"A poet of the saz and the pen": that is how Hüsameddin describes Safâyî Hasan Çelebi. He lived in Amasya around the middle of the eighteenth century and was a Janissary scribe; his father, Halil Ağa, had been a Janissary too. Hasan Çelebi joined the corps himself and served as secretary to the Janissary serdars of Amasya, which is why he was known by the nickname "Yazıcı", the scribe. He was one of the people of poetry and epistolary prose, and a friend of Rüşdü Ahmed Efendi, Abdî Efendi's grandson, who wrote the continuation of the anthology of poets. He died after 1161 (1748). All that is known of him comes from a three-sentence entry in Amasya Tarihi, and none of his poems has survived.

Three Sentences in the Source

Safâyî Hasan Çelebi-Yazıcı. Amasya yeniçerilerden Halil Ağa'nın oğludur. Bu da yeniçeri olup serdârların yazıcılığını yapar erbâb-ı şiir ve inşâdan bir kimse idi. Şeyh Alizâde Hâfız Ahmed Rüşdi Efendi'nin dostlarından bir sâz ve kâlem şâiri olup 1161 sâlinden sonra vefât etdi.

A plainer version: Halil Ağa, one of the Janissaries of Amasya, was his father. He too was a Janissary and served as secretary to the serdars; he was one of the masters of poetry and prose. A friend of Şeyh Alizâde Hâfız Ahmed Rüşdü Efendi and a poet of the saz and the pen, he died after the year 1161.

A Scribe in the Corps

The Janissaries of Amasya were headed by a serdar. Hüsameddin names, a generation earlier, in the second half of the seventeenth century, İkinci Ömer Ağa, father of the mufti Sânî Abdullah Efendi, as serdar of the Janissaries of Amasya; Safâyî's father Halil Ağa also belonged to the corps in Amasya. The serdar's secretary was the man who drafted his correspondence and kept his records. That Hasan Çelebi, raised in a family attached to the corps from father to son, was given this post suggests that his reading, writing and pen were ahead of those around him. Hüsameddin's placing him among "the masters of poetry and inşâ" points the same way; inşâ is the art of composing official and private letters.

A Saz Poet or a Pen Poet

The most interesting phrase in the entry is the description of Safâyî as "a poet of the saz and the pen". A saz poet is the minstrel who sings in syllabic metre to the accompaniment of the saz; a poet of the pen writes in quantitative aruz metre within the divan tradition. By placing him in both traditions at once, Hüsameddin may be indicating that besides singing in syllabic metre to the saz, Safâyî also wrote in aruz. This is a guess; Hüsameddin does not explain his words and gives no example of either kind, and we cannot tell in which of the two Safâyî composed more.

Rüşdü Ahmed Efendi's Friend

The only clue to Safâyî's literary circle is his friendship with Rüşdü Ahmed Efendi. Rüşdü carried the Amasya anthology of poets compiled by his grandfather Abdî Efendi down to his own day, collecting the poets of his age in a continuation. He died on 18 Safer 1159 (March 1746). Hüsameddin writes that this continuation was found among Rüşdü's books and papers; the work is no longer extant. It is very likely that Safâyî's name and the friendship reached Hüsameddin through that continuation. Yet the date of death in the entry, "after 1161", lies two years beyond Rüşdü's death, so Hüsameddin must also have seen some other document showing Safâyî alive in 1161. What that document was, he does not say.

His Poetry

Safâyî's poems have not been found. Since Rüşdü's continuation is lost, any poems it may have held have vanished with it, and Hüsameddin's entry contains not one line. Hakverdioğlu's survey of the poets in Amasya Tarihi records his name twice in a row, in identical form.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Online sources