Ahmed Nedîm is the best-known poet of the Tulip Era (1718-1730) and one of the great names of classical Turkish poetry. He was born in Istanbul, spent his whole life there and died, again in Istanbul, during the Patrona Halil Revolt of 1730. His link with Amasya comes through his father's side: his grandfather was Mustafa Muslihuddin Efendi of Merzifon, one of the chief military judges (kazasker) of the reign of Sultan İbrâhim. This origin is accepted in the entries in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi and the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü and in the edition of the divan by Muhsin Macit, the author of the most comprehensive study of Nedîm. Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar, in his Amasya Tarihi, goes further, connecting Nedîm's lineage with the Ahî Toy family of Merzifon, calling him "Merzifonîzâde" in one place, and establishing ties of kinship or friendship between him and certain scholars of Amasya and Merzifon. These details are found only in Hüsameddin and do not fully agree even with one another. Nor is there any record that Nedîm ever saw Amasya or Merzifon; this is why the link is regarded as disputed.

Hüsameddin's Records

Hüsameddin's work has no separate entry for Nedîm. The poet's name occurs in the entries of other people, in four places. The first is the genealogy given at the end of the entry on Ebu's-Su'ûd Efendi of Merzifon:

Ebu's-Su'ûd Efendi-Bedreddînzâde Merzifonludur. Sultân Fâtih devrinde kâtib-i sultânî ve re'isü'l-küttâb-ı divânî olan Ahmed Çelebi bin Ahi Toy ibn-i Ahmed el-Merzifonî ahfâdından Ahmed Efendi bin Bedreddîn Mahmûd Çelebi bin kâtib-i sultânî Ahmed Çelebi mahdûmudur. [...] Mahdûmları el-Hâc Mehmed, Receb Efendilerdir. Hacı Efendizâde Emîrî Receb Efendi meşâhîr-i şu'arâ ve ulemâdan olup İstanbul'da vefât etdi. Receb Efendi kibâr-ı mevâli-i devriyyeden olup mahdûmu Mehmed Efendi de kudâtdandır. Bunun oğulları Receb, Musliheddîn Mustafa, İbrâhim Efendilerdir. Bunlara "Recebzâde" dendi. Kaz'asker Musliheddîn Mustafa Efendizâde kudâttan Mehmed Efendi mahdûmu Nedîm Ahmed Efendi şâir-i meşhûrdur.

In modern English: Ebu's-Su'ûd Efendi of the Bedreddinzâde family was from Merzifon. He descended from Ahmed Çelebi son of Ahî Toy of Merzifon, the sultan's secretary and chief of the scribes (reisülküttap) of the imperial council in the reign of Mehmed II (the Conqueror). His sons were Hacı Mehmed and Receb Efendi. Hacı Efendizâde Emîrî Receb Efendi was among the famous poets and scholars and died in Istanbul. Receb Efendi was one of the senior mollas, and his son Mehmed Efendi was also a judge (kadı). Mehmed Efendi's sons were Receb, Musliheddin Mustafa and İbrâhim Efendi; they were called "Recebzâde". Nedîm Ahmed Efendi, son of the judge Mehmed Efendi, son of the military judge Musliheddin Mustafa Efendi, is the famous poet.

The second record is in the entry on Bedreddin Mahmud Çelebi, ancestor of the same family:

Bedreddîn Mahmûd Çelebi-Ahî Toyzâde Merzifonludur. Fâtîh Sultân Mehmed Hân devrinde reîsü'l-küttâb olan Mevlânâ Ahmed Çelebi bin Ahî Toy'un mahdûmudur. [...] 924'de vefât etdi. [...] Mahdûmu Ebû's-Su'ûd Efendi kibâr-ı ulemâdan idi. Bunun mahdûmu Mehmed Efendi kudâttan ve bunun mahdûmu Receb Ümîdî Efendi de şu'arâdan idi. Bunlara Bedreddînzâdeler dendi. Bu sülâleden Rûmeli Kazaskeri mülâkkab Musliheddîn Mustafa Efendi pek meşhûr idi. Şâ'ir-i meşhûr Nedim Ahmed Efendi bunun hafîdidir.

In modern English: Bedreddin Mahmud Çelebi of the Ahî Toyzâde family was from Merzifon. He was the son of Mevlânâ Ahmed Çelebi son of Ahî Toy, chief of the scribes in the reign of Mehmed II, and died in 924 (1518). His son Ebu's-Su'ûd Efendi was one of the great scholars. His son Mehmed Efendi was a judge, and Mehmed Efendi's son Receb Ümîdî Efendi was a poet. They were called the Bedreddinzâdes. Musliheddin Mustafa Efendi, military judge of Rumelia, who came from this line and was known by a nickname, was very famous. The famous poet Nedîm Ahmed Efendi is his grandson.

The third record is in the entry on Eşref Abdurrahman Efendi, mufti of Merzifon and poet:

Eşref Abdurrahman Efendi-Abdîzâde Merzifonludur. Oranın ulemâsından Mustafa Efendi bin Mehmed Efendi bin Abdî Efendi'nin mahdûmu ve şâir-i meşhûr Nedim Ahmed Efendi'nin pederi akrâbasından olup Merzifon'da Gelgiras hatîbi İbrâhim Efendi'den mukaddimât-ı ulûmu görüp Amasya'ya geldi. [...] 1136'da Merzifon Müftüsü olup 1143'de İstanbul'a gitdi. [...] 1151'de dâr-ı bekâya irtihâl etdi.

In modern English: Eşref Abdurrahman Efendi of the Abdîzâde family was from Merzifon. He was the son of Mustafa Efendi son of Mehmed Efendi son of Abdî Efendi, of the scholars of Merzifon, and one of the relatives of the father of the famous poet Nedîm Ahmed Efendi. After studying the elementary sciences with İbrâhim Efendi, preacher of Gelgiras in Merzifon, he came to Amasya. In 1136 (1723-24) he became mufti of Merzifon, in 1143 (1730-31) he went to Istanbul, and he died in 1151 (1738-39).

The fourth record is in the entry on Sarı Ahmedzâde Sabrî Mehmed Efendi, a scholar of Amasya. Describing the life of Sabrî, who went to Istanbul after 1121 (1709) and became a madrasa teacher and judge, Hüsameddin says:

1143 vak'asında Merzifonîzâde Ahmed Nedîm Efendi'nin refiklerinden olduğu münâsebetle korkusundan kaçıp Amasya'ya geldi.

In modern English: In the incident of 1143 (1730), because he was one of the companions of Merzifonîzâde Ahmed Nedîm Efendi, he fled in fear and came to Amasya. According to Hüsameddin, Sabrî lived for a time in seclusion, later held the judgeships of Trabzon and Tokat, and died in Amasya in 1158 (1745).

His Life

Nedîm's name was Ahmed, and he was probably born in Istanbul in 1092 (1681). His father was the judge Mehmed Efendi; his mother was Sâliha Hatun of the Karaçelebizâde family, which had been in state service since the conquest of Istanbul. His grandfather Mustafa Muslihuddin Efendi was given ugly nicknames because of rivalries among the ulema and the janissaries and because of certain habits, and became known as "Mülakkab Mustafa" (Mustafa the Nicknamed); on 18 Receb 1058 (8 August 1648), the day Sultan İbrâhim was deposed, he was lynched in front of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque. Because of this nickname some poets, such as Osmanzâde Tâib, referred to Nedîm as "Mülakkabzâde". Well educated within his family, Nedîm learned the sciences of his time, and Arabic and Persian well enough to write poetry in them, and won the post of teacher at an outer (hariç) madrasa by passing an examination before a board that included the Şeyhülislâm Ebezâde Abdullah Efendi. Ebezâde's years in office place this examination between 1707 and 1713.

Nedîm became known for his poetry early in the reign of Ahmed III; his earliest known chronogram poem dates from 1114 (1702-03). In the period that began when Nevşehirli Damad İbrâhim Pasha became grand vizier in 1718, he wrote kıtas and kasides (qasidas) for almost every undertaking of the pasha, served as keeper of his library (hâfız-ı kütüb) and took part in the translation committees the pasha set up. In a labour lasting ten years he translated the Arabic Câmiu'd-düvel of Müneccimbaşı Ahmed Efendi (d. 1702) into Turkish under the title Sahâifü'l-ahbâr; the translation was printed in Istanbul in 1285 (1868). From Ramadan 1136 (1724), when the lessons held in the sultan's presence (huzur dersleri) were put on a regular footing, he took part in them, in the words of Çelebizâde Âsım, as "kârî-i ders", the reader of the lesson. He also rose quickly in his profession: after serving as deputy judge (nâib) at the court of Mahmud Pasha he taught at the Molla Kırımî madrasa in 1726 and the Nişancı Paşa-yı Atîk madrasa in 1728, and in 1729 rose to a professorship at the Sahn madrasas.

He was teaching at the Sekban Ali Pasha Madrasa when the Patrona Halil Revolt broke out on 12 Rebîülevvel 1143 (25 September 1730). There are different accounts of Nedîm's death. Older sources write that he died in the days following the revolt of an illness of fear (illet-i vehîme) or of a trembling caused by his fondness for drink; Müstakimzâde Süleyman Sâdeddin, on the other hand, says that in his fear he climbed onto the roof of his house and died after falling from it. The estate records found and published by Ali Canip Yöntem and examined in detail by İsmail E. Erünsal bear the date 15 Rebîülâhir 1143 (28 October 1730) and confirm that the poet died during the revolt. According to these records Nedîm, who lived in the Tekerlek Mustafa quarter of Beşiktaş, left his wife Ümmügülsüm Hanım and his daughter Lübâbe. His grave is in the Miskinler section of the Karacaahmet Cemetery in Üsküdar.

The certain part of the link is that Nedîm was, on his father's side, the grandson of a family from Merzifon. Muhsin Macit, in his entries in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi and the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü and in the introduction to his edition of the divan, gives the grandfather as "Merzifonlu Mustafa Muslihuddin Efendi". Hüsameddin, independently of this information, mentions the same man among the records of the scholars of Amasya and Merzifon as "Rumeli Kazaskeri mülakkab Musliheddin Mustafa Efendi"; the epithet "mülakkab" shows that he is the same person as Nedîm's grandfather "Mülakkab Mustafa". In Nedîm's time Merzifon was a town in the sanjak of Amasya, and today it is a district of Amasya province. Since the literary-historical scholarship and Hüsameddin's local records meet at this point, this part of the link can be regarded as confirmed.

What lies beyond it is disputed. The family's descent from Ahmed Çelebi son of Ahî Toy, chief of the scribes under Mehmed II, and from the Bedreddinzâdes, appears only in Hüsameddin. Nor do Hüsameddin's two entries give this lineage in the same way: in the entry on Ebu's-Su'ûd Efendi the chain runs Ebu's-Su'ûd Efendi, Receb Efendi, the judge Mehmed Efendi and Musliheddin Mustafa, while in the entry on Bedreddin Mahmud Çelebi it appears as Ebu's-Su'ûd Efendi's son Mehmed Efendi and his son Receb Ümîdî Efendi; and since two different Receb Efendis are mentioned in the first entry, the text does not make clear which of them was Nedîm's ancestor. The kinship with Eşref Abdurrahman Efendi and the friendship with Sabrî Mehmed Efendi have not been confirmed in any other source either. The name "Merzifonîzâde" used by Hüsameddin appears to be peculiar to him, as against the nickname "Mülakkabzâde" used by Nedîm's contemporaries.

Nedîm himself never made any connection with Amasya or Merzifon. The sources contain no record of his having left Istanbul in the course of his life. In the text of the divan that Macit prepared by comparing all the manuscripts, the names Amasya and Merzifon do not occur in the poems; this finding rests on our own search of the e-book text of the edition. In one of his kasides the poet is seen to take pride in his ancestors' service to the palace since the time of Mehmed II, but the text does not reveal whether this praise refers to the Karaçelebizâdes on his mother's side or to the family from Merzifon on his father's side. In this respect Nedîm cannot be counted a poet raised in Amasya; he is the grandson of a family from Merzifon, born and brought up in Istanbul. The value of his link with Amasya lies in Hüsameddin's placing him within the family trees of the scholars of Merzifon, and in the way the echo of the 1730 revolt reached as far as Amasya with the flight of Sabrî Mehmed Efendi.

His Poetry

Nedîm grew up in a climate where Nef'î was influential in the kaside and the didactic (hikemî) manner of Nâbî in the ghazal (gazel), and soon created a style of his own, called "Nedîmâne". Macit defines the essence of this style as perfection of utterance, a desire for the local and a playful, coquettish tone. His skill in using expressions from the spoken language, his success in rhyme and redif (refrain word), and his grasp of the music of aruz (quantitative metre) made his poems well suited to being set to music; his şarkıs and ghazals were set many times from his own lifetime onwards. The beloved, who remains abstract in divan poetry, comes down in his poems to the street, the promenade and Sâdâbâd; the gardens, pleasures and daily life of Istanbul become the material of poetry.

The earliest dated manuscript of the divan was copied in 1149 (1736) and is in the Library of the Turkish Historical Society. Macit states that there are more than sixty manuscripts in Turkey and abroad. The divan was printed three times in the old script, published in the new alphabet by Abdülbaki Gölpınarlı in 1951, and Muhsin Macit prepared a critical text in 1994 by evaluating all the manuscripts. This edition contains forty-two kasides, eighty-seven kıtas, one hundred and sixty-four ghazals, thirty-three murabbas, two koşmas, eleven rubais and many other verse forms; in the TDV entry the same author gives the figures as forty-four kasides, eighty-eight kıtas and one hundred and sixty-six ghazals. The divan also contains five Arabic and thirty-nine Persian poems.

Nedîm's influence lasted several generations. The anthology of Sâlim called him "tâze-zebân", a poet of fresh speech, while he was still alive, and historian-poets such as Râşid and Âsım wrote nazires (response poems) to his poems. In the eighteenth century Kâmî, Neylî, İzzet Ali Pasha and Şeyh Galib, and in the nineteenth Enderunlu Vâsıf and Leskofçalı Galib followed in his footsteps. Nâmık Kemal regarded Nedîm as the greatest poet of the Turkish language. Since there is no poem connected with Amasya or Merzifon in Nedîm's large body of work, no separate poem pages have been opened in this category.

Family and Circle

Nedîm's family united two long-established traditions of the learned and scribal professions. His father's side was a family of military judges from Merzifon; the lynching of his grandfather in 1648 shook the family deeply, and it has been suggested that the state of fear Nedîm carried throughout his life may have been connected with this event. His mother's side was the Karaçelebizâde family of Istanbul. His patron was Damad İbrâhim Pasha, and his circle the poets, scholars and statesmen of the Tulip Era. According to Hüsameddin, Eşref Abdurrahman Efendi, mufti of Merzifon, was a relative of his father, and Sabrî Mehmed Efendi of Amasya was his friend. The milieu in which these scholars were trained is described in the site's article on education and learning in Merzifon, and the poetic life of Amasya in Amasya Divan Poets and Literary Environment.

There are also people of Amasya with the same name who should not be confused with Nedîm. Hüsameddin mentions the poet Mehmed Nedîm Efendi, who had served as doorkeeper of the Sultan Bayezid Madrasa and went to Istanbul at the beginning of the nineteenth century as divan secretary to Tayyar Mahmud Pasha. A certain Nedim Mehmed Efendi, known by the nickname "Dülgerzâde", also appears in his work. These people have no connection with Ahmed Nedîm.

Chronology

18 Receb 1058 (8 August 1648): His grandfather, the military judge Mustafa Muslihuddin Efendi, is lynched on the day Sultan İbrâhim is deposed.

1092 (1681): Probable year of birth, Istanbul.

1114 (1702-03): His earliest known chronogram poem.

1718: Damad İbrâhim Pasha becomes grand vizier; the Tulip Era begins.

1136 (1723-24): His relative Eşref Abdurrahman Efendi becomes mufti of Merzifon; from Ramadan of the same year Nedîm takes part in the lessons held in the sultan's presence.

1726-1729: Teaching posts at the Molla Kırımî, Nişancı Paşa-yı Atîk and Sahn madrasas.

12 Rebîülevvel 1143 (25 September 1730): The Patrona Halil Revolt begins; Nedîm dies during the revolt.

15 Rebîülâhir 1143 (28 October 1730): The probate record of his estate is drawn up.

1149 (1736): The earliest dated manuscript of the divan.

1158 (1745): Sabrî Mehmed Efendi, who according to Hüsameddin fled to Amasya during the revolt because he was Nedîm's friend, dies in Amasya.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Books

  • Muhsin Macit, "Nedîm, Ahmed", Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, 19.09.2013 (updated 12.12.2020). https://teis.yesevi.edu.tr/madde-detay/nedim-ahmed
  • İsmail E. Erünsal, "Şâir Nedim'in Muhallefâtı", The Archival Sources of Turkish Literary History, Harvard University, 2008, pp. 271-291 (as cited by Macit).

Online sources