In Ottoman calligraphy, Şeyh Hamdullah is remembered as the master who took the art of writing from the point where Yâqūt al-Musta'simī had left it and gave it a new proportion. Yet whether a style outlives its originator and becomes the standard for later generations depends on the hands that take it over. Two people stand out among those hands: his son Mustafa Dede and Şükrullah Halife, who married the master's daughter. Of the forty-three pupils named in the biographical dictionaries, these two are counted as the leading representatives of the Şeyh's school. The general history of the calligraphic school and Hamdullah's own life belong to another article; this one deals with the lives, families and pupils of these two calligraphers and with their contribution to the school.

A Calligraphic Family in Amasya

Behind the two names stands Amasya's tradition of writing. Hamdullah's father, the Suhrawardi sheikh Mustafa Dede, belonged to a family that had migrated from Bukhara to Amasya and had taken charge of his son's spiritual training; the son Mustafa Dede therefore carries the name of his grandfather. Hamdullah learned the religious sciences and literature from Hatib Kasım Efendi and the six scripts (aklâm-ı sitte) from Hayreddin Mar'aşî, a well-known calligrapher of the day. His maternal uncle Celâleddin Amâsî was also a calligrapher, and Hamdullah married his daughter. From this marriage he had a daughter and a son named Mustafa, who like his father became a calligrapher. Hamdullah's household, in other words, already worked like a calligraphy workshop while he was still in Amasya, and writing passed from hand to hand within the bonds of kinship. According to Hüsâmeddin, the family was known in Amasya as the "Saru Kâdızâdeler" after the nickname of their forebear, the Amasya judge Rükneddin Mahmud, and the elder Hamdullah's son Mustafa Dede Çelebi and his descendants were likewise remembered as calligraphers.

Şükrullah's lineage leads back to the same circle. According to what Hüsâmeddin gives in the ninth and tenth volumes of his Amasya Tarihi, Hayreddin Halil was the son of Hasan b. Ali of Maraş; he had come to Amasya as a young man, learned to write from Sofu Yahya Çelebi and the city's other masters, and served as divan secretary to Prince Alâeddin, governor of Amasya. After the prince was strangled in 846 (1442-1443) he devoted himself to training pupils; he is recorded as alive in 873 and died around 876 (1471-1472). His most famous pupil was Hamdullah. This master's son, Sinâneddin Yusuf Çelebi, was Şükrullah's father. Şükrullah was thus born the grandson of Hamdullah's teacher and was placed with the master his own grandfather had trained. The tie between Hamdullah and Şükrullah was, before it was a bond between master and apprentice, a closeness between two families of calligraphers lasting several generations.

Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin Yasar, in his Amasya Tarihi, extends this observation to the city as a whole. In his view, calligraphers such as Şükrullah Halife, Abdullah-ı Sânî of Amasya, Mustafa Dede and Derviş Mehmed Dede had very few equals anywhere in the Ottoman lands; anyone who reads the biographical dictionaries of calligraphers knows that most of the most celebrated calligraphers of Rum were from Amasya, and for this reason the people of Amasya were regarded as "üstâd-ı küll", masters of the whole art. Hüsâmeddin's sentence may look like local praise, but the fact that Hamdullah, Mustafa Dede, Abdullah Amâsî, Celâleddin Amâsî and Celâlzâde Muhyiddin Amâsî all appear together on the list of the seven great calligraphic masters of Anatolia (esâtize-i Rûm) shows that the claim cannot be dismissed as exaggeration. The remaining two names on the list are Ahmed Şemseddin Karahisârî and Şerbetçizâde İbrâhim Efendi of Bursa.

From Amasya to Istanbul

The sources do not agree on when the family moved to Istanbul. The usual view is that Bayezid II summoned his former calligraphy teacher to the capital after his accession in 1481. Hüsâmeddin, however, gives a more detailed sequence: when Bayezid left Amasya in Rebiülevvel 886 (1481) to take the throne, Hamdullah became calligraphy teacher to Prince Ahmed, who remained in Amasya; then, at the great circumcision festival of 896 (1490-1491), the sultan invited him to Istanbul and he set out "with his family, children and son-in-law". The same date appears in the biography of Şükrullah's father: after the circumcision event of 896, Sinâneddin Yusuf went to Istanbul with his son Şükrullah in Hamdullah's company, became sheikh of a lodge near the Hırka-i Şerif attributed to Akşemseddin, and died around 905 (1499-1500). If Hüsâmeddin's date is correct, Şükrullah's first years in Istanbul must have been spent between his father's lodge in the Fatih quarter and the writing room at Topkapı; this last sentence is an inference.

Sinâneddin Yusuf was himself more than the father of a calligrapher. Hüsâmeddin describes him as a Halveti sheikh who attended the circle of Gümüşlüzâde Pîr Hayreddin Hızır el-Halvetî, received deputyship from him and was therefore known as "Sinan Halife". The same record states that in 887 (1482) he sold the share of a farm he had inherited from his father to the chief gatekeeper Firuz Ağa and was granted a stipend in return. The name of Firuz Ağa stands out here, because years later Şükrullah would teach calligraphy at the Firuz Ağa school in Istanbul. Whether the two pieces of information can be connected is not discussed in the sources; there is no document that would establish a firm link between them.

One branch of the family stayed in Amasya. Hamdullah Çelebi, son of Hamdullah's brother Mahmud Çelebi, had learned to write from his uncle and, when his uncle left for Istanbul in 896, remained in Amasya and kept the post of calligraphy teacher at the Sultan Bayezid school. Known in Amasya as "Hamdullah-ı Sânî", the second Hamdullah, he became calligraphy teacher to Prince Ahmed in 912 and died around 931. While those who had gone with his uncle, namely Mustafa Dede and Şükrullah, carried on the Şeyh's style in Istanbul, the calligraphers trained in Amasya drew for a time on the writing room of this second Hamdullah. The city's tradition of writing thus lived on in two centres at once.

Mustafa Dede

Birth and Training

Mustafa Dede was born in Amasya in 900 (1495). According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, his father had by then settled in Istanbul with his family at the invitation of Bayezid II, teaching writing to secretaries and attendants at the palace and copying Qur'ans in the writing rooms near the Harem and in the palace at Edirne. The sources do not explain this mismatch between his birthplace and the date of the family's move to Istanbul. Mustafa Dede learned the six scripts from his father and received permission to write in the Şeyh's style. Among the pupils who grew up beside his father was Hüseyin Şâh-ı Şehrî. In the words of Müstakimzâde's Tuhfe-i Hattâtîn, this calligrapher was "Mustafa Dede merhûm ile maan perveriş-yâfte", raised together with him; he was older than Mustafa Dede and known for his devotion to his master. The date of Hüseyin Şâh's death is disputed: Müstakimzâde has him living until the year 1000, while Hüsâmeddin writes that the Islamic court registers show he died in 949 (1542-1543).

When Hamdullah died in 926 (1520), his son was about twenty-five and had not yet fully mastered the finer points of the art. The biographical dictionaries diverge at this point: some say that his real teacher was Abdullah of Amasya, and Müstakimzâde records that after his father's death Mustafa Dede worked under Abdullah-ı Amâsî and so reached the subtleties of writing "in scripts of every kind". Abdullah Amâsî was a relative of Hamdullah and one of the esâtize-i Rûm, so this move did not mean leaving the school.

Another factor that matured Mustafa Dede's hand was his journey to Egypt and the Hejaz. Setting out on the pilgrimage, the calligrapher stayed for a while in Cairo, where he studied his father's albums closely; the sources also say that during the pilgrimage he saw the works of Hamdullah that had been presented to the Kaaba and to the Prophet's tomb in Medina. On this account Mustafa Dede came to understand his father's manner largely by examining his works one by one. On his return from the pilgrimage he settled in Üsküdar and began to train pupils so that the chain of Şeyh Hamdullah would continue.

Style and Works

The sources describe his writing as firm and elegant and say that he wrote on the same level as his father. Müstakimzâde writes that he saw his Qur'an endowed to the Süleymaniye Mosque and states that every line, indeed every letter, of Mustafa Dede's writing defied imitation. The same source mentions forgers who tried to age paper with ironing, henna-like dye (vesme) and coffee grounds so as to pass it off as the Dede's work. The remark attributed to Bakkal Ârif Efendi on seeing the signature of one of his panels, "If I could write a Mustafa like that, I would call myself a calligrapher", belongs to the same tradition.

Mustafa Dede left the art world Qur'ans, en'âm prayer books, single sections (cüz), albums (murakka') and calligraphic panels (kıta). In the Topkapı Palace Museum Library, the Emanet Treasury holds his albums and panels numbered 2099-2107 and 2299, his Qur'an Y 406, a copy of the Sura of the Cave numbered 407, and en'âm books numbered 305, 306 and 402. Two Qur'ans (AY, 6566 and 6625) and an album (AY, 6508) in the Rare Books Library of Istanbul University, an album (no. 256) in the Turkish Foundation Museum of Calligraphic Arts, and a Qur'an (no. 9963) in the Koyunoğlu Museum in Konya are also counted among his works. These figures remain modest beside the tradition that his father wrote forty-seven Qur'ans and some thousand copies of the en'âm and of the suras of the Cave and of the Tidings. Mustafa Dede's life, however, came to an end at forty-five.

One more work has been added to this list in recent years. In April 2024 the Minister of Culture and Tourism, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, announced that a Qur'an copied in thuluth script by Mustafa Dede at the beginning of the sixteenth century had been brought back to Türkiye. According to the ministry, the manuscript had been taken out of the country illegally and put up for sale in England in 2017; it was also stated that it had once belonged to the collection of Abdülhamid II. The manuscript is notable because its written sections were prepared in the technique known in calligraphy as "vassale", pasted onto a different sheet of paper. It was announced that the Qur'an would be displayed at the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts.

Family

The only detailed record of Mustafa Dede's marriage is in Hüsâmeddin. According to the tenth volume of the Amasya Tarihi, the calligrapher's wife Sittî Hâtun was the daughter of the Şeyhülislam Zenbilli Ali Efendi and the granddaughter of Uzun Mustafa Çelebi, after whom a quarter and a mosque in Amasya are named. Sittî Hâtun built a school with a small mosque beside it at Vefa in Istanbul and another school in the Temennâ quarter of Amasya, endowed her properties for the upkeep of these buildings, and died at a great age in 973 (1565-1566), being buried at Vefa. Reşad Ekrem Koçu's notes for the İstanbul Ansiklopedisi also know a daughter of Zenbilli Ali Efendi named Sittî Hâtun, but place the mosque she built near Silivrikapı and write that her grave lies in Zeyrek, in the courtyard of the Zenbilli Ali Efendi school beside her father. Koçu's note says nothing of a marriage to Mustafa Dede; the identification of the two records as one person rests solely on Hüsâmeddin's information.

This household, too, produced calligraphers. According to Hüsâmeddin, his son Hamza Çelebi was born in Amasya, went to Istanbul as a child, learned to write from his father, trained pupils in Istanbul and died in 968 (1560-1561); he also records that a Qur'an written by him rested on a lectern in the Süleymaniye Mosque. The other son, Derviş Mehmed, was also known by the nickname "Şehlâ Derviş". According to Koçu's entry, based on Müstakimzâde, he was born in Istanbul, learned to write as a small child in his father's house and was a thuluth and naskh calligrapher who received permission to sign from his father. A Qur'an of his, too, was venerated for centuries on one of the lecterns before the mihrab of the Süleymaniye Mosque. Derviş Mehmed died in 1001 (1592-1593) and was buried beside his famous grandfather; the phrase "Hattât-ı Kur'an" gives the year of his death by the abjad reckoning. The next link of the line is Hamza's son Hasan b. Hamza.

Death

Mustafa Dede died in 945 (1538) at the age of forty-five, while engaged in training pupils in Üsküdar. The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi attributes his death to the wrong treatment of a minor illness; Müstakimzâde speaks of his having carelessly eaten a substance called "nâhun". The poet Kandî composed a chronogram on his death with the line "Gitdi dedem cennete" ("My Dede has gone to paradise"); by the abjad reckoning the phrase yields 945. Mustafa Dede was buried beside his father in the Karacaahmet Cemetery in Üsküdar. His grave no longer survives.

Pupils

Among his pupils are named Gubârî Abdurrahman, Ulvî, Pîr Mehmed b. Şükrullah, Derviş Mehmed b. Mustafa, Mehmed Dal Çelebi, Ali b. Hüsâm and Hamza b. Mustafa Dede. The presence of Şükrullah Halife's son on the list shows that each of the two branches drew on the other. Hüsâmeddin adds a name from Amasya: Aydınzâde Habîb Çelebi, a relative of Mahmud Çelebi, sheikh of the Emir Buhârî lodge, learned the various scripts in Istanbul from "Hamdullah Amasîzâde Mustafa Dede", became a secretary of the Imperial Council and died around 971 (1563-1564). The same author records that Abdullah Kırımî, a pupil of Derviş Mehmed b. Mustafa Dede, taught writing to Tâczâde İsmâil of Amasya; this chain shows that the Mustafa Dede branch lived on among the secretaries of Amasya as well.

Şükrullah Halife

Lineage and Childhood

Şükrullah was born in Amasya, the son of Mar'aşîzâde Şeyh Sinâneddin Yusuf Efendi. His father placed him in Şeyh Hamdullah's care while he was still a child. The third link of the lineage appears differently in two separate entries by Hüsâmeddin. In the entry on Pîr Mehmed in the eighth volume, Şükrullah is the son of Sinâneddin Yusuf Çelebi and grandson of "the famous calligrapher Hayreddin Hızır". In the entry on Şükrullah in the eleventh volume, however, his father is explicitly introduced as Sinâneddin Yusuf, son of "Hayreddîn Mar'aşîzâde, the master of Hamdullah Efendi". In the tenth volume the name Hayreddin Hızır is used for Gümüşlüzâde Pîr Hayreddin Hızır, the Halveti sheikh from whom Sinâneddin Yusuf received deputyship. When these records are set side by side, it emerges that Şükrullah's grandfather was Hamdullah's teacher Hayreddin Halil Mar'aşî and that the name "Hayreddin Hızır" arose from a confusion; this assessment is an inference based on comparing Hüsâmeddin's own texts. Hüsâmeddin also calls Şükrullah Hamdullah's son-in-law and cousin, without saying through which line the kinship ran.

The biographers write that the boy was unruly and was put to various kinds of service, including shepherding, to tame him. Part of this account is interpretation; one should bear in mind that a calligrapher's training began as a kind of service, growing up by working in the master's household. Hüsâmeddin writes that Şükrullah attached himself to Hamdullah "at a very young age", learned the various scripts in his service, and became his "tilmîz-i hâss", his special pupil. Şükrullah went to Istanbul with Hamdullah. Müstakimzâde records that he served his master without interruption and even cooked for him when needed. This loyalty and diligence won him the Şeyh's favour. Hamdullah came to regard him as a spiritual son and gave him his daughter in marriage; Şükrullah thus became both pupil and son-in-law.

The Şeyh's Successor

Şükrullah studied thuluth and naskh with Hamdullah and received his diploma (icâzet). Thanks to his mastery of fine writing he was regarded during his teacher's lifetime as "hayrü'l-halef", the best of successors. After Hamdullah's death the posts of calligraphy teacher he had held at the writing room of Topkapı Palace and at the Firuz Ağa school were given to him. For years he taught writing at these two schools and trained hundreds of calligraphers. In Hüsâmeddin's words, "on the death of his master and father-in-law he took his place and became exceedingly famous." In the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi entry on Alâeddin Ali Çelebi he appears as "Şeşkalem Şükrullah Halîfe"; şeşkalem means "six pens" in Persian, but no record explaining the nickname has been found.

Müstakimzâde says of him "Şeyhâne hutûtta alem ve dest-i melekede vücûhla müsellem", that is, a calligrapher who could be held up as a standard-bearer of the Şeyh's style and a master whose manual skill was acknowledged by all. Hüsâmeddin says he wrote many Qur'ans, en'âm books, sections and books. The Topkapı Palace Museum Library holds an album he wrote in imitation of Hamdullah, an En'âm-ı Şerîf and a section containing the Sura of Victory. The word imitation carries no negative sense here; in Hamdullah's school those who succeeded were praised with the phrase "he wrote like the Şeyh", and training consisted precisely of learning by rewriting the master's models.

An early dated Qur'an by Şükrullah has also been the subject of a recent comparative study. Tuba Su's doctoral thesis in art (sanatta yeterlik), completed at Fatih Sultan Mehmet Vakıf University in 2023, sets the Yâsîn suras of four Qur'ans side by side to trace the development of naskh in Ottoman Qur'an copying: the copies of Yâqūt al-Musta'simī dated 690 (1291), Şeyh Hamdullah dated 914 (1508), Şükrullah Halife dated 899 (1494) and Hâfız Osman dated 1094 (1683). The comparison is made on the basis of page layout, the angle at which letters and words flow along the line, and the structure of the letters. The thesis abstract introduces Şükrullah as Hamdullah's "leading pupil". The date 899 shows that, while his master was still alive and only a few years after their arrival in Istanbul, Şükrullah had reached the level of copying a Qur'an on his own.

Pupils

Şükrullah's pupils include well-known names of the period. Alâeddin Ali Çelebi, author of the Hümâyunnâme, learned the art of calligraphy from him; Beyânî became a calligrapher by receiving a diploma in ta'lik from him and was appointed professor at the Kestel Madrasa in return for making a fair copy of his teacher's Qur'an commentary. Nefeszâde Mustafa Efendi, Şerîf Seyyid Abdullah Efendi and Fevrî Ahmed Efendi are also counted among his pupils. Koçu mentions Şerif Abdullah Efendi as one of the Istanbul notables who lived before 1000 (1591-1592) and one of the renowned calligraphers of his day. The list shows that Şükrullah was as much an educator as a calligrapher: those he trained included poets, madrasa professors and authors of biographical dictionaries.

One of his pupils, Fazlullah Efendi of Belgrade, is a good example of how the school was carried on through imitation. Having learned thuluth and naskh from Şükrullah, Fazlullah imitated Şeyh Hamdullah's writing so closely that his pieces were taken for the Şeyh's own hand. Müstakimzâde weighs this closeness with a simile: the writings of the man from Belgrade are the very image of Şeyh Hamdullah's, but they are like the colour of a rose without its scent. The same author says that he saw the copy of Şeyhî's Hüsrev ü Şîrîn that Fazlullah completed in 970 (1562-1563) and found it very beautiful.

Not every pupil attached to Şükrullah's name in the biographical dictionaries is equally reliable. Hüsâmeddin objects to Müstakimzâde in two instances. In the first, Nefeszâde Mustafa Efendi is said to have learned writing from Şükrullah Halife; Hüsâmeddin, recalling that Şükrullah died before 950 and that Nefeszâde died in 1011 (1602-1603), regards this as an error and writes that Mustafa Efendi learned to write in Amasya from his uncle Hamdullah Hamdi Efendi. In the second, Müstakimzâde, having seen the Qur'an written in 1001 by Hâfız Cîlânî Mehmed b. Süleyman of Amasya, counted him "among Şükrullah Halife's pupils, being one of the apprentices of the hearth". Hüsâmeddin notes instead that the calligrapher stated in his own hand that his teacher was Ebu'l-Fazl Mehmed Efendi of Amasya, who died in 941. These objections suggest that in later generations Şükrullah's name came to be used almost as a general label for the Şeyh's style; this last interpretation is an inference.

Death and Grave

The sources give the date of Şükrullah Halife's death within a range of a few years. Müstakimzâde estimates that he lived until about 950; Hüsâmeddin in one place gives 950 as "the most probable assumption" and in another writes that he died before 950; some biographies give the year 951 (1543-1544). Hüsâmeddin describes him as "exceedingly skilled in the known scripts, good-natured and of Sufi disposition"; given his father's and grandfather's ties to Halveti circles, the description seems apt. He was buried beside his master, near Şeyh Hamdullah in the Karacaahmet Cemetery in Üsküdar. Because many famous calligraphers were buried around the Şeyh's grave over time, the spot came to be known as the Şeyh Sofası; the graves of Şükrullah and Mustafa Dede, however, no longer survive.

The loss of the graves is in keeping with the general condition of Karacaahmet. The section of the cemetery known as "Hattatlar", the Calligraphers, is the area where Şeyh Hamdullah is buried. Yet sixteenth-century gravestones are almost entirely absent from Karacaahmet; the oldest surviving stone, dated 1520, belongs to Şeyh Hamdullah, and most of the stones date from the nineteenth century. The stones of Şükrullah and Mustafa Dede were most probably lost over these centuries; this is an inference, as there is no record of what became of them.

Family

Şükrullah made calligraphy a family profession. His sons Pîr Mehmed Dede, Şeyh Ahmed Efendi, Süleyman Efendi and Mustafa Efendi, and his grandson Mehmed b. Süleyman, were trained as calligraphers. According to Hüsâmeddin, Pîr Mehmed and his son Hâfız Ahmed Çelebi were known as "Şeker Halifezâde"; Hâfız Ahmed was also a famous calligrapher and died in 989 (1581). Hamdullah's writing thus travelled along two family branches descending from Mustafa Dede and Şükrullah.

The Two Branches United: Pîr Mehmed Dede

The name that best shows the continuity of the school is Şükrullah's younger son, Pîr Mehmed Dede. He was born in Istanbul and was the Şeyh's grandson through his daughter. He first studied calligraphy with his father and received his diploma; after his father's death he benefited from his maternal uncle Mustafa Dede. In this way he united the two branches represented by Şükrullah and Mustafa Dede. Müstakimzâde writes that his Qur'ans were numerous and that a large Qur'an in his hand was kept in the Süleymaniye Mosque. Pîr Mehmed Dede died in 988 (1580) and was most probably buried in the Karacaahmet Cemetery near his grandfather and father.

Pîr Mehmed's writing room in Istanbul was also a stopping place for young men from Amasya. Mustafa Efendi, nicknamed Hacı Efendi, recorded by Hüsâmeddin, learned to write in Amasya from Hayreddinzâde Mehmed Çelebi, then went to Istanbul and perfected his hand with "the famous calligrapher Şükrullah Halifezâde Pîr Mehmed Çelebi of Amasya". He later became divan secretary and treasurer to Prince Mustafa, then accountant of Anatolia and chief treasurer, and died in Amasya in 1006 (1597-1598). Müstakimzâde likewise says of him "hüsn-i hattı şeyh-i merhûmun hafîdleri Pîr Mehmed bin Şükrullah Halîfe'den yazmışdır", that he learned fine writing from the late Şeyh's grandson Pîr Mehmed b. Şükrullah Halife. Ahmed Efendi-Rûmî of Amasya, for his part, studied with Hamdullah-ı Sânî in Amasya and in Istanbul with the calligrapher Hüsâmeddin calls "Pîr Mehmed Dede bin Mustafa Dede". This wording, which makes Pîr Mehmed a son of Mustafa Dede, contradicts the biographical dictionaries that make him Şükrullah's son and Mustafa Dede's nephew.

Here the sources show a further confusion. Hüsâmeddin notes that the signature of the large Qur'an endowed to the Süleymaniye in 964 reads "Pîr Mehmed son of Hayreddin, of the pupils of Abdullah el-Amâsî", and so assigns this Qur'an to a namesake, Pîr Mehmed b. Hayreddin of Amasya, rather than to Şükrullah's son. The same Hüsâmeddin maintains that Pîr Mehmed son of Şükrullah presented a Qur'an to Süleyman the Magnificent in 958 and that his death must have occurred before 971 rather than in the 988 given by Müstakimzâde. Some biographies attribute the Qur'an dated 964 to Şükrullah's son; the works of the two namesake calligraphers appear to have become mixed up in the dictionaries, and which work belongs to which is uncertain. According to Hüsâmeddin, Pîr Mehmed b. Hayreddin succeeded Hamdullah in his writing room in Amasya, taught writing to Prince Mustafa, died in 971, and "the chain of calligraphers in Amasya descends from him".

The Chain: From Üsküdar to Derviş Ali

The calligraphers descended from Şükrullah and Mustafa Dede carried the school into the following centuries. The knot of this transmission is Hasan Üsküdârî. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, he was the son of a man named Hamza and was known by the nisba Üsküdârî because he was born and lived in Üsküdar; he was both a relative and a pupil of Pîr Mehmed b. Şükrullah. After studying the six scripts with him and receiving his diploma, he learned the finer points of writing from Derviş Mehmed, son of Mustafa Dede. The Şeyh's style thus came together in him from both branches. Hüsâmeddin, however, counts Hasan Çelebi as a native of Amasya and introduces him as the son of Hamza Çelebi, a relative of Pîr Mehmed; he writes that the name Üsküdârî came from his long residence in Üsküdar and that he received his diploma from the Şeyh's grandson Mehmed Çelebi b. Mustafa Dede. This disagreement about his birthplace has not been resolved in the sources.

Hasan Üsküdârî taught calligraphy for many years at the Ayazma school in Üsküdar. Some examples of his monumental thuluth (celî sülüs) survive in the compositions he wrote for the tile band of the mihrab area and the window lunettes of the late-comers' portico of the Atik Vâlide Mosque, a work of Mimar Sinan in Üsküdar; few of his works on paper remain. He died in 1023 (1614); his grave is on the terrace opposite the tomb of Karacaahmet Sultan, and the calligraphy of his headstone is by his pupil Hâlid Erzurûmî. The later fate of the grave is also recorded: probably in 1915, when the grave fell in the path of a newly opened road, its transfer to the Şeyh Sofası was considered but never carried out, and in the attempt the inscription written by Hâlid Erzurûmî was broken in two. In 1917 the broken stone, together with the other gravestones that had to be removed, was moved in a ceremony attended by the great calligraphers of the day to the graveyard behind the Selimiye Library, today the garden of the Çiçekçi Mosque, while the graves themselves could not be moved. Besides Hâlid Erzurûmî, Hasan Üsküdârî's pupils included İmam Mehmed Efendi of Tokat.

Hâlid Erzurûmî's pupil, Derviş Ali the Elder, wrote more than forty Qur'ans before his death in 1084 (1673) and revived, when it was on the verge of being forgotten, the style of Şeyh Hamdullah that had reached him through the chain of Şükrullah Halife, Pîr Mehmed b. Şükrullah, Hasan Üsküdârî and Hâlid Erzurûmî. For this he was given the title "şeyh-i sânî", the second Şeyh. Derviş Ali was also the first teacher of the celebrated Hâfız Osman.

This chain shows that Hamdullah's son and son-in-law were more than masters of their own time. The style carried in their hands grew from a small school in Istanbul into the standard of Ottoman Qur'an calligraphy. Page layout, the proportions of the letters to one another, and the way naskh and thuluth were handled were preserved through the ages in the measure Hamdullah had set, thanks to the work of these people.

Looking Back to Amasya

Amasya is more in this story than the city where the master was born. Şükrullah, Mustafa Dede, Abdullah Amâsî, Celâleddin and Celâlzâde Muhyiddin were all calligraphers raised by the same city. Hüsâmeddin states plainly that in the art of calligraphy the people of Amasya were regarded as "üstâd-ı küll". The transfer of the art from Amasya to Istanbul is linked to Bayezid II; Hamdullah became calligraphy teacher to Bayezid, whom he probably came to know during the prince's governorship, and after Bayezid's accession he was summoned to Istanbul with his family. The work that Şükrullah Halife and Mustafa Dede carried on in Istanbul and Üsküdar is a continuation of that bond. Nor did the bond run in one direction only: the secretaries who returned to Amasya from Pîr Mehmed's writing room, the school that Mustafa Dede's wife built in the Temennâ quarter, and Amasya men trained in Istanbul such as Habîb Çelebi show that the exchange of writing between the two cities continued a generation later.

Chronology

c. 1430-1436: Birth of Şeyh Hamdullah; the sources give dates ranging between 830-833 and 840.

1471-1472 (876): According to Hüsâmeddin, Şükrullah's grandfather Hayreddin Mar'aşî, Hamdullah's teacher, dies around this date.

1482 (887): Şükrullah's father Sinâneddin Yusuf sells his inherited share of a farm to the chief gatekeeper Firuz Ağa.

1490-1491 (896): According to Hüsâmeddin, Hamdullah goes to Istanbul with his family and son-in-law on the occasion of the circumcision festival; Sinâneddin Yusuf and Şükrullah are with them.

1494 (899): Dated Qur'an of Şükrullah Halife.

1495 (900): Mustafa Dede is born in Amasya.

1499-1500 (905): Sinâneddin Yusuf dies around this date as sheikh of a lodge in Istanbul.

1520 (926): Şeyh Hamdullah dies; Şükrullah Halife takes over the posts of calligraphy teacher at the Topkapı Palace writing room and the Firuz Ağa school.

1538 (945): Mustafa Dede dies in Üsküdar at the age of forty-five.

1543-1544 (951): The date most often given for Şükrullah Halife's death; Müstakimzâde shows him alive until about 950.

1560-1561 (968): According to Hüsâmeddin, Mustafa Dede's son Hamza Çelebi dies.

1565-1566 (973): According to Hüsâmeddin, Mustafa Dede's wife Sittî Hâtun dies and is buried at Vefa.

1580 (988): Death of Pîr Mehmed Dede according to Müstakimzâde; Hüsâmeddin proposes an earlier date.

1592-1593 (1001): Mustafa Dede's son Derviş Mehmed dies and is buried beside his grandfather.

1614 (1023): Hasan Üsküdârî dies.

1673 (1084): Derviş Ali the Elder dies.

1917: The broken grave inscription of Hasan Üsküdârî is moved in a ceremony to the graveyard behind the Selimiye Library.

2024: The Mustafa Dede Qur'an put up for sale in England in 2017 is brought back to Türkiye.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Official sources

Books

Other sources

Online sources