Much of what we know about Amasya's recent past is read today from the notebooks of a civil servant. Osman Fevzi Olcay spent most of his life in ordinary government posts, as a tax collector, a district administrator and a clerk in the provincial records office; yet the notebooks he filled in his spare hours, in the old script and usually in his own calligraphy, became one of the principal sources for the city's memory after Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar's great History of Amasya. In his works he introduces himself as "specialist in ancient Turkish and Islamic scripts, historian of Amasya." Neither title was chosen lightly: he was both a calligrapher and an expert in old scripts, and he regarded writing the history of his hometown as a lifelong task.

Since Fikret Sarıcaoğlu's study of the historians of Amasya, Olcay has been counted as the city's "third historian," after Mustafa Vâzıh Efendi and Abdizâde Hüseyin Hüsameddin. Only a short translation of his, however, was printed in his lifetime. His books Amasya Şehri (The City of Amasya), Amasya Meşâhiri (Notables of Amasya) and Bildiklerim, Gördüklerim, İşittiklerim (What I Knew, Saw and Heard) reached readers years after his death, in simplified editions published by the Municipality of Amasya. Many studies written today on Amasya's neighbourhoods, madrasas, late Ottoman scholars and forgotten customs carry his name in their footnotes.

Family and Birth

In a note titled "My Biography" (Tercüme-i Hâlim), which he wrote and signed in his own hand in 1954 and added to a copy of Amasya Meşâhiri, Olcay introduces his family as follows: he was the son of Kara Vaiz Ahmed Hilmi Hoca, himself the son of Kara İsmail Kahya of the Hasanoğulları, a family originally from the village of Kızılkışlacık in the Akdağ district of Amasya. His mother's name was Feride Hanım. He was born in 1887 in the Sofular quarter of Amasya. In the article by Ayar and Özel on his treatise about Mîr Hamza Nigârî the birth year appears as 1877; but both the editions based on his own biographical note and the study by İlhan and Dandan give 1887, and the year in the article is most likely a typographical error.

A more detailed document on his father, Ahmed Hilmi Efendi, is his personnel file in the Meşîhat Archive (the archive of the office of the Şeyhülislam). According to this record, published by Hasan Telli, Ahmed Hilmi Efendi was born in 1855 in the village of Elale near Merzifon, was also known as "Hasanoğlu," and bore the nickname Kara Vaiz Hoca (the Dark Preacher). His father's name was İsmail and his mother's Rukiye. After his first religious lessons in his village he came to Merzifon in 1870 and studied Arabic morphology and syntax at the Yeni Medrese near the Kara Mustafa Paşa Mosque; in 1873 he moved to Amasya, lodged at the Sultan Bayezid Madrasa and attended the lessons of the former mufti Hacı Osman Efendi, Hâfız Abdurrahman Kâmil Efendi and other teachers. He received his diploma (icazetname) from the mufti of Amasya on 5 March 1887 and then began teaching morphology, syntax, logic, theology and jurisprudence to students at the Mehmed Paşa Mosque. His identity document of 1905 gives his residence as the Sûfîzâde (Sofular) quarter of Amasya. The year of the son's birth was thus the year in which the father completed his madrasa studies and began to teach.

The difference between the two records is plain: the son connects the family to the village of Kızılkışlacık in Akdağ, while the official file states that the father was born in the village of Elale near Merzifon. The sources do not explain this; the family's place of origin and the father's birthplace may simply be different villages. Olcay mentions his father several times in his memoirs. Ahmed Hilmi Efendi and Tosyalı Deli İsmail Efendi lived, until they received their diplomas, in a room of the Sultan Bayezid Madrasa that is now set aside for manuscripts. According to his son, his father held an administrative post in the scholarly organization of the time under the title "Kemerbaşı," and for this reason took part in the military roll calls of madrasa students and in the examination boards that came from Sivas.

Education

Olcay began his primary education at the Çukurkonak School in the Mehmed Paşa quarter. The edition by Böcekçi and Seçkiner states that he completed it at the Çevikçe School, while İlhan and Dandan, reading the autograph biography, give the name of the school as Çöplüce. He then enrolled at the İdadi (secondary) School on the slope of Saraydüzü and successfully completed both the rüşdiye and idadi levels. In his memoirs he names his schoolmates one by one. Mehmed Sabri and Ahmed Emrî Yetkin, sons of the mufti Abdurrahman Kâmil Efendi, were among his classmates; with Ahmed Emrî, he writes, "we grew up together from birth."

After the İdadi he went to Istanbul and entered the Darülfünun under the patronage of his father's friend, the chief judge of Rumelia Ödemişli Mustafa Efendi. Which department he attended is unclear. The 2009 edition says "the Mathematics Department of Istanbul University"; İlhan and Dandan, however, note that in Olcay's own hand the word is "Arziyat" (geology), and that other studies have confused it with "riyâziyât" (mathematics). A year later he returned to Amasya at his father's wish and for about five years studied Arabic grammar, logic and jurisprudence at the Mehmed Paşa Mosque and Madrasa, where his father taught. In 1327 (1912) he enrolled at the Darülmuallimin (teachers' training school) of Amasya and obtained a certificate there as well. In these years he took a special interest in calligraphy (hüsn-i hat); the sources do not name his teacher, but it is known that he advanced far enough to teach calligraphy in the schools of Amasya during his later years of service.

From the Balkan War to the Armistice

When the Balkan War broke out, Olcay served at the front as a combatant for thirteen months. The 2009 edition gives this date as "328 (1911)"; İlhan and Dandan write that he joined as a volunteer in 1912 and served in Thrace. Since the war began in October 1912, the correct date is 1912, and the Rumi year 1328 also corresponds to it. In his memoirs he mentions a pasha living in the Mehmed Paşa quarter who had been his commander in the Balkan War, and adds that the pasha's eldest son, Turgut, had been his own student at the İdadi. After his discharge he returned to Amasya and taught calligraphy in the city's schools for about a year and a half.

When the First World War began he was called up again and served throughout the war as a clerk in the Recruitment Office of the 31st Division. This post made him a witness to one of the most bitter pages of Amasya Hâtıraları. He relates that the trees of the Soğukpınar vineyards in Upper Savadiye, the loveliest promenade of the city before the war, were cut down without a single one being spared, in order to burn the lime needed for repairing the ruins of the Palace of Bayezid II on Saraydüzü. The order was given by Pertev Bey, nephew of the army commander Vehib Pasha, head of the Recruitment Office and acting divisional commander; Olcay says he saw the affair at close range because he was working in the same office under special orders of the Ministry of War. Thirty years later, describing the flood of June 1948 in which eighty-eight people died and a hundred and forty-nine houses were swept into the Yeşilırmak, he recalls this felling and writes his conviction that, had the vineyard trees still stood, the flood would not have been so great.

The summary by İlhan and Dandan, based on his biographical note, also states that during the war years Olcay served under Kâzım Karabekir Pasha in an organization set up for the deportation of Armenians; the detail concerning Karabekir has not been confirmed by any other source. After his military service, which lasted until the Armistice, he was appointed tax collector at the Amasya Property Office on 6 January 1919 and continued to teach calligraphy. In the 2009 edition this post carries the date "1355 (1917)," which is inconsistent in both its Hijri and Gregorian forms. According to the same summary, when the occupation forces entered Amasya they demanded that he and forty-three companions who had served in the deportation be handed over for execution; they escaped this fate when local armed bands forced the occupiers out of the city. The details of the episode rest solely on Olcay's own account.

Civil Service in the Republican Years

After the Turkish War of Independence he became an official at the Amasya Tobacco Monopoly; after two years and five months he quarrelled with the director and was dismissed. He worked for about thirty-five days as a substitute teacher in the district of Zara. On 26 May 1929 he became a trustee and compensation officer at the Samsun Settlement Directorate, and a year later he was transferred to Istanbul in the same post. When this post was abolished in 1933 he served as administrator of the districts of Sinekli, Rami and Akçalı; according to the summary by İlhan and Dandan he also spent a year at the Istanbul Archive Office.

The turning point of his life was his appointment, in the same year, to the Book Classification Commission of the Istanbul Libraries, set up by order of Atatürk. The commission was charged with examining the manuscripts and printed books in the city's libraries; Olcay drew on the notes he took and the material he gathered there in all his later works. He himself writes that he completed Amasya Meşâhiri during this assignment; Adliye Tarihçesi (A Short History of Justice) also grew out of the same notes. He then became an examiner in the Records Office of the Province of Istanbul, and finally, after about two years as Director of Correspondence at the Sarıyer District Governorship, he retired.

Information on his private life is scattered through his memoirs. He relates that he spent the first four years of his marriage as a tenant in the house of Semerci Bekir Ağa in the Mehmed Paşa quarter, and that part of his son Fethi's youth was also spent in that house. He writes, on the basis of what he heard from his mother, that she and Emine Hanım, wife of the mufti Abdurrahman Kâmil Efendi, were sworn sisters. The biographical notes kept by his son Fethi Olcay were also used in preparing Bildiklerim, Gördüklerim, İşittiklerim for publication.

Works

Almost all of Olcay's identified works are manuscripts written in his own hand. He usually wrote in rik'a, using kufic, thuluth, ta'lik and naskh in titles and quotations as well. His habit of rewriting and enlarging the same work over the years has left different copies in several libraries today. Combining the lists given by İlhan and Dandan and by Ayar and Özel, the picture is as follows:

  • Mecmûa-i Eş'âr: An anthology of poems by the late Mevlevi sheikh and poet Ahmed Remzi (Akyürek) Dede, written in rik'a in 1935. One copy is in the Atatürk Library (no. 1960), another in the Yeniler section of the Topkapı Palace Library (no. 2259).
  • Amasya Şehri: The name, geography, climate and economy of the city; the rulers, statesmen, şeyhülislams, scholars, poets, calligraphers and Sufis raised in Amasya; Seljuk and Ottoman inscriptions; the First World War years and Atatürk's arrival in Amasya. The copy in the Topkapı Palace titled "Târîh-i Amasya" is dated 1352 (1933), the copy in the Atatürk Library 1356 (1937). It was published by the Municipality of Amasya in a simplified version by Harun Küççük and Kurtuluş Altunbaş; the year of publication appears as 2010 in Özcan's citation and as 2017 in İlhan and Dandan.
  • Menâkıb-ı Mîr Hamza Nigârî: A 26-folio treatise completed in February 1938 on the lineage, appearance, works and disciples of Mîr Hamza Nigârî, the Nakşibendi-Hâlidi sheikh and poet buried in Amasya (Atatürk Library, no. 888/01). Ali Rıza Ayar and Recep Orhan Özel published it in simplified form.
  • Türklerin Faziletleri ve Övgüleri: A translation of al-Jahiz's Fadā'il al-Atrāk (The Virtues of the Turks), printed in 29 pages by Tefeyyüz Kitabevi in Istanbul in 1939. It is the only work of his printed in his lifetime.
  • Muhtasar Menâkıb-ı Mevlânâ: A work completed on 12 October 1940, held in the Library of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (no. 175).
  • Selçuk Türkleri'nin Zuhûru ve Osmanlı İmparatorluğu: Written in 1940, a brief account of the Seljuk rulers and of the Ottoman sultans down to Selim III (Library of the Grand National Assembly).
  • Amasya Meşâhiri: Biographies of 183 people of Amasya, conceived as a companion to Amasya Şehri. Copies are in the Berlin State Library, the Topkapı Palace (Y. 1701), Istanbul University Library and the Amasya Manuscript Library; the last copy, dated 1374 (1953), contains his own biography. It was published by Turan Böcekçi in 2002 under the title Amasya Ünlüleri.
  • Adliye Tarihçesi: A 57-folio work compiled in 1944 from his notes on the Book Classification Commission (National Library, 06 Mil Yz A 4094).
  • Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Paşa: A 22-folio manuscript in the Topkapı Palace Museum Library (Y. 3554).
  • Bildiklerim, Gördüklerim, İşittiklerim: The neighbourhoods, madrasas, teachers, Sufis, customs, vineyards and gardens, and proverbs of Amasya; completed in 1967. It was published in 2009 by Turan Böcekçi and Mehmet H. Seçkiner under the title Amasya Hâtıraları.
  • Muhtıra Defteri: A 45-folio notebook written in 1967, containing historical and literary notes, selected poems and verses of his own (National Library, no. 9214). M. Fatih Köksal describes it as a miscellany of the kind the old writers called "kırkambar" (a storehouse of everything).

A short text titled Durûbü'l-Emsâl, attributed to him in the records of the Amasya Manuscript Library, has on examination proved not to be his.

His Place in the Historiography of Amasya

In the preface to their edition, Böcekçi and Seçkiner regard Olcay's works as a continuation (zeyl) of Hüsameddin's History of Amasya. The two authors lived in the same century; as the trustees of mosques and endowments changed, Olcay felt the need to record them again, and he wrote down recent developments not found in Hüsameddin's work. Nor was the relationship one-way. According to Turgut Akpınar's article "Amasya Tarihi" in the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, Olcay's Amasya Meşâhiri and Amasya Tarihi are among the few works whose use Hüsameddin acknowledges in his history. That Olcay's first copies were written as early as 1933 makes this record understandable.

The notebooks of the two historians are at times close enough to be confused. M. Fatih Köksal relates that when he first saw six large notebooks he had bought from a second-hand bookseller in Ankara, which he believes belong to the lost volumes of Hüsameddin, he considered the possibility that they were a different and larger copy of Olcay's Amasya Şehri; the number and content of the biographies weakened that possibility.

The information Olcay provides is used in academic studies today. The TDV Encyclopedia of Islam article on Şeyh Hamdullah cites, for the calligrapher's year of birth, Olcay's range of 830-833 (1426-1430) in Amasya Meşâhiri alongside Müstakimzâde's date of 840 (1436). Recep Orhan Özel, in his article on Mecdîzâde Abdurrahman Kâmil Yetkin, uses Olcay as a witness both for Kâmil Efendi's date of birth and for the family's private life. According to Mustafa Çağhan Keskin, it is again Olcay who reports that the Mehmed Paşa Madrasa consisted of a lecture hall and eleven rooms, with a bakery and an oven on its western side.

Amasya Hâtıraları

Olcay's most widely read work is Bildiklerim, Gördüklerim, İşittiklerim, completed in 1967. In his own words, the book tells "who came and went among the people of Amasya sixty-five years ago, by property and by neighbourhood." The copy in the Amasya Bayezid Library is written on notebook paper and was deciphered with difficulty because the ink had bled through to the reverse of the pages. Its editors call the work "a photograph of Amasya taken with a pen half a century ago."

The book proceeds quarter by quarter. From Upper and Lower Savadiye to Sofular, from Çilehane to the Mehmed Paşa quarter, from Gümüşlü to Temenna, the houses are listed in order; it records who owned each house, who was related to whom and who worked in which shop. In this survey the small quarter opposite the Tomb of Pir İlyas, the district where the disciples of Mir Hamza Nigârî lived, Savadiye, where not a single one of its former Christian inhabitants remained after the deportation, and the İhsaniye quarter, where Tatars who came from the Crimea in 1876-1877 were settled, stand side by side. The section on madrasas lists in order the books taught in Amasya's madrasas and describes the diploma ceremonies. The section on customs contains details recorded nowhere else: where the town crier stood and how he made his announcements, the arrival in the city of Ömer Ağa's caravan carrying army supplies between Diyarbakır and Samsun, how the army's need for halva was met from Amasya, and the firing of a cannon from the citadel at the fast-breaking and pre-dawn meals of Ramadan. From this book we also learn that every year on the eve of the Feast of Sacrifice, under an endowment attached to a shop in Selağzı, flour halva was made, wrapped in flatbread and carried in large baskets to the Lower Pirler Tomb, where it was distributed after a complete recitation of the Qur'an.

Olcay is aware that this world is vanishing. At one point in his memoirs he quotes a poem he wrote to Talat Öncel of Kayseri, a former governor, expressing his grief at finding no one left of the city's old families and at the disappearance of its cemeteries in these lines: "Cast a glance at the history, at the past of this fair city. / Of history, of the past, not a trace remains." The memoirs have their lighter side too. He writes that the reply he received from Kemerpaşazâde Hüsameddin Efendi, when he teased the teacher on seeing him stagger arm in arm with a tall friend, "has still not left my memory"; he names the neighbourhood's cockfighting enthusiasts, its hunters and the regulars of the riverside café.

Calligraphy and the Mevlevi Circle

Olcay's relationship with calligraphy defines him as much as his identity as a historian. He taught calligraphy in the schools of Amasya and wrote his works using several scripts side by side. In Muhtasar Menâkıb-ı Mevlânâ he writes the title in kufic, the preface in rik'a and the genealogy in thuluth, enlarges the letters where he wishes to add emphasis and writes explanatory notes in a smaller hand. A photograph included in the 2009 edition shows him examining the tombstone of Şeyh Hamdullah of Amasya in the Karacaahmet Cemetery. His admiration for Hamdullah turned into a bond that would continue after his death.

His relationship with the Mevlevi circle can best be traced through Ahmed Remzi Akyürek. Akyürek, a poet and Sufi from Kayseri, was the last sheikh of the Üsküdar Mevlevi lodge; after the closure of the dervish lodges he classified books as head official of the Hacı Selim Ağa Library in Üsküdar from 1925 to 1937. The years in which Olcay worked on the library classification commission in Istanbul fall within this period. In 1935 he wrote an anthology of Akyürek's poems. The piece M. Fatih Köksal published in the journal Erciyes in 2006 introduces him in its title as "an admirer of Ahmed Remzi Dede." In his Muhtıra Defteri he recorded that on 31 May 1934 Akyürek composed a taştir, an amplification in twenty-three stanzas, of a poem by Ahmed Emrî Yetkin; Özel takes his information on this poem of Yetkin's from Olcay's notebook.

Muhtasar Menâkıb-ı Mevlânâ is a product of the same interest. In a note at the beginning of the work Olcay says that he tried to render Bahaeddin Veled Çelebi's (İzbudak) Menâkıb-ı Hazret-i Mevlânâ in a style that everyone could read and understand, because that work was written in a mystical and difficult language. The book opens with Rumi's genealogy and tells of his father, the Sultan of Scholars, of Rumi himself, his companions and Sultan Veled; at the end are lists of the twenty-nine Çelebis who held the seat of Mevlânâ and of eighty-one Mevlevi lodges, including the one in Amasya.

Death

Osman Fevzi Olcay died in Istanbul on 11 December 1973 and was buried in the Karacaahmet Cemetery at the foot of the grave of the calligrapher Şeyh Hamdullah, whom he so admired. The date of death is the same, with day and month in the edition by Böcekçi and Seçkiner, and as a year in the studies by Ayar and Özel and by İlhan and Dandan. The phrase "d. 1967" in a footnote of Özel's 2018 article contradicts the date of 1973 in another footnote of the same article; 1967 is the year in which Bildiklerim, Gördüklerim, İşittiklerim was completed, and the confusion appears to have arisen from that.

The notebooks of this civil servant historian, born in Amasya and dead in Istanbul without seeing his works in print, began to be published by the municipality of his hometown some thirty years after his death. Many of the names, houses, shops and customs we know today from Amasya's last century have come down to us as Olcay set them down with his pen.

Chronology

1887: Born in the Sofular quarter of Amasya; his father Ahmed Hilmi Efendi received his diploma on 5 March of the same year.

1912: Enrolled at the Darülmuallimin of Amasya (1327); served thirteen months at the front in the Balkan War.

1914-1918: Served as a clerk in the Recruitment Office of the 31st Division.

6 January 1919: Appointed tax collector at the Amasya Property Office.

26 May 1929: Became trustee and compensation officer at the Samsun Settlement Directorate; transferred to Istanbul a year later.

1933: Joined the Book Classification Commission of the Istanbul Libraries; the Topkapı copy of Amasya Şehri is dated this year.

1935: Wrote Mecmûa-i Eş'âr, an anthology of Ahmed Remzi Akyürek's poems.

1937: Completed the Atatürk Library copy of Amasya Şehri.

February 1938: Finished Menâkıb-ı Mîr Hamza Nigârî.

1939: His translation of al-Jahiz, Türklerin Faziletleri ve Övgüleri, was printed in Istanbul.

12 October 1940: Completed Muhtasar Menâkıb-ı Mevlânâ.

1942: Completed a copy of Amasya Meşâhiri.

1944: Wrote Adliye Tarihçesi.

6 March 1954: Wrote and signed the note "My Biography," added to Amasya Meşâhiri.

1967: Completed Bildiklerim, Gördüklerim, İşittiklerim and the Muhtıra Defteri.

11 December 1973: Died in Istanbul; buried in the Karacaahmet Cemetery at the foot of Şeyh Hamdullah's grave.

2002: Amasya Meşâhiri published as Amasya Ünlüleri.

2009: Bildiklerim, Gördüklerim, İşittiklerim published as Amasya Hâtıraları.

Bibliography

The following sources were used in this article:

  • Osman Fevzi Olcay, Amasya Hâtıraları: "Bildiklerim-Gördüklerim-İşittiklerim ile Amasya", simplified by Turan Böcekçi and Mehmet H. Seçkiner, Amasya: Amasya Belediyesi Kültür Yayınları, 2009, pp. 13-19, 23-48, 63-75.
  • Mevlüt İlhan and Ermiş Dandan, "Osman Fevzi Olcay'ın Muhtasar Menâkıb-ı Mevlânâ İsimli Eseri", Mevlevilik, Mevlana ve Şeyh Galip Üzerine İncelemeler, ed. Mücahit Kaçar, Ömer Arslan and Yasemin Karakuş, Istanbul: Istanbul University Press, 2022, pp. 189-243. https://dosyalar.semazen.net/e_kitap/osman-fevzi-olcayin-muhtasar-menakib-i-mevlana-isimli-eseri.pdf
  • Ali Rıza Ayar and Recep Orhan Özel, "Osman Fevzi Olcay'ın 'Menâkıb-ı Mîr Hamza Nigârî' Adlı Risalesi", Amasya Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, no. 3, 2015, pp. 187-201. https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/amauifd/article/21327
  • Recep Orhan Özel, "Amasya'da Bir İlim Yuvası: Mecdîzâde Abdurrahman Kâmil Yetkin (ö. 1941) ve Oğulları Mehmet Sabri Yetkin, Ahmet Emrî Yetkin, Mustafa Niyazi Yetkin", Amasya Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, vol. 6, no. 10, 2018, pp. 39-72.
  • Hasan Telli, "Meşîhat Arşivine Göre Amasya Müderrisleri", Kocatepe İslami İlimler Dergisi, 7(2), 2024, pp. 732-758.
  • Mehmet Fatih Köksal, "Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn'in Amasya Tarihi'nin Kayıp Ciltleri", Uluslararası Amasya Âlimleri Sempozyumu Bildiriler Kitabı II, Amasya: Amasya University, 2017.
  • Turgut Akpınar, "Amasya Tarihi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 3, Istanbul 1991, pp. 6-7. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/amasya-tarihi
  • Muhittin Serin, "Hamdullah Efendi, Şeyh", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 15, Istanbul 1997, pp. 449-452. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/hamdullah-efendi-seyh
  • Hasibe Mazıoğlu, "Akyürek, Ahmed Remzi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 2, Istanbul 1989, pp. 304-305. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/akyurek-ahmed-remzi
  • Selim Özcan, "Amasya'da Sancak Beyliği Yapan Şehzadeler Döneminde Amasya Şehri", Amasya Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, no. 5.
  • Mustafa Çağhan Keskin, "II. Bayezid Dönemi Amasya Çevresinde Yerel Bir Bani: Hızır Paşa Oğlu Mehmed Paşa", Art-Sanat, 5, 2016, pp. 63 ff.

Online sources