Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin was a fifteenth-century physician and surgeon of Amasya who spent most of his life at the bedside in the city's hospital, the darüşşifa. His name is tied to the Cerrâhiyyetü'l-Hâniyye, the first illustrated surgical book written in Turkish, and to the Mücerrebnâme, regarded as the first Turkish monograph in which a physician described medicines he had tested himself. He wrote these books when he was past eighty, and they show a man who had not merely read widely but had learned, over more than half a century of practice, exactly when and how to use the knife and the cautery iron.

Most of what we know about his life comes from brief notes scattered through his own books. It is he who tells us his age, his teacher, the cities he visited, the patients he treated and, now and then, the apprentice who travelled with him. There is no official record, no gravestone and no contemporary biography. His life is therefore a story assembled from his own lines and from the conclusions that researchers drew from them centuries later. At several points the sources disagree; those disagreements are set out below as they stand.

Sabuncuoğlu's bond with Amasya goes well beyond a record of birthplace. His family was the city's best-known medical family, the institution in which he trained and worked was the Amasya Darüşşifa, and he wrote his books in this city at the request of its circle of physicians. Today his name lives on in the medical history museum housed in the darüşşifa where he worked and on the signboard of the city's main hospital.

Name and Family

In his books he introduces himself as "Şerefeddin bin Ali bin el-Hâc İlyas Sabuncuoğlu." The full name given by historians of medicine, which adds his great-grandfather, is Şerefeddin b. Ali b. el-Hâc İlyas b. Şa'bân el-Amâsî. His father's name was Ali and his grandfather's Hacı İlyas. No document explaining the origin of the family name "Sabuncuoğlu" has been found; that the family was known by this name in Amasya is clear both from his own books and from local historians.

His grandfather, Sabuncuoğlu Mevlânâ el-Hâc İlyas Çelebi, was the man who established the family's reputation. Describing the turbulent years when Timur entered Anatolia and Mehmed I (Çelebi Mehmed) moved back and forth between Amasya and Tokat, Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar's Amasya Tarihi records that Sabuncuoğlu Mevlânâ el-Hâc İlyas Çelebi, one of the scholars of Amasya, became Çelebi Sultan's chief physician because he was a highly skilled doctor. Modern studies in the history of medicine also present Hacı İlyas as the chief physician of Mehmed I; some of them state that he served as palace physician in Bursa during Mehmed I's reign (1413-1421). The Hacıilyas neighbourhood of Amasya is held to take its name from this physician; the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam writes that the name of Sabuncuoğlu's family lives on in a neighbourhood of Amasya known today as "Sabuncuoğlu (Hacı İlyas)."

The fullest information on the family's other physicians again comes from Hüsâmeddîn. According to him, Hacı İlyas's son Mevlânâ Hasan Çelebi learned medicine from his father and the religious and literary sciences from other scholars, served as physician at the Amasya Darüşşifa, and attended in turn the princes who came to Amasya as governors: Şehzade Ahmed, Şehzade Mehmed and Şehzade Alâeddin. Hasan Çelebi, who is said to have written two works on his medical experience, appears in the text with two death dates, 849 and 851, which places his death in the second half of the 1440s. His son Hamza Çelebi was also a physician; Hüsâmeddîn reports that Hamza signed the flyleaf of a commentary he wrote as "Hamza bin Mevlânâ Hasan bin Mevlânâ Hacı İlyâs es-Sâbûnî." If these records are correct, Şerefeddin grew up in a family that practised the same profession in the same institution, alongside his uncle and his cousin.

"Şerefeddîn İsa Çelebi" in Hüsâmeddîn

In the biographical volumes of the Amasya Tarihi, Hüsâmeddîn lists the physician under the heading "Şerefeddîn İsa Çelebi-Sabuncuzâde" and introduces him as the son of "Hacı İlyâs Çelebizâde Mevlânâ Alâeddîn Ali Çelebi, known as Sabuncuoğlu of Amasya." The father's name, Ali, agrees, but the name "İsa" appears neither in the signature in Sabuncuoğlu's own books nor in modern research. For this reason the physician's name is usually written today as Şerefeddin, sometimes as Şerafeddin, and the addition "İsa" remains an unverified detail.

Birth and Education

His date of birth is calculated from the ages he gives himself. In the Cerrâhiyyetü'l-Hâniyye, completed in 870 (1465), he says he is eighty-three, and in the Mücerrebnâme, written in 873 (1468), eighty-five. On the basis of these statements the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam accepts that he was born in 788 (1386); the year 1385 appears in some foreign publications. No record states his birthplace explicitly, but the fact that his entire family lived in Amasya and that he himself spent his life there has led researchers to conclude that he was born in Amasya.

His childhood fell in an unsettled period, when the Anatolian principalities were contending with one another and, after the Battle of Ankara in 1402, the Ottoman lands were divided among rival princes. Amasya was then the seat of Mehmed I, and his grandfather was Mehmed's chief physician. It has been suggested that Sabuncuoğlu attended a mektep (primary school), on the strength of the phrase "we saw many little boys at the mektep" in the Cerrâhiyyetü'l-Hâniyye; since the same phrase is found in al-Zahrawi's text, however, this sentence alone cannot count as proof. His easy command of medical terms of Arabic, Persian and Greek origin suggests that he received a sound madrasa education.

He entered the profession very young. By his own account he was already in medicine at seventeen, which corresponds to the very beginning of the 1400s, the years in which his grandfather was serving as Mehmed I's chief physician. He is thought to have learned medicine by the master-apprentice method, at the bedside. The TDV Encyclopedia of Islam writes that he was probably trained at the Amasya Darüşşifa by Burhâneddin Ahmed en-Nahcuvânî. It has been calculated that he spent at least sixty years of a life of more than eighty in practice.

Physician at the Amasya Darüşşifa

The Amasya Darüşşifa, where Sabuncuoğlu trained and worked, had been built in 708 (1308-1309) by Anber bin Abdullah in the name of the Ilkhanid ruler Öljeitü (Olcaytu Mehmed Han) and his wife İlduş Hatun. The inscription over its door lists these names. In Sabuncuoğlu's day the darüşşifa served both as a hospital and as a school where physicians were trained. In this building, where physicians prepared medicines and performed operations and students learned by watching their masters, a foundation already a century old was still one of the working health institutions of Anatolia.

In his books Sabuncuoğlu proudly states that he worked in this institution for fourteen years. The dates of those fourteen years are unknown. Some publications interpret this period as service as chief physician, others simply as work as a physician or surgeon at the darüşşifa. What the sources agree on is that Sabuncuoğlu held his post in the institution for a limited time but continued to practise medicine in Amasya until the end of his life.

His patients included ordinary townspeople. An incident he relates in his book shows this: one day, as he was walking through the market of Amasya, a patient whose life he had once saved by opening his throat stood before him, pointed to his tracheotomy opening and thanked him. Historians of medicine draw from this small scene the conclusion that the famous physician led an unassuming life among the people of the city.

With İsfendiyar Bey in Kastamonu

The only place outside Amasya where Sabuncuoğlu is known to have worked is Kastamonu. In the Mücerrebnâme he relates a case that begins, "I was in Kastamonu, in the service of İsfendiyar Bey; there was a young nakkaş (miniaturist) there." The statement shows that he practised for a time in circles close to the court of İsfendiyar Bey of the Candaroğulları (1392-1440). How long he stayed in Kastamonu is unknown. Researchers think this period falls somewhere between the start of his apprenticeship at the beginning of the 1400s and İsfendiyar Bey's death in 1440, and that it was not long. The TDV Encyclopedia of Islam places these Kastamonu days after his fourteen years of service at the darüşşifa.

The Life Told by Hüsâmeddîn

Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar's biographical entry tells a life that differs from the picture drawn by modern historians of medicine and is far more eventful. According to him, Şerefeddin, as he himself wrote in his works, lost his father at an early age and grew up with his grandfather and mother. He learned medicine from his grandfather, Hekim Hacı İlyas Çelebi, and Arabic and the religious sciences from the scholars of his time. With his grandfather's death he fell into great hardship and, in straitened circumstances, began to teach and to practise medicine.

At this point Hüsâmeddîn's account merges with Amasya's role as a princely sanjak. Some time later, he says, Şerefeddin drew close to Şehzade Alâeddin, who had come to Amasya as governor, and became his physician, but with the prince's death in 846 (1442-1443) he was again left without a post. On the pretext that he had incited the prince to revolt he was given no office and lived by medicine alone. In 855 (1451), when Mehmed II (the Conqueror) came to the throne, he became physician of the Amasya Darüşşifa and served in this post for more than twenty years. Drawing close to Şehzade Bayezid, then governor of Amasya, he was admitted among the prince's private physicians and enjoyed great prosperity. Hüsâmeddîn says that he wrote his work "Kitâbü'l-Mücerrebât" as a summary of the trials he carried out on the patients he treated, that he also left works on dentistry and pharmacy, and that he died after 878 (1473-1474).

Some details of this account cannot be confirmed by other sources. His service as physician to Şehzade Alâeddin, the accusation of incitement to revolt and the start of his darüşşifa post in 1451 do not appear in modern studies, which give his service at the darüşşifa as fourteen years. For the date of death as well, Hüsâmeddîn points to after 1473-1474, the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam to after 1468. Hüsâmeddîn further names as the physician's sons Sinâneddîn Yûsuf Efendi, who became chief physician in Istanbul, and Lütfullah Efendi, who stayed in Amasya and took his father's place. Yet in another volume of the same work Lütfullah Çelebi appears as the son of Ali Çelebi, that is, as Şerefeddin's brother. Since this contradiction cannot be resolved, it does not seem possible to say anything certain about the physician's children.

The Akrâbâzîn Translation

Sabuncuoğlu's earliest known work is a translation. He rendered into Turkish the final section, entitled "Akrâbâzîn," of the great Persian medical encyclopedia Zahîre-i Hârizmşâhî by Zeyneddin İsmâil b. Hasan el-Cürcânî (al-Jurjani). Akrâbâzîn is the name given in Islamic medicine to handbooks that collect the formulas of medicines. Sabuncuoğlu expanded this section of thirty-one chapters to thirty-three with additions of his own, and at the end of the book he added a glossary of the Arabic, Persian and Turkish medical terms he used in translating. The book opens with the methods of preparing medicines and then, distinguishing simple from compound drugs, gives formulas in the order of electuaries, eyâriç and cevâriş (purgative and digestive compounds), ıtrıfil, lozenges, powders, linctuses, syrups, preserves, gargles, oils and ointments.

The date of the translation, and at whose request it was made, are disputed. The TDV Encyclopedia of Islam writes that it was made in 1444 at the request of Şehzade Bayezid during his second governorship of Amasya. According to another publication, the translation was made in 1444 at the request of Şeyh Mehmed b. Ahmed, physician to Şehzade Bayezid. Bayezid II, however, was born in 1448 and sent to the sanjak of Amasya at the age of seven, so the date 1444 cannot be reconciled with this prince. A publication based on Şaban Doğan's doctoral work at Sakarya University reports instead that the translation was made in the hijri year 858 (1454), at the request of Bayezid II's physicians while he was prince in Amasya. This date fits the prince's arrival in Amasya. The known copies of the work are in the Süleymaniye Library (Fatih, no. 3536; Kılıç Ali Paşa, no. 761/1). Kenan Süveren wrote a doctoral thesis comparing this translation with Ibn Sina's work of the same name (Ankara 1991).

In the book's epilogue Sabuncuoğlu states plainly why he wrote in Turkish: "Zîrâ kim 'ilm-i tıbbın kitâbları Fârisî ve Tâzî dilinde düzülmişdür. Rûm ehlünün ekseri 'Arabî ve Fârisî dilün bilmeyüp âciz ve âtıl olmuşlardır" ("For the books of the science of medicine have been composed in Persian and Arabic; most of the people of Rûm, knowing neither Arabic nor Persian, have been left helpless and idle"). In the land of Rûm, that is, Anatolia, physicians who knew no Arabic or Persian could not benefit from medical books, and Sabuncuoğlu wanted to fill this gap. The same conviction remained unchanged in all his later works.

The Cerrâhiyyetü'l-Hâniyye

Sabuncuoğlu's best-known work is the Cerrâhiyyetü'l-Hâniyye, completed in 870 (1465) when he was eighty-three. The work is also known in the sources as the Cerrâhiyye-i İlhâniyye; its title means "the book of surgery belonging to the sovereign," usually rendered "Imperial Surgery," and it was dedicated to Mehmed II (the Conqueror). Sabuncuoğlu says that he knew the sultan loved scholarly books and supported men of learning, and that he wished to write such a book in order to introduce himself to him.

Relation to al-Zahrawi

The basis of the book is the thirtieth section, devoted to surgery, of the medical encyclopedia Kitâb al-Tasrîf by the Andalusian physician Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi (Albucasis, d. 1013). Sabuncuoğlu translated this section largely into Turkish, but added to it two new chapters, his own observations and experience and, most importantly, coloured pictures showing operating scenes. Whether the work should count as a translation or an original composition has been debated. Western historians generally regard it as a Turkish adaptation of al-Zahrawi with original contributions; İlter Uzel, who brought the work into modern Turkish, opposed this view, arguing that there is no known Arabic original corresponding exactly to the text.

Contents and Miniatures

The book consists of three parts. The first deals with the treatment of various diseases by cauterization, the second with operations such as incision, suturing and the removal of stones, and the third with the treatment of fractures and dislocations. In the breakdown given by the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam for the Paris copy, the first part contains fifty-six miniatures and eleven drawings of instruments; the second, of ninety-six sections, fifty-eight miniatures and 146 drawings of instruments; and the third, of thirty-six sections, twenty-four miniatures and eleven drawings of instruments. In other studies these figures vary with the copy and the method of counting; one study states that the book contains 138 operating scenes and 168 different surgical instruments, eleven of them Sabuncuoğlu's own invention.

What sets the work apart in the history of medicine is these pictures. Earlier Islamic medical books had drawn instruments, but they had no scenes with human figures showing the posture of patient and physician during an operation. In Sabuncuoğlu's miniatures one can see how the patient is to be laid down, where the physician is to stand, how many assistants are needed and how the instrument is to be held. In most of the pictures the chief surgeon is thought to be the author himself. In this respect the book is counted among the earliest examples of today's surgical atlases. Some scenes also show women physicians examining and treating female patients; Sabuncuoğlu calls them "tabibe." Researchers have also noted that some of the cauterization points coincide with acupuncture points.

Because it is written in fully vowelled Turkish, the book is an important source for the history of the language as well as of medicine. The text, which reflects the pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar of fifteenth-century Anatolian Turkish, is among the works most often consulted in Turkological research. Its miniatures have also been a separate subject of study for historians of Turkish painting.

Composition and Presentation to Mehmed II

After finishing his book, Sabuncuoğlu travelled to Istanbul to present it to the sultan. His words in the Mücerrebnâme, "once I had business at the sultan's gate, I went down to Istanbul... then, our business finished, we returned again to the city of Amassiyya," describe this journey. On the way back he passed through Bolu, Gerede and Tosya with the apprentice who accompanied him. The copy presented to Mehmed II is now in Paris and bears the seal of Bayezid II. How the book was received at court is unknown. Some researchers think Sabuncuoğlu failed to win the Conqueror's interest and never entered court circles; there is, however, no conclusive document.

The Manuscripts

Three copies of the work have survived. The copy in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (Supplément Turc, no. 693) and the copy in the Millet Library in Istanbul (no. 79) are in Sabuncuoğlu's own hand. The third copy is in the medical history library of the Istanbul Faculty of Medicine of Istanbul University; although many of its pages are missing, its miniatures are of high artistic value. The Paris copy has 205 folios, each page written in seventeen lines of vowelled naskh, with red ink used for the headings. This copy left the palace at an unknown date, was given to a French physician by Yâsincizâde İlmî Efendi in 1860, and passed to the Bibliothèque Nationale in 1871.

Scenes from His Practice

The Cerrâhiyyetü'l-Hâniyye also shows Sabuncuoğlu's manner at the bedside. His recipe for putting patients to sleep before an operation is a good example. Some patients, he says, can endure incision and cauterization while others cannot, and for these he recommends preparing a narcotic called "murkid": fresh mandrake root is pounded, mixed with almond oil and left for a day and a night, and an adult is given one dirhem of it to eat before a meal. After a while, he writes, the patient will lie down and fall asleep, and the intended treatment can then be carried out; children should be given only as much as is needed. He adds that he used this medicine all his life and never needed any other anaesthetic.

The book also contains sections on mental illness. For the disease called "mâlihulya," which corresponds to a range of mental disorders today, and for forgetfulness, which he calls "unutsağuluk," he recommends a stepwise treatment: first herbal medicines, then warm sheep's-tail fat applied to the crown of the head, and if these fail, cauterization of certain points, taking care not to harm the skin. These sections contain the earliest known coloured illustrations of the treatment of mental illness. That the Amasya Darüşşifa became, in later centuries, an institution serving only the mentally ill gives these lines an added interest.

Modern historians of medicine have examined Sabuncuoğlu's book from the standpoint of many fields, from general surgery to neurosurgery, from urology and obstetrics to orthopaedics, ophthalmology and ear, nose and throat diseases, and have published separate articles on each. The common conclusion of these studies is that Sabuncuoğlu described interventions that may be considered quite complex for the conditions of his time, paid careful attention to post-operative care, and recommended surgery only where medical treatment had failed.

The Mücerrebnâme

Sabuncuoğlu's last work is the Mücerrebnâme ("Book of Tested Remedies"), written in 873 (1468) when he was eighty-five. In the preface he says he wrote the book at the request of the physicians of Amasya. His colleagues had asked him to bring together the experience he had gained so far, so that they would no longer need to consult other books. He states that he wrote it to help his colleagues, patients and students and to earn their prayers. A copy of the work is in the Süleymaniye Library (Fatih, no. 3619).

The book, in seventeen chapters, describes the preparation and use of medicines that Sabuncuoğlu tested on various animals, on people and on himself. The chapters are arranged by the form of preparation: antidotes, electuaries, powders, plasters, suppositories, syrups and gargles, eye remedies, tablets, ointments and oils, enemas, emetics and remedies for the mouth and teeth are among them. The medicines are ordered from the most to the least used. The way the cases are presented resembles today's case reports. In this respect the work is considered the first monograph in Turkish medical history in which a physician described medicines and methods of treatment of his own discovery.

The most frequently cited passages of the book are his trials of poisons and antidotes. Sabuncuoğlu writes that after drinking an antidote (tiryak) he had prepared himself, he let a venomous snake bite his finger and saw no sign of poisoning. In another trial he plucked the feathers from a rooster's thigh, had a venomous snake bite the bare skin and then gave the bird Tiryâk-ı Fârûk to drink. The next day, on finding a greenish wound on the skin, he repeated the antidote, and on the second day the symptoms disappeared. Declaring that "experience is the proof of truth" (tecrübe delil-i sıdktır), the physician stresses that he never applied to others a treatment of which he was not sure.

Some of his experience he gained by chance. He relates that on the way back from Istanbul he became infested with lice, mixed mercury with pine resin, smeared it on a wick of linen thread which he tied around his neck, and rubbed the rest under his arms. He found that this treatment also relieved an old pain in his shoulder, and on his return to Amasya he used the same method on his patients. His frank admission that, when he could not cure a disease, he learned the treatment from those who knew it is regarded as a sign of his professional honesty. Where he quotes, he names authors such as Hippocrates, Galen and Ibn Sina. The edition by İlter Uzel and Kenan Süveren that brought the work into modern Turkish appeared in 1999.

Writing in Turkish

What binds Sabuncuoğlu's three works together is that all of them were written in Turkish. Although he knew Arabic and Persian well, he explains at every opportunity that this was a deliberate choice. His words in the preface of the Cerrâhiyyetü'l-Hâniyye are: "Bu kitabı Türkî yazdum. Türkî yazduğum şol ecilden oldu kim Kavm-i Rûm Türkî dilin söylerler... ohuyanları dahi Türkî kitâblar ohurlar" ("I wrote this book in Turkish. I wrote it in Turkish because the people of Rûm speak the Turkish tongue... and those who read also read Turkish books"). He goes on to say that most surgeons of his age could not read or write, that those who could were able to read only Turkish books, and that by consulting a book written in Turkish they would solve their problems and be saved from making mistakes.

This choice also cost him something. The TDV Encyclopedia of Islam attributes the main reasons why Sabuncuoğlu was not sufficiently known in the Ottoman scholarly world to his having lived in the provinces, in Amasya, and to his having written his works in Turkish rather than in Arabic, the scholarly language of the day. On the other hand, the choice made an important contribution to the establishment of Turkish as a language of medicine and science in fifteenth-century Anatolia. Many medical words and terms of the spoken language have come down to us thanks to his books.

His Students

Sabuncuoğlu is also remembered as a good teacher of medicine. He attached great importance to practice in surgery and held that students should learn by working under the supervision of an expert. In his book he says, "Ey talib bilmiş olasın, bu bana keşf olan san'atı aslıyla bu kitabta beyan ve 'ayan itdim. Hiç nev'ale buhl itmedim" ("Know, O student, that I have set out and made plain in this book the art revealed to me, in its essence; I have withheld nothing"), declaring that he kept nothing of his knowledge to himself. He was also a calligrapher; his mention, in a case in his book, of a growth on the cheek of a student learning to write suggests that he also gave lessons in calligraphy.

One of his students, Gıyâs b. Muhammed İsfahânî, praises his teacher's achievements in medicine in his Persian book Mir'âtü's-sıhha, dedicated to Bayezid II, and says that he took him as his model. Another student was Muhyiddin Mehî. Bursalı Mehmed Tâhir, in his Osmanlı Müellifleri, attributed a versified work entitled Müfîd (Nazmü't-teshîl) to Sabuncuoğlu; later research, however, has shown that the work belongs to Mehî and that Sabuncuoğlu copied this book of his student in his own naskh hand. Halîmî, who wrote a medical work in Persian verse, is also counted among his students.

His Death

When Sabuncuoğlu died is unknown. Since he wrote in 1468 that he was eighty-five, he must have died after that date. Some publications give 1470 as the year of his death; Hüsâmeddîn, for his part, points to after 878 (1473-1474). No grave or tomb of his is known, and his burial place has not been identified.

Oblivion and Rediscovery

The first source after his death to mention Sabuncuoğlu is the Alâim-i Cerrâhîn, written in 911 (1505) by the surgeon İbrâhim b. Abdullah. In this book his name is given and a formula for a suppository used in women's diseases is quoted from the Mücerrebnâme. After that the physician's name was long forgotten, and his books remained on library shelves.

The rediscovery came at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Mücerrebnâme was first introduced in 1920 by Rusçuklu Hakkı in the newspaper İkdam. Ali Canip Yöntem introduced the Cerrâhiyyetü'l-Hâniyye to the scholarly world in 1927. A. Süheyl Ünver published the work in 1939; in 1960 the French historians of medicine P. Huard and M. D. Grmek published the Paris copy together with its 140 miniatures under the title "the first Turkish surgical manuscript." İlter Uzel's facsimile and transcription, prepared by comparing the three copies, was published in two volumes by the Turkish Historical Society in 1992. A congress in Sabuncuoğlu's name was held in Kayseri in 1985; in 2008 the International Congress on Anatolian-Turkish Darüşşifas and Sabuncuoğlu, held in Amasya to mark the 700th anniversary of the Amasya Bimarhane, brought his works back to attention.

His Traces in Amasya

The Amasya Darüşşifa in which Sabuncuoğlu worked was restored by the Amasya Municipality and opened to visitors in 2011 as the Sabuncuoğlu Museum of the History of Medicine and Surgery. The museum displays copies of the physician's works, replicas of the instruments in his books and figures re-enacting the treatment scenes of his miniatures.

The city's main hospital today bears the name Amasya Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin Training and Research Hospital. The family's name lives on in the Hacıilyas neighbourhood, in the memory of his grandfather Hacı İlyas Çelebi. There is also a vocational and technical Anatolian high school in the city that bears his name.

The Sabuncuoğlu Family after Him

Hüsâmeddîn's records show that the Sabuncuoğlu family kept up its tradition of medicine and pharmacy until the middle of the sixteenth century. Sabuncuzâde Hoca İbrâhim Çelebi, presented as Şerefeddin's nephew, was among the well-known physicians and pharmacists of Amasya; he gained wealth and standing through medicine and pharmacy and entered the inner circle of Şehzade Ahmed, governor of Amasya. Because of this closeness he was prosecuted on the accession of Selim I (Selim the Grim) and suffered a year of imprisonment and pressure. In 923 (1517) it was rumoured that Şehzade Ahmed's son, Şehzade Murad, had come to Amasya from Iran disguised as a dervish and hidden in his house. According to Hüsâmeddîn, Solakzâde also writes that Murad fell ill in Amasya and recovered under the protection of Sabuncuoğlu İbrâhim Çelebi. In 924 (1518) İbrâhim Çelebi was taken all the way to Üsküdar to testify that the man who had been captured and beheaded was Şehzade Murad, and he died in Amasya around 930 (1523-1524).

His son, Hekimî Mehmed Çelebi, also studied in Amasya and became physician of the darüşşifa. According to Hüsâmeddîn, he drew close to Şehzade Mustafa, who came to Amasya as governor, became his private physician and died in 959 (1552). Hüsâmeddîn presents him as a scholar, a poet and a skilled physician. A chain of physicians thus emerges, stretching over roughly a century and a half from Hacı İlyas Çelebi to the physician of Şehzade Mustafa. Şerefeddin is the best-known link in this chain, the one whose works have come down to us.

Chronology

1308-1309: The Amasya Darüşşifa was built by Anber bin Abdullah in the name of Öljeitü (Olcaytu Mehmed Han) and İlduş Hatun.

1386: Born, according to the ages he gives himself (788). Some publications give 1385.

1413-1421: His grandfather Hacı İlyas Çelebi was chief physician to Mehmed I.

1440: Death of İsfendiyar Bey of the Candaroğulları, in whose service he had been in Kastamonu; his Kastamonu days fall before this date.

1444 or 1454: Made the Akrâbâzîn Translation. The TDV gives 1444; the publication based on Şaban Doğan's work reports hijri 858 (1454).

1465: At eighty-three, completed the Cerrâhiyyetü'l-Hâniyye and travelled to Istanbul to present it to Mehmed II.

1468: At eighty-five, wrote the Mücerrebnâme. The date of his death is unknown but falls after this year.

1505: The surgeon İbrâhim b. Abdullah, naming him in the Alâim-i Cerrâhîn, quoted a formula from the Mücerrebnâme.

1860: The copy of the Cerrâhiyyetü'l-Hâniyye presented to Mehmed II was given to a French physician by Yâsincizâde İlmî Efendi.

1871: This copy passed to the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.

1920: The Mücerrebnâme was introduced by Rusçuklu Hakkı in the newspaper İkdam.

1927: Ali Canip Yöntem introduced the Cerrâhiyyetü'l-Hâniyye to the scholarly world.

1939: A. Süheyl Ünver published the work.

1960: P. Huard and M. D. Grmek published the Paris copy in French.

1992: İlter Uzel's two-volume facsimile and transcription was published by the Turkish Historical Society.

2011: The Amasya Darüşşifa opened as the Sabuncuoğlu Museum of the History of Medicine and Surgery.

Bibliography

The following sources were used in this article:

  • Nuran Yıldırım, "Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 35, Istanbul 2008, pp. 358-359 (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Ali Haydar Bayat, "Cerrâhiyye-i İlhâniyye", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 7, Istanbul 1993, p. 420 (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Şerafettin Turan, "Bayezid II", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 5, Istanbul 1992, pp. 234-238 (for his date of birth and appointment to the sanjak of Amasya).
  • Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar, Amasya Tarihi, e-book edition of the Amasya Municipality: vols. 1-4 (record of Mehmed I and his chief physician Sabuncuoğlu Hacı İlyas Çelebi); vols. 6-8 (entries on Hasan Çelebi-Mevlânâ Hekim Çelebi and İbrâhim Çelebi-Sabuncuzâde Hoca); vols. 9-12 (entries on Şerefeddîn İsa Çelebi-Sabuncuzâde, Hamza Çelebi-Hekim Nureddîn and Hekimî Mehmed Çelebi-Sabuncuzâde).
  • Osman Sabuncuoğlu - Salim Aydüz, "The 15th Century Turkish Physician Serefeddin Sabuncuoglu Author of Cerrahiyetu'l-Haniyye", Muslim Heritage, 2010. muslimheritage.com
  • Ayhan Verit, Tuncay Toprak, Fatma Ferda Verit, "Şereffeddin Sabuncuoğlu (1386-147?): An Overlooked Yet Brilliant Ottoman Physician", Acta Medico-Historica Adriatica, 22/1 (2024), pp. 261-270.
  • Amasya Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School, Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin Dergisi ("Amasya'yı Yaşıyorum" project), vol. 1, no. 1, March 2025.
  • Wikipedia (Turkish), "Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin" article. tr.wikipedia.org
  • KÜRE Encyclopedia, "Sabuncuoğlu Tıp ve Cerrahi Tarihi Müzesi" article.
  • Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Family and Social Services, Amasya Provincial Directorate, news item on a visit to the Amasya Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin Training and Research Hospital, 8 April 2026.

Online sources