His father worked as a clockmaker in the timekeeper's room (muvakkithane) of the Sultan Bayezid mosque in Amasya; Ahmed Sa'î Efendi made his way with the pen. Thanks to his poetry and his inşâ, that is, his skill in writing prose letters and documents, he became a divan secretary, remained in this post for many years, joined the ranks of the city's notables and died in 1122 (1710-11). Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar had obtained a few of his ghazals and qit'as, but these were burned, and so none of Sa'î's poetry is known today.

Hüsameddin's Entry

The entry given in the sixth volume of Amasya Tarihi under the heading "Ahmed Sa'î Efendi-Saatçızâde" reads:

Amasya'da Sultân Bâyezîd muvakkit-hânesinde saatçı olan Mehmed Çelebi bin Derviş mahdûmudur. Amasya ulemâsından tahsîl-i ilm ü marifet edib şiir ve inşâsı ile iştihâr ederek divân kâtibi oldu. Hayli müddet bu kitâbetde müstahdem olup a'yân sırasına girdi. 1122'de vefât etdi. Asâr-ı şi'riyyesinden elde edinilen birkaç gazel ve kıt'ası yandı. Pederi muvâkkitdi.

In paraphrase: His father was Mehmed Çelebi, son of Derviş, a clockmaker in the timekeeper's room of Sultan Bayezid in Amasya. He acquired learning and knowledge from the scholars of Amasya, became known for his poetry and prose style and became a divan secretary. He served for a long time in this secretaryship and entered the ranks of the notables. He died in 1122. The few ghazals and qit'as of his poetry that had been obtained were burned. His father was a timekeeper.

The subject of the entry is Ahmed Sa'î; Mehmed Çelebi is his father. The distinction matters, because the first sentence of the entry begins with the father's name and can easily be read as the father's biography. The heading of the entry, Ahmed Sa'î Efendi-Saatçızâde, makes this plain in any case.

Divan Secretary

A divan secretary was the man who conducted the correspondence at the side of the sanjak governor or the provincial governor. The statement that Sa'î reached this post through "poetry and inşâ" recalls that in the clerical work of the age the ability to write good prose was sought as a professional skill. Hüsameddin does not give under which governors he served or when he took up the post; he says only that he remained "for a long time". Entering "the ranks of the notables" at the end of his service means that he came to be counted among the leading men of the city. A generation before him, İlhâmî Hasan Çelebi, who served as divan secretary in Amasya and was known for his poetry, had followed a similar path, rising from poll-tax clerk to divan secretary.

In other entries Hüsameddin describes in detail a family known in Amasya as the "Sâ'atçizâdeler". The head of the family is Sâ'î Mehmed Çelebi: son of Hasan of the Ahî Receb quarter, a renowned clockmaker, timekeeper of the Sultâniyye, that is the Sultan Bayezid mosque, imam of the Ahî Receb mosque and a poet; he died around 1095 (1684). Hüsameddin names as his sons el-Hâc Sâlih, Hasan and Hüseyin Efendi.

Ahmed Sa'î's father is introduced as "Mehmed Çelebi, who was a clockmaker in the timekeeper's room of Sultan Bayezid"; the profession, the mosque and the period fit Sâ'î Mehmed Çelebi, and the epithet "Saatçızâde" in the heading of the entry also points to this family. That Ahmed's name does not appear among Sâ'î Mehmed's sons is no obstacle to this identification: Saatçizâde Bünyâd Efendi, who has a separate entry in Hüsameddin's seventh volume, is also introduced as the son of "Saatçi Mehmed Çelebi, imam of the Ahî Receb mosque", dies in 1127 (1715), and is likewise missing from that list. On the other hand, the two records give the father's father differently: Sâ'î Mehmed Çelebi is "son of Hasan", while Ahmed Sa'î's father is "Mehmed Çelebi son of Derviş". "Derviş" may be a name or a title. Ahmed Sa'î's being the son of Sâ'î Mehmed Çelebi is therefore a strong possibility, but not a certainty.

If the identification is correct, an interesting detail emerges: the son is known by a name very close to his father's pen name. In Hüsameddin's edition the father's pen name is spelled "Sâ'î", the son's "Sa'î"; both spellings call to mind the root sa'y, "effort, striving". That the son continued his father's pen name with a slight difference is a possibility; whether the difference in spelling comes from Hüsameddin's manuscript or from the edition cannot be known.

The later generations of the family appear in Hüsameddin as a chain of poets, madrasa teachers and imams: Hâfız Hasan Efendi dies in 1136 (1723-24) as imam of the Receb quarter; his son Sâtı' Mustafa Efendi becomes a madrasa teacher in Istanbul. It is also recorded that the timekeeper and poet Sâni'î Mehmed Efendi was "one of the friends of Saatçı Mehmed Çelebi".

His Poetry

None of Ahmed Sa'î Efendi's poems survives. Hüsameddin's words are plain: the few ghazals and qit'as he had obtained were burned. He does not say which fire it was. In another entry he writes that a historic endowment deed which he had found and copied in the house of Fâzılzâde Mustafa Âkif Efendi, preacher of the Sultan Bayezid mosque, was burned "in the Taş musluk fire"; whether Sa'î's poems were lost in the same fire is unknown. Ahmed Sa'î is also missing from Metin Hakverdioğlu's account of the poets of the sixth volume.

Chronology

Around 1095 (1684): Sâ'î Mehmed Çelebi, clockmaker and timekeeper, regarded as the ancestor of the family, dies.

1122 (1710-11): The divan secretary and poet Ahmed Sa'î Efendi dies.

1127 (1715): Bünyâd Efendi, another son of Saatçi Mehmed Çelebi, dies.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Online sources