Years after his father had held the sheikh's seat of the Amasya Mevlevî lodge, Ahmed Dede, whom the town knew as "Sâbir Dede", came to occupy it himself. He was a Mevlevî poet; he grew up in the lodge as a sheikh's son and became trustee of its endowments. After the death of his father Mahmûd Dede he was trained in the service of Şeydâ Ahmed Çelebi and of Kudsî Hasan Dede, the lodge's new sheikh, and became a Mesnevî reciter. According to Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar he was appointed sheikh of the lodge in 1097 (1685-86), and he died in office in Shawwal 1102 (June-July 1691). Hüsameddin describes him as "pleasant in conversation, versed in letters, a poet". Not a single line of his verse survives, and the date of his sheikhdom does not agree with other records in the same work.

The Entry in Amasya Tarihi

The entry Sâbir Ahmed Dede-Mevlevîzâde, which Hüsameddin places among the names beginning with the letter "sâd", runs to four sentences:

Amasya'da Mevlevîhâne şeyhi Mahmûd Dede'nin oğludur. Şeydâ Ahmed ve Şeyh Kudsî Hasan Dede'lerin hizmetlerinde tefeyyüz edib Mesnevîhân ve 1097'de Mevlevîhâne şeyhi ve evkâf-ı mütevellîsi olduğu halde 1102 senesi şevvâlinde vefât etdi. 'Urefâ-yı Mevlevîyye'den, sohbeti hoş, edebiyâta vâkıf, şâir idi. "Sâbir Dede" demekle meşhûrdur.

Rendered into modern English, the entry says: he was a son of Mahmûd Dede, sheikh of the Mevlevî lodge in Amasya. He received spiritual training in the service of Şeydâ Ahmed and of Sheikh Kudsî Hasan Dede and became a Mesnevî reciter; in 1097 he became sheikh of the lodge and trustee of its endowments, and he died in the month of Shawwal 1102 while holding these posts. He was one of the gnostics of the Mevlevî order, pleasant in conversation, versed in literature, a poet. He is known as "Sâbir Dede".

Life

Sâbir Dede's family was bound up with the seventeenth-century refounding of the Amasya Mevlevî lodge. The lodge had burned in 1011 (1602-03) during a raid by brigands; when Mehmed Ârif Dede, son of Sheikh İbrâhim Çelebi, laid the matter before the former grand vizier Bayram Paşa, it was rebuilt in 1047 (1637-38) and its endowments enlarged. After Ârif Dede the sheikh's seat passed to his son-in-law Mahmûd Dede. Sâbir Dede was this Mahmûd Dede's son, and Senâyî İbrâhim Efendi, who preached in the lodge, became trustee of its endowment in 1112 and died the following year, was his brother. In the chronicle section of Hüsameddin's history the father's death is entered under Dhu al-Qadah of the year 1070, when the trial of Hızır Efendi was throwing Amasya into turmoil: in the middle of that month "mevlevîhâne şeyhi Mahmûd Adnî Dede Efendi" died and was succeeded by "hulefâ-yı mevleviyyeden Hasan Kudsî Dede Efendi". Since his father died in July 1660, Sâbir's years of training in the lodge were spent under other sheikhs.

Of the two teachers named in the entry, Kudsî Hasan Dede is the man who succeeded his father as sheikh and held the post until Shaban 1091 (August-September 1680). The other is Şeydâ Ahmed Çelebi, son of Ali, one of the gardeners of Amasya. Şeydâ had been trained in the service of Mehmed Ârif Dede and was a Mesnevî reciter, known for his poetry and his prose, and he died in 1078 (1667-68). Hüsameddin writes that his "müşâare", his exchange of poems, with Kudsî Hasan Dede was famous, that he had obtained two of his ghazals, and that these too were burned. The circle in which Sâbir Dede grew into a poet "versed in letters" was this lodge assembly, where his two teachers answered each other in verse. The Mesnevî reciter's task was to read and expound Rûmî's Mesnevî. Since Sâbir took it on, his Persian must have been good.

According to Hüsameddin, Sâbir became both sheikh of the lodge and trustee of its endowments in 1097 and died holding both posts in Shawwal 1102. His brother Senâyî likewise kept the administration of the endowment until his death. Both brothers, it appears, looked after the spiritual as well as the financial affairs of the lodge, and both died in office. Nothing is known of a marriage or of any children Sâbir may have left.

A Discrepancy in the Dates of His Sheikhdom

The statement that Sâbir Dede became sheikh in 1097 cannot be reconciled with Hüsameddin's other records of the same lodge. According to the chronicle section, when Kudsî Hasan Dede died in Shaban 1091 he was succeeded by "sâdât-ı Aleviye'den es-Seyyid Alâeddîn Dede Efendi". The entry on Ebû Saîd Ahmed Dede, among the biographies of Amasya's notables, describes a further interruption: Ahmed Dede, a pupil of Kudsî Hasan Dede who had given him the by-name "Ebû Saîd", became sheikh of the Şeyh Cûî lodge in 1095 and a year later sheikh and Mesnevî reciter of the Amasya lodge as well; he was removed in 1099 and the sheikhdom was given back to Alâeddîn Dede. Alâeddîn Dede then remained sheikh until his death in 1112. In this sequence there is no room for a sheikhdom of Sâbir's running from 1097 to 1102.

The account of the Mevlevî lodge in Hüsameddin's opening volume does not settle the problem either. There the sheikhs of the lodge built by Bayram Paşa are listed in order as Mehmed Ârif Dede, Mahmûd Dede, Abdülkâdir Dede and Alâeddîn Dede, and Sâbir's name does not appear. Yet the same list also leaves out Kudsî Hasan Dede and Ebû Saîd Ahmed Dede, whose sheikhdoms are recorded with dates in the chronicle. The list is incomplete, and Sâbir's absence from it proves nothing by itself. Hüsameddin never sets these records side by side or discusses them. Either the date 1097 has been miswritten, or Sâbir held the office briefly and at the same time as the other sheikhs; which is correct cannot be known without the account books of the endowment or the Islamic court registers.

Poetry

For Sâbir Dede, Hüsameddin mentions no divan, no long poem, not even a single couplet; he records his poetry only in the words "versed in letters, a poet", and none of his poems has been found. Sâbir, "the patient one", stands in the heading of the entry as his pen name, and among the townspeople he was known as "Sâbir Dede". Hüsameddin, who lost the ghazals of Sâbir's teacher Şeydâ in a fire, seems never to have had any text by Sâbir himself. The tezkire of Amasya poets compiled by the madrasa teacher Abdî Efendi covered poets down to 1081, and Hüsameddin does not cite it in this entry. In Metin Hakverdioğlu's volume-by-volume list of the poets named in Amasya Tarihi, Sâbir Ahmed Dede appears among the poets of the eleventh volume.

Chronology

1047 (1637-38): Mehmed Ârif Dede, with the support of Bayram Paşa, has the burned Mevlevî lodge rebuilt.

Dhu al-Qadah 1070 (July 1660): His father Mahmûd Adnî Dede dies; Kudsî Hasan Dede becomes sheikh.

1078 (1667-68): His teacher Şeydâ Ahmed Çelebi dies.

Shaban 1091 (August-September 1680): Kudsî Hasan Dede dies; Alâeddîn Dede becomes sheikh.

1097 (1685-86): According to Hüsameddin, he becomes sheikh of the lodge and trustee of its endowment.

Shawwal 1102 (June-July 1691): He dies.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Online sources