegy: "Merŝiyye-i Evlād-ı Münīr"

Ķurretü'l-aynum ǾAlī birle ciger-kūşem Feraĥ
N'eylediler n'itdiler bilsem hele bārī saňa

K'ol iki tāze cüvānuň ķanını bir haftada
Śu gibi içüp bini biň derde ķılduň mübtelā

Olmış idi hicrete heştād ü heft ü heşt ü śad
Şeş cihetden göstericek baňa yüz yüz biň belā

BaǾd-ez-ān Rūķıyye-veş Belķīs-ı ŝānī duħterüm
K'anuň ādābından iderdi melek gökde ĥayā

Bī-meĥābā fücǿe birle anı da ķılduň helāk
Śūretā bedr olmış iken ķāmet ile müntehā

O heavens, if only I knew what Ali, the light of my eyes, and Ferah, the piece of my heart, did to you, what they had done. Within a single week you drank the blood of those two young men like water and plunged me into a thousand griefs. It was the year eight hundred and eighty-seven of the Hegira, when from all six directions you showed me hundreds of thousands of calamities. After that my daughter, like Rukayya, a second Bilqis, whose good manners made the angels in heaven blush, you destroyed her too, suddenly and without pity, when her face had become a full moon and her stature had reached its prime. This elegy of fifty-four couplets, in the form of an ode, gives the most certain date of the poet's life: his two sons died one week apart in 887 (1482). The TDV entry attributes their deaths to an epidemic of plague. The couplets on his daughter's death show that the same misfortune struck the family once again. Most of the poem is a reproach to faithless fortune, but at the end the poet turns to resignation and prays that his children may be with Hasan and Hüseyin, close to the Prophet. Reyhan Çorak also quotes the first two of these couplets in her article on the Siyer-i Nebî (Ersoy 2017, pp. 125-128, Kaside 29, couplets 19-20, 33, 42-43; Çorak 2018, p. 17).

From the Siyer-i Nebî: The Opening of the Hicretnâme

Gel iy hicrân elinde mübtelâ dil
Di söyle hicr ile ne hâl-i müşkil

İñilde ney gibi her dem olup zâr
Nice kânun umar zâr içre bîmâr

Büküp kaddüñi kıldı hicr eli çeng
Neçün iñlenmez idüp nâle âheng

Münîrî söylegil hicretle ashâb
Ne kıldı ya ne çekdi cân-ı ahbâb

Come, O heart held captive in the hand of separation, tell what a hard state separation brings. Moan like the reed flute, weeping at every moment; how many a kanun does the sick man hope for in his weeping. The hand of separation has bent your stature into a harp; why do you not lament, setting your wailing to a tune. Münîrî, tell what the Companions did in the Hijra, what the souls of the friends endured. The Hicretnâme in the third volume of the Siyer-i Nebî runs, according to Çorak, to 1,101 couplets and is the longest known account of the Hijra in Turkish literature. Before turning to the story of the emigration the poet addresses himself and reflects on separation; the names of the instruments ney, kanun and çeng are used here also in their senses of wailing, rule and bent shape. In the rest of the section the council at the Dâr al-Nadwa, Ali sleeping in the Prophet's bed, the cave of Thawr and the stories of Suraqa and Umm Ma'bad are told in a plain style close to spoken language (Çorak 2018, pp. 21-22, couplets 2966-2968, 2974).

Tuyuğ and Single Couplets

Senüň Ǿışķuň beni dīvāne ķıldı
Cihāna ĥālümi efsāne ķıldı
İrüp şemǾ-i cemālüňden tecellī
Dil-i pür-sūzumı pervāne ķıldı

Münīrī ister iseň bī-fenā genc
ĶanāǾat gencin ola fāriġ ol var

Ķoma elden ölince Ǿışķı Münīr
Her kişi śanǾatında yarlıġanur

Your love has driven me mad and made my state a legend to the world; a radiance from the candle of your beauty reached my burning heart and turned it into a moth. Münîrî, if you want a treasure that never perishes, let it be the treasure of contentment; let go of everything else and be on your way. Münîr, do not let go of love until you die; every man is forgiven in his own craft. The quatrains headed "rubâî" in the manuscripts of the divan are counted by Ersoy, on the evidence of their metres, as tuyuğs, and he places Münîrî among the few poets of the Anatolian tradition who wrote tuyuğs, seeing in this the influence of Atâî. The first quatrain is one of these tuyuğs; unlike the others it is written in the metre mefâîlün mefâîlün feûlün. The single couplets are found only in the Vatican copy; the two chosen here show the poet's inclination towards pithy sayings on contentment and love (Ersoy 2017, p. 380, tuyuğ 2; p. 389, müfred 1-2).

Chronology

887 (1482): His two sons Ali and Ferah die one week apart; the poet writes his elegy, which dates the event to this year.

889 (1484): He composes a Persian chronogram for a prayer ground (musalla) built by Bayezid II.

9 Şevval 892 (28 September 1487): He completes the copy of his Mihr ü Müşterî translation written in his own hand.

1503: A divan of Münîrî appears in Bayezid II's private library in the Topkapı Palace library catalogue.

910 (1504-1505): According to Hüsameddin, he becomes Prince Ahmed's nişancı.

911 (1505-1506): At the circumcision festivities for Prince Ahmed's sons he is named "the most learned" of the poets of Amasya.

915 (1509-1510): He appears as nişancı among the members of Prince Ahmed's council.

Before 1511: He writes his mesnevi on the journey to Lâdik made with Prince Ahmed.

1512: One of his ghazals is included in the Câmi'u'n-nezâir of Hacı Kemal of Eğridir.

927 (1520-1521): According to Bursalı Mehmed Tâhir he dies in Sofia; Evliya Çelebi places his tomb in Amasya.

1523: Sixty-four of his ghazals appear in the Mecmau'n-nezâir of Nazmî of Edirne.

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

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Ersen Ersoy (ed.), II. Bayezit Devri Şairlerinden Münîrî ve Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin), Ankara: Ministry of Culture and Tourism, 2017 (e-book), pp. 1-18, 113-119, 125-128, 134, 263-264, 288, 380, 389-391.
  • Ersen Ersoy, II. Bayezit Devri Şairlerinden Münîrî, Hayatı, Eserleri ve Dîvânı (İnceleme-Tenkitli Metin), doctoral dissertation, Marmara University Institute of Turkic Studies, 2010 (abstract).
  • Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar, Amasya Tarihi, vol. III, Istanbul 1927, pp. 243-249, 255 (new edition by Amasya Municipality, vols. 1-4). amasya.bel.tr
  • Latîfî, Tezkiretü'ş-Şu'arâ ve Tabsıratü'n-Nuzamâ, ed. Rıdvan Canım, Ankara: Ministry of Culture and Tourism, 2018 (e-book), p. 495.
  • Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi, Tezkiretü'ş-Şu'arâ, ed. Aysun Sungurhan, Ankara: Ministry of Culture and Tourism, 2017 (e-book), p. 801.

Academic studies

  • Reyhan Çorak, "Amasyalı Münîrî'nin Siyer-i Nebî'sinde Bulunan Hicretnâme ve Hususiyetleri", Hadis ve Siyer Araştırmaları IV/2 (2018), pp. 11-48.
  • Avni Erdemir, "Aynı Edebî Muhit İçinde Üç Şair: Mihrî Hatun, Münîrî, Mûsâ Medhî ve Lâdik Methiyeleri", Turkish Studies 13/28 (2018), pp. 341-379.

Books

  • Ümran Ay, "Münîrî Amâsî", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, Supplement 2, Ankara 2019, pp. 337-338. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Günay Kut, "British Museum'daki Bazı Önemli Türkçe Yazmalar ve Tevâif-i Aşere'den Tâife-i Bektaşiyân", Yazmalar Arasında, vol. I, Istanbul 2005, pp. 49-50 (cited after Ersoy and Çorak).
  • Ayten Akmandor, Münîrî ve Mihr ü Müşterî Mesnevisi, doctoral dissertation, Ankara University Faculty of Languages, History and Geography, 1983 (cited after Ersoy and Çorak).

Online sources