Şirvânîzâde Mehmed Rüşdü Pasha was a madrasa scholar and statesman, born in the Yâkûtiye quarter of Amasya, who rose to become grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire; in his poems he used the pen name (mahlas) "Rüşdî". He was the son of the Naqshbandi-Khalidi sheikh İsmâil Sirâceddin Şirvânî. His tie to Amasya was more than his birthplace: as a young man he served as director of the Amasya pious endowments (waqf), in 1871-1872 he spent nearly a year in Amasya in exile, he completed his father's tomb and mosque above the Şamlar cemetery, and he had a mansion built for the sheikh Mîr Hamza Nigârî. His poetry remained in the background of his life, and he never compiled a divan. His only surviving poem is a five-couplet ghazal preserved in Fatîn Efendi's biographical anthology of poets (tezkire) and copied by Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar into his History of Amasya. That ghazal is given on a separate page in this category with its original text, an English version and commentary.

Life

According to Hüsameddin, Mehmed Rüşdü was born in 1245 (1829-1830) in the Yâkûtiye quarter of Amasya; the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam gives his year of birth as 1828. His family had migrated from the village of Kürdemir, first to Ahıska and then to Amasya, after the Khanate of Shirvan passed under Russian rule. His father, Sheikh İsmâil Sirâceddin, founded a circle of learning and Sufism in Amasya and trained poets such as Mîr Hamza Nigârî. Mehmed Rüşdü received his first lessons from Anaç Hoca Mehmed Efendi, and studied Arabic and the rational and traditional sciences with his father and his elder brother Abdülhamid Efendi. When his father died in 1264 (1848) he went to Istanbul, completed his studies in the classes of Vidinli Mustafa Efendi, passed the ruûs examination and taught in the mosques of Fâtih and Bâyezid.

In 1853 he returned to his home town as director of the Amasya endowments. The post did not last; at the beginning of 1855 he resigned and went back to Istanbul. Hüsameddin sees a local complaint behind the resignation: certain people reported to the governor Sâlih Pasha that he held drinking parties, had a dancing girl perform and paid in debased coin, and Mehmed Rüşdü, troubled by this, gave up his post. In Istanbul he entered the circle of Şeyhülislam Meşrebzâde Ârif Efendi, taught his son and through him obtained the rank of müderris; he became an assessor (kassam) of the Mahkeme-i Teftîş-i Evkāf and worked on the land commission chaired by Cevdet Pasha.

The turning point of his life was his journey to Syria in the suite of the Foreign Minister Fuad Pasha after the Damascus events of 1860. Fuad Pasha greatly liked his learning and his cheerful conversation; when the senior judgeship he sought within the religious hierarchy was refused on the objection of the Şeyhülislam, Fuad Pasha had him appointed governor of Damascus with the rank of vizier (1863). Hüsameddin puts it in the words "although he could not obtain a mahrec judgeship, his fortune made him a vizier." He took off the garb of the ulema in Beirut and returned to Damascus in civil dress; the following year he became the first governor of the newly formed province of Syria. In 1865 he came to Istanbul as Minister of Endowments, and then served as Minister of Finance, of the Privy Purse and of the Interior. In the debate over the preparation of the Mecelle he sided with Cevdet Pasha.

When he fell out with the grand vizier Âlî Pasha he was moved from ministry to ministry. After Âlî Pasha's death the new grand vizier Mahmud Nedim Pasha had him dismissed in the autumn of 1871 and confined to Amasya; Hüsameddin writes that, besides the grand vizier's intrigues, the gambling and dissipation of his son İsmâil Hakkı Bey also played a part in this exile. The pasha was pardoned in the summer of 1872, returned to Istanbul and became Minister of Forests and Mines, then again Minister of Endowments and of Finance. On 17 Safer 1290 (16 April 1873) he was made grand vizier. According to Hüsameddin, the Serasker Hüseyin Avni Pasha confided to him the idea of deposing Sultan Abdülaziz; the grand vizier would not go along with it, and Hüseyin Avni Pasha, fearing exposure, accused him before the sultan. Thus, after a grand vizierate of nine months and ten days, he was dismissed in February 1874 and sent first as governor to Aleppo and then to the Hijaz.

Shortly after reaching the Hijaz he died at Taif and was buried near the grave of the Companion Abdullah b. Abbas. The sources differ on the date of his death: Hüsameddin and TEİS give 11 Şaban 1291, while TDV, following İbnülemin, records 13 September 1874. The cause of death is also disputed. İbnülemin speaks of typhus; Cevdet Pasha reports that his steward was a man of Hüseyin Avni Pasha and that it was said he had been poisoned through him. Hüsameddin writes that all sorts of rumours circulated, but no evidence was found to confirm any of them.

Ties to Amasya

Mehmed Rüşdü Pasha's traces in Amasya belong above all to the year of his exile. According to Hüsameddin, during this time the pasha spent his days in the company of Mîr Hamza Nigârî, his father's deputy (halife), completed his father's tomb and mosque, which were still under construction, and had a large mansion built for Nigârî; but "his eye and ear were in Istanbul." Sheikh İsmâil Sirâceddin's tomb above the Şamlar cemetery, with the small mosque beside it, is still known as the Şirvanlı Mosque; these buildings are described in Şirvanlı (Azerbaijanis) Mosque and the Tomb of Mîr Hamza Nigârî. The pasha also had the Feyziye Madrasa, the Tayyar Pasha Madrasa and the Benderli Madrasa, where he had lodged in his youth, rebuilt.

Alongside these benefactions, Hüsameddin does not fail to record two harms the pasha did to his home town. The first was that, in his first term as Minister of Endowments, he abolished the exemption that the Amasya endowments had obtained with great difficulty; in the historian's view this decision wronged many of the endowments' staff. The second was that, as soon as he returned to Istanbul, he had Amasya, which during Mahmud Nedim Pasha's grand vizierate had been made a province of three sanjaks through the efforts of the Amasyan Hâfız Ali Paşazâde Hasan Tahsin Bey, restored to its former status. Hüsameddin attributes this to the "certain mischief-makers" whose complaint had forced him to resign during his youthful term as director of endowments, and adds, "they say he took out his grudge on Amasya and its people." The historian himself makes clear that this is hearsay.

The pasha's family in Amasya also appears in the records. His elder brother Seyyid Ahmed Hulûsî Efendi rose to the rank of kazasker (chief military judge); his life can be read in Ahmed Hulûsî Efendi (Şirvânîzâde), based on his entry in the sixth volume of Hüsameddin. Hüsameddin compares the two brothers: both were generous and refined, and alike in face; Mehmed Rüşdü Pasha was exceedingly learned, a searching mind who had gathered every kind of accomplishment, while Ahmed Hulûsî Efendi, besides his learning, was pious and devoted to the sacred law. The pasha's only son İsmâil Hakkı Bey died young in Safer 1291, so his line did not continue through him; İsmâil Hakkı Bey's daughter married Hâlid Ziyâ Bey, the son of Ahmed Hulûsî Efendi.

His father's life is told in detail in İsmail Sıracüddin Şirvânî, and that of the poet he protected in Mîr Hamza Nigârî.

Hüsameddin's Account

In the tenth volume of his History of Amasya, Hüsameddin devotes a long entry to the pasha under the heading "Rüşdü Mehmed Paşa-Şirvânîzâde". The beginning of the entry and the passage on the pasha's poetry read as follows:

Rüşdü Mehmed Paşa-Şirvânîzâde Amasyalıdır. Yukarıda tercemesi yazılan Hâlidiyye meşâyih-i kirâmından Şirvânî el-Hâc İsmâ'îl Sirâceddîn Efendi'nin ikinci mahdûmudur. Amasya'da Yâkûtiyye Mahallesi'nde 1245'de doğdu. Mukaddimât-ı ulûmu Anac Hoca Mehmed Efendi'den gördü. Ulûm-ı Arabiyye ve akliyye ve nakliyyeyi hâssaten pederinden ahz ü tederrüs edib 1264'de pederinin vefâtından sonra İstanbul'a gitdi. [...] Âlim, fâzıl, münşî, zekî, fatîn, sahî, mümtezic, mu'tedil, orta boylu, tıknaz, sabîh, mütebessim bir zât idi. [...] Merhûm gâyet kâtib, münşî olduğu gibi mükemmel şâir ve rind-meşreb idi. Mey ü mahbûbu gâyet sever, İstanbul sâhil-hânelerinde ve köşklerinde ricâl-i asrıyla beraber ta'tîl günlerinde ve gecelerde her türlü zevk ü sefâya düşkün idi. "Fatîn tezkeresi"nde şu gazeli görüldü.

In English: Şirvânîzâde Rüşdü Mehmed Pasha is from Amasya. He is the second son of Şirvânî Hacı İsmâil Sirâceddin Efendi, one of the Khalidi sheikhs whose biography was given above. He was born in 1245 in the Yâkûtiye quarter of Amasya. He learned the elements of the sciences from Anaç Hoca Mehmed Efendi. He studied the Arabic sciences and the rational and traditional sciences above all with his father, and when his father died in 1264 he went to Istanbul. [...] He was learned, virtuous, a fine prose writer, clever, perceptive, generous, sociable and moderate, of medium height, stocky, handsome and smiling. [...] The late pasha was an excellent secretary and stylist as well as an accomplished poet of libertine (rind) temperament. He was very fond of wine and beauties, and on holidays and at night, in the waterside mansions and pavilions of Istanbul, he was given to every kind of pleasure and amusement together with the statesmen of his day. The following ghazal was seen in Fatîn's tezkire.

After quoting the ghazal, Hüsameddin says that he improvised a tahmis on it on the spot "because it awakened an opening in my temperament", and adds the five-stanza tahmis signed with his pen name Asrî. Since this tahmis is the historian's own poem, it is given on a separate page in his category, under Asrî (Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar): Poet and Works.

Poetry

The sources do not agree on Mehmed Rüşdü Pasha as a poet. Hüsameddin calls him an "accomplished poet". İbnülemin Mahmud Kemal, the biographer of the last grand viziers, writes, as quoted in TEİS, that because the pasha was first occupied with his studies and then with affairs of state he found no opportunity to write major works; that although he collected some of his poems, poetry was not his true talent; and that, knowing this himself, he did not persist in verse and did not compile a divan. Metin Hakverdioğlu, in his study of the Shirvani poets of Amasya, on the other hand says that the pasha's "poetic side was strong" and notes that examples of his poems are also found in Hümâ-yı Arş, a work collecting the poets of Mîr Hamza Nigârî's circle. This work has not been published, and the poems in it could not be reached.

His only poem whose text is known today is the ghazal with the refrain (redif) "bir değilse de" in Fatîn Dâvud's tezkire Hâtimetü'l-eş'âr. The ghazal treats things known to be separate appearing as one to the poet in a state of rapture and love: the joy of union and joy, the torment of separation and torment, earth and sky, morning and evening, pain and cure. In the last couplet the poet sets out his own view of poetry, saying that the connoisseur of words will understand this style and manner. The ghazal appears in Hüsameddin's text and in TEİS with small differences of reading; these are shown on the poem's page. The pasha also left two works connected with his profession: a Turkish translation of Mâverdî's Arabic treatise on statecraft under the title Düstûrü'l-vüzerâ, and a gloss on Gelenbevî's logic textbook el-Burhân.

One of Hüsameddin's remarks on the pasha's political outlook is also of interest for literary history. According to the historian, when the pasha returned to Istanbul in 1872 he won Midhat Pasha's affection through certain liberal actions, and "had adopted the aim pursued by Ziyâ and Kemâl Beys." Those meant are Ziya Pasha, who had also served as governor of Amasya, and Nâmık Kemal. Ziya Pasha's years in Amasya are discussed in Ziya Pasha: Poet and Works.

State of the Sources

The most detailed local source on the pasha's life is Hüsameddin's entry; the dates of his official posts are given in the TDV article on the basis of archival documents. The two accounts largely agree, but there are small differences of date. His year of birth is 1245 (1829-1830) in Hüsameddin and 1828 in TDV. In Hüsameddin the exile to Amasya begins with his dismissal on 3 Receb 1288 (September 1871), while TDV gives 30 October 1871 as the date he was ordered to reside in Amasya. For his death there are the two dates given above. Hüsameddin's charges concerning the Amasya endowments and the province question are the judgement of a local historian; no counterpart has been found in other sources. For the poetry, Fatîn's tezkire itself could not be consulted; the text of the ghazal is taken from Hüsameddin and from the TEİS entry, which gives the poem with a reference to Fatîn.

Chronology

1245 (1829-1830): Born in the Yâkûtiye quarter of Amasya (TDV: 1828).

1264 (1848): His father Sheikh İsmâil Sirâceddin dies; he goes to Istanbul.

1853-1855: Director of the Amasya endowments; resigns and returns to Istanbul.

1860: Goes to Damascus in the suite of Fuad Pasha.

1863: Becomes governor of Damascus with the rank of vizier; the following year governor of Syria.

1865-1871: Serves as Minister of Endowments, of Finance, of the Privy Purse and of the Interior.

1871-1872: Dismissed and confined to Amasya; completes his father's tomb and mosque.

16 April 1873: Becomes grand vizier.

February 1874: Dismissed from the grand vizierate; sent to Aleppo and then to the Hijaz as governor.

1291 (1874): Dies at Taif (Hüsameddin and TEİS: 11 Şaban 1291; TDV: 13 September 1874).

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Books