Kömürcüzâde Rûhî Ahmed Efendi was one of the noted calligraphers of Merzifon in the first half of the nineteenth century. He learned the various scripts by copying the models of the town's celebrated calligrapher Vehbî Mehmed Efendi, studied under the mufti of Merzifon, Nâsıh Ahmed Efendi, and then became secretary of the endowment of Sultan Mehmed I (Çelebi Mehmed) in Merzifon and imam of the Câmi-i Cedîd. He died some time after 1251 (1835-36). Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar describes him as "a scholar, a famous calligrapher, a secretary and a poet". Nearly everything known about him comes from that entry of a few lines, and not a single line of his verse has survived.

Life

Hüsameddin's entry Rûhî Ahmed Efendi-Kömürcüzâde is a single paragraph:

Merzifonludur. Mehmed oğlu olup hutût-ı mütenevvi'ayı orada hattât-ı meşhûr Vehbî Mehmed Efendi'den ahz ü temeşşuk etdikten sonra müftî-i Merzifon Nâsıh Ahmed Efendi'nin dâru'l-ifâdesinde ulûm-ı edebiyye vü şer'iyyeyi tahsîl ederek Çelebi Sultân vakfı kâtibi ve Câmi-i Cedîd imâmı oldu. 1251 sâlinden sonra vefât etdi. Âlim, hattât-ı meşhûr, kâtib, şâir idi.

Translated: A native of Merzifon, he was the son of a man named Mehmed. After taking the various scripts there from the famous calligrapher Vehbî Mehmed Efendi and practising them by copying, he studied the literary and religious sciences in the teaching circle of the mufti of Merzifon, Nâsıh Ahmed Efendi, and became secretary of the Çelebi Sultan endowment and imam of the Câmi-i Cedîd. He died after the year 1251. He was a scholar, a well-known calligrapher, a secretary and a poet.

Brief as it is, the entry traces a professional path step by step. "Hutût-ı mütenevvi'a" are the different scripts, such as thuluth, naskh and ta'liq; "ahz ü temeşşuk" means learning by writing out the master's model again and again. A calligrapher trained this way moving into an endowment secretaryship is no surprise, since endowment accounts, deeds and the registers of the trustees called for a hand that was both elegant and legible. The post of imam was the usual reward of a madrasa education. Of his family Hüsameddin names only his father Mehmed. The surname "Kömürcüzâde", son of the charcoal-maker, suggests an ancestor who lived by selling charcoal, though the source gives no explanation.

His Circle in Merzifon

Hüsameddin wrote no separate entry for his teacher Nâsıh Ahmed Efendi; the name appears only inside other records. The entry on Rûmî Mehmed Efendi-Müderris, a little further down the same page, helps to date him. Rûmî Mehmed Efendi studied in Damascus with Ibn Âbidîn, returned to Merzifon and taught there for years before becoming professor of the Sultâniyye of Merzifon in Safar 1225 (March-April 1810), "equal to es-Seyyid el-Hâc Nâsıh Ahmed Efendi and more accomplished"; he also served some years as mufti of Merzifon and died in 1234 (1818-19). The comparison shows that Nâsıh Ahmed Efendi was among the leading scholars of Merzifon in the early nineteenth century. Rûhî's death after 1251 fits well with his being a pupil of that generation.

The "Çelebi Sultan endowment" is the foundation that regulated the revenues of the madrasa and bath built in Merzifon by Sultan Mehmed I in 1414. The madrasa Hüsameddin calls the "Sultâniyye of Merzifon" is the same building, known today as the Merzifon Çelebi Sultan Mehmed Madrasa, standing in the town's Cami-i Cedid quarter. The entry does not say which building the Câmi-i Cedîd, the "New Mosque" where Rûhî served as imam, actually was. The quarter may well have taken its name from it, but identifying the mosque with certainty would require an endowment register or some other document. As calligrapher, secretary and imam, Rûhî belongs to one of the last Ottoman generations in the long line of scholars trained in the madrasas of Merzifon.

Confusion with His Namesake Fâzıl Rûhî

Two entries headed Rûhî Ahmed Efendi follow one another, and more than three centuries separate the two men. The first is Fâzıl Rûhî Çelebi, son of the Şeyhülislam Zenbilli Ali Efendi, born in 891 (1486) and dead in 927 (1521), the author of an Ottoman history and of a divan. Hüsameddin adds two couplets to his entry, and the Kömürcüzâde entry begins immediately after them. Because name, pen name and title are identical, a couplet signed "Rûhî" in an anthology could be assigned to the early sixteenth-century Rûhî Fâzıl Çelebi or to the calligrapher of Merzifon only on the evidence of its language and period. The pen name was common anyway: in Kınalızâde's tezkire, right after Zenbillizâde, comes another Rûhî, a son of Hasan Ağa, steward of the Şeyhülislam Ebussuûd Efendi.

Poetry

None of Rûhî Ahmed Efendi's poems has come down to us. The word "şâir" at the end of the entry is the only known witness that he wrote verse at all: Hüsameddin quotes no couplet and names no divan or anthology in which his poems were gathered. Metin Hakverdioğlu, who lists the poets of the Amasya Tarihi volume by volume, does not include Kömürcüzâde among those of the tenth. Since his calligraphy seems to have been better known than his poetry, verses of his own might yet turn up among the panels he wrote or the books he copied, but no such piece is known today.

Chronology

1414 (817): Sultan Mehmed I builds in Merzifon the madrasa attached to the endowment whose secretary Rûhî would later become.

Safar 1225 (March-April 1810): Rûmî Mehmed Efendi, Nâsıh Ahmed Efendi's equal, becomes professor of the Sultâniyye of Merzifon.

After 1251 (1835-36): Rûhî Ahmed Efendi dies.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Online sources