Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar makes two claims for Sa'dî Çelebi, who lived in the middle of the fourteenth century: that he did more than anyone to spread Persian literature in Amasya, and that he opened the town's first Halvetî lodge. Born into a family of scholars from Ziyâre as the son of Mevlânâ Nûreddîn Hasan, he was known by the honorific "Mevlânâ Şemseddîn". The same entry says that he wrote poetry in Arabic, Persian and Turkish, that he was the sheikh of Tâceddîn Altunbaş, the ruler of Amasya descended from the Seljuks, that he was a favourite of Hacı Kutluşah, and that people called him "the second Sa'dî". He died around 759 (1357-58). Hüsameddin also states that Ahmedî, the poet of the İskendernâme, was his pupil. No poem of his is in hand, and several details of the entry do not agree with other sources.

His Entry in the Amasya Tarihi

The record stands in the tenth volume under the heading "Sa'dî Çelebi-Mevlânâ Şemseddîn":

Amasyalıdır. Kibâr-ı ulemâdan Mevlânâ Nûreddîn Hasan bin Ali ez-Ziyârî mahdûmudur. Pederinden mukaddimât-ı ulûmu okudu. Ba'dehû Mevlânâ Musliheddîn Mûsâ et-Tebrîzî'den ikmâl-i tahsîl edib tasavvufa meyl etdi. Bir müddet Amasya'ya gelip ikâmet eden eş-Şeyh Cemâleddîn İbrâhim Zâhid Geylânî sohbet-i şerîfesinde tekmîl-i sülûk edib Amasya'da ilk def'a zâviye-i Halvetiyye küşâd ederek şeyhi oldu. Hacı Kutlu Şâh devrinde fevka'l-âde iştihâr edib 759 hudûdunda vefât etdi. Amasya hükümdârı olan Sultân Altunbaş Gâzi şeyhi olup âlim, fâzıl, elsine-i selâsede şâir, Kutlu Şâh'ın mergûbu idi. Buna "Şeyh Sa'dî-i sânî" denirdi. Amasya'da Farsiyyâtı en ziyâde bu neşr etdi. Şâ'ir-i meşhûr Ahmedî bunun yetişdirmesidir.

In present-day English: A native of Amasya, he was a son of the great scholar Mevlânâ Nûreddîn Hasan bin Ali ez-Ziyârî. He read the elementary sciences with his father, then completed his education under Mevlânâ Muslihuddîn Mûsâ et-Tebrîzî and turned to Sufism. In the company of Şeyh Cemâleddîn İbrâhim Zâhid-i Geylânî, who came to Amasya and stayed for a while, he completed the mystical path; he then opened a Halvetî lodge in Amasya for the first time and became its sheikh. He grew extraordinarily famous in the time of Hacı Kutluşah and died around 759. He was the sheikh of Sultan Altunbaş Gâzi, ruler of Amasya; a learned and virtuous man, a poet in three languages, much loved by Kutluşah. He was called "the second Şeyh Sa'dî". More than anyone, he spread Persian letters in Amasya. The famous poet Ahmedî was trained by him.

His Family

The name Ziyârî links the family to the present-day town of Ziyaret, which Hüsameddin calls "the Ziyâre quarter of Amasya". His father Nûreddîn Hasan Çelebi, son of Ali of Ziyâre, taught at the Halfet Gâzi Madrasa and in 713 (1313-14) is found as "sadrü'l-ulemâ", foremost of the scholars, and a well-known mufti. His uncle was Mevdûd bin Ali ez-Ziyârî; in another entry on the family he is called "Muhibbüddîn Mevdûd", which is the name of Hoca Muhibbeddin Mevdûd ez-Ziyârî, said to have built a mosque and a bathhouse at Ziyâre. The descendants of this branch held the judgeship and the office of mufti of Amasya for a long time: Şemseddîn Ebû Saîd Ahmed Çelebi became chief judge of Amasya under Kutluşah and his son Hacı Şâdgeldi and died in 767 (1365-66), and his son Saîdeddîn Mevhûb Çelebi died in the last month of 788 (1386-87) as şeyhülislam to Ahmed Paşa, the son of Hacı Şâdgeldi. Within this family of judges and muftis, Sa'dî Çelebi appears as a branch that moved from scholarship to Sufism.

His Life

The year of his birth is not recorded. After his first lessons with his father he attended Muslihuddîn Mûsâ et-Tebrîzî and then turned to the mystical path. The weight of the entry falls on the political setting of his years as a sheikh. Tâceddîn Altunbaş was a son of the Seljuk sultan Gıyâseddîn Mesud II and, according to Hüsameddin, was three times proclaimed ruler of Simre, that is, of Amasya; the third time, in 755 (1354), was the work of his grandson Hacı Kutluşah. Sa'dî Çelebi's standing as "sheikh of Altunbaş Gâzi" belongs to these years, to Altunbaş's last reign in Amasya. Real power in the town, however, lay with Hacı Kutluşah, who had settled there as an Eretnid emir, and Hüsameddin ties Sa'dî Çelebi's fame to his time.

The epithet "Şeyh Sa'dî-i sânî" alludes to Sa'dî of Shiraz, the poet of the Gulistan and the Bustan. The comparison is natural for a sheikh who spread Persian verse and prose in Amasya and who himself bore the name Sa'dî. The entry does not say when or by whom the epithet was given. His death is placed "around 759", that is, about 1357-58; the site of his grave is not recorded.

The State of the Sources

Three details of the entry raise difficulties when compared with other records. The first concerns his master. The man Hüsameddin calls "Cemâleddîn İbrâhim Zâhid Geylânî" is known in the history of Sufism as Tâcüddîn İbrâhim Zâhid-i Geylânî. According to Mustafa Bahadıroğlu's article in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, this sheikh was born in Gîlân around 615 (1218), spent his life on the shores of the Caspian and died there in 700 (1301); nothing is said of any journey to Anatolia, and only one of his deputies, Ahî Yûsuf, is known to have founded a lodge at Niğde. It is not impossible for a sheikh who died in 1357-58 to have kept company with a master who died in 1301, but no other record has been found of Zâhid-i Geylânî staying in Amasya.

The second is the phrase "zâviye-i Halvetiyye". According to the same article, the Halvetiyye is the order named after Ömer el-Halvetî, nephew and disciple of Zâhid-i Geylânî's deputy Ahî Muhammed Halvetî, and it took shape at the end of the fourteenth century. The Halvetî path is generally held to have taken root in Amasya at the beginning of the fifteenth century with Pir İlyas, who had gone into retreat with Sadreddîn-i Hıyâvî in Shirvan. Hüsameddin's description of a lodge opened before 759 as "Halvetî" may be a retrospective label, arising from Zâhid-i Geylânî's later place in the Halvetî chain of masters. This is an inference; nothing is said of the lodge's site or endowment.

The third is his link with Ahmedî. In the entry on Ahmedî in the sixth volume, Hüsameddin writes that the poet was born in Amasya around 735 (1334-35) and studied under Aksarayîzâde Fahreddîn İlyas, Şemseddîn Ahmed bin Osmân ez-Ziyârî and Muslihuddîn Mûsâ bin Mahmûd es-Sivâsî; Sa'dî Çelebi's name does not appear among his teachers. Two names in that list do catch the eye, however: one is a scholar with the honorific "Şemseddîn" and the name Ziyârî, like Sa'dî Çelebi, and the other bears the name Muslihuddîn Mûsâ, like Sa'dî Çelebi's teacher. The author may have recorded the same people in two separate entries with different fathers' names and attributions, but this is no more than a suggested reading. What is known of Ahmedî's education therefore cannot be tied firmly to Sa'dî Çelebi.

His Poetry

"Elsine-i selâsede şâir": with these words Hüsameddin tells us that Sa'dî Çelebi wrote verse in Arabic, Persian and Turkish. Not a single line in any of the three languages has come down; his poems have not reached us, and the entry offers neither the title of a work nor a reference to an anthology. If one weighs the place of Persian among the sheikhs and madrasas of fourteenth-century Amasya, most of the lost poems may well have been in Persian. There is no concrete document to support this.

Chronology

713 (1313-14): His father Nûreddîn Hasan Çelebi is found as sadrü'l-ulemâ and mufti.

755 (1354): Tâceddîn Altunbaş is proclaimed ruler of Amasya for the third time, through Hacı Kutluşah.

Around 759 (1357-58): Sa'dî Çelebi dies.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Online sources