Known in Amasya as "Türbeli Hâfız", the Hâfız of the Tomb, Hâfız Mehmed Efendi, who wrote under the pen name Sebâtî, spent some thirty years at the foot of the tomb of the Naqshbandi-Khalidi sheikh İsmail Sirâceddin Şirvânî, as imam of the mosque beside it. He was born in Erzurum in 1264 (1847-48) to a family that had migrated there from Shirvan, came to Amasya as a young man and died in Safer 1321 (May 1903). He was a disciple of Mîr Hamza Nigârî, Şirvânî's successor (halife), and part of his poetic circle; he had his divan printed himself and gave a copy to Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar. Because Hüsameddin's copy burned, Amasya Tarihi contains not a single couplet of his. Today the full text of only two of his poems, the two chronograms he wrote on the deaths of Nigârî and of Nigârî's son Sirâceddin, is available to us through a published article.

His Life

Hüsameddin's entry Sebâtî Mehmed Efendi-Türbeli Hâfız in the eighth volume begins the poet's life with the family's roots in Shirvan:

Erzurumludur. Şirvân eyâletinde Şeki kazâsı dâhilinde Kutkaşın nâhiyesi halkından Abdulkerîm Efendi bin Hacı Mikâ'il mahdûmudur. Pederi Hacı Hamza Efendi'yle Şirvân'dan kalkıp Erzurum'da ikâmet etdikleri esnâda 1264'de doğdu. Orada tahsîl-i ulûm edib Amasya'ya geldi. Bu esnâda Şirvânî Hacı İsmâ'îl Efendi'nin türbesi, câmii ikmâl edilmiş olduğundan bu câmi-i şerîfin imâmı olarak kendisine tahsîs edilen türbe civârındaki hânede ikâmet etdi. Bu münâsebetle kendisine "Türbeli Hâfız" dendi. 1314'de Amasya mekteb-i idâdîsi Fârisî mu'alimi olup türbede kendi âleminde türbenin güzel sesli mü'ezzininin nagamât-ı latîfesiyle dem-güzâr oldu. Otuz yıl kadar bu âlem-i ferâgatte yaşayıp 1321 senesi saferinde vefât etdi. Âlim, halîm, şâir, edîb, natûk, gâyet latîf, şekl ü şemâli güzel, mükerrem bir zât idi. "Hâfız Sebâteddîn Mehmed Efendi" denirdi. Dîvân-ı eş'ârını bastırmış ve bir nüshasını da fakîre hediyyeten vermişti. Hayfâ ki yandığından eş'ârı nakl edilemedi. Mahdûmları Alî Hâver, Ahmed Tâhir Efendilerdir.

In plain English: He was from Erzurum, the son of Abdülkerim Efendi, son of Hacı Mikâil, of the people of the district of Kutkaşın in the kaza of Şeki in the province of Shirvan. He was born in 1264, while he and his father Hacı Hamza Efendi, having left Shirvan, were living in Erzurum. He studied there and came to Amasya. At that time the tomb and mosque of Şirvânî Hacı İsmâil Efendi had just been completed, so he lived, as imam of this mosque, in the house near the tomb that was assigned to him. For this reason he was called "Türbeli Hâfız". In 1314 (1896-97) he became teacher of Persian at the Amasya secondary school (idadi), and spent his time in the tomb in a world of his own, with the sweet melodies of the tomb's fine-voiced muezzin. Having lived some thirty years in this retired life, he died in the month of Safer of the year 1321. He was learned, gentle, a poet, a man of letters, eloquent, very pleasant, handsome in face and figure, and generous. He was called "Hâfız Sebâteddîn Mehmed Efendi". He had had his divan of poems printed and had given a copy to this humble writer. Alas, as it burned, his poems could not be transcribed here. His sons are Ali Hâver and Ahmed Tâhir Efendi. Hüsameddin adds that Ali Hâver graduated from the military medical school as a doctor with the rank of captain and died in 1334, while serving as doctor at the military hospital in Ioannina (Yanya), during the Greek occupation of the city.

The family names in the entry do not quite agree: Sebâtî is first introduced as the son of "Abdülkerim Efendi, son of Hacı Mikâil", and then said to have migrated from Shirvan with "his father Hacı Hamza Efendi". Whether Abdülkerim and Hacı Hamza are the same person, or whether the second sentence means the grandfather, cannot be made out from the entry.

Keeper of the Tomb and Teacher

The mosque and tomb where Sebâtî served as imam for thirty years were built for the Naqshbandi-Khalidi sheikh İsmail Sirâceddin Şirvânî, who had come from Shirvan and settled in Amasya, by his son, the grand vizier Şirvânîzâde Mehmed Rüştü Paşa. According to the hagiography quoted by Metin Hakverdioğlu, Sebâtî had his own grave dug in his lifetime ten to fifteen metres in front of the tomb's entrance, watched from the window of his house while it was dug, and, never recovering from that illness, was buried in the grave he had had dug himself. Osman Fevzi Olcay, too, in his memoirs of Sofular Mahallesi, remembers the area around the tomb as the place where "our famous poet Sebâtî Hoca" and his son Ali Hâver Bey lived.

His appointment as teacher of Persian at the Amasya secondary school in 1314 placed him on the same staff as Şirvânîzâde Enver Ahmed Efendi, Hüsameddin's own teacher of Persian.

Disciple of Nigârî

The source that best presents Sebâtî's literary identity is Hümâ-yı Arş, the hagiography (menâkıbname) of Nigârî written by Mîrzâde Mustafa Fahreddin Ağabali. In his 2016 article Metin Hakverdioğlu quotes long passages from the section of this work devoted to Sebâtî. According to Ağabali, Sebâtî was born in the town of Kurtkaşın in the district of Şeki, migrated with his family to Erzurum and, after a few years there, came to Amasya, the city where Azerbaijani emigrants lived in the greatest numbers. He is described as a man of nearly middle height, rather stout, with a thick white beard, large eyes, bushy eyebrows falling over them and a large head, jovial and smiling. Ağabali writes from his own observation that he never saw him frown at anyone, and that even at his most distressed he said nothing but "hay külhanî" (oh, you rascal).

The same source relates that Sebâtî once offended his sheikh, and that Nigârî answered him: "Seni bu bâbda rüsvâ-yı cihân ederdim / Lakin imdi seni İlhamî'ye kurban etdim" (I would have disgraced you before the world for this, but now I have sacrificed you to İlhamî). According to Ağabali, İlhamî was Sebâtî's elder brother, a pious man, pleasant in conversation and much sought after in gatherings. Hakverdioğlu interprets these words as meaning that Nigârî forgave Sebâtî for his brother's sake. The hagiography includes another scene told by Sebâtî himself: one day Nigârî came to the Şirvânî tomb and, before going in, asked for the samovar to be lit; when the samovar's embers had burned out two or three times and the sheikh still had not come out, Sebâtî went into the tomb and found him standing in prayer, drenched in sweat, before the coffin of his own sheikh. Hakverdioğlu maintains that Sebâtî shared Nigârî's love for Husayn (Hz. Hüseyin) but never wrote in his own divan anything like the harsh couplets against Muawiya and Yazid found in his sheikh's divan.

The State of the Sources

The year of his death differs between the two sources: Hüsameddin gives Safer 1321 (May 1903), Ağabali's hagiography gives 1320 (1902-03). There is also a difference over his birthplace: Hüsameddin has him born in Erzurum, while Ağabali writes that he was born in the town of Kurtkaşın in Şeki and later migrated to Erzurum with his family.

His Poetry

In his 2022 article Hakverdioğlu describes Sebâtî as "the most important representative of the Shirvani poets after Hamza Nigârî" ("Şirvânlı şâirlerin Hamza Nigârî sonrasında en önemli temsilcisi"), notes that he was famous for the beauty of his voice and that he had a mürettep divan, that is, one arranged in the formal order of a divan. According to Hüsameddin's testimony the divan was printed in the poet's lifetime. As reported by Hakverdioğlu, Nagehan Koç prepared a transcribed text and study of this divan as an MA thesis at Sakarya University in 2006, and A. Çalışkan published a selection in 2017 under the title Sebâtî ve Divanı'ndan Seçmeler. These two works could not be seen, nor could the thesis record be reached online.

Hakverdioğlu writes that Sebâtî turned to chronograms (tarih manzumesi) rather than to ghazals and kasides, that his signature is found on many inscriptions in Amasya, and that in this he may have been influenced by a couplet of his sheikh that conceals the sheikh's own date of death. The article does not identify one by one which inscriptions are Sebâtî's. The two chronograms published in full in the article, quoted from Koç's thesis, are these:

  • Chronogram 1 — Âh kim söndi sirâc-ı bezm-i irfân ey dirîġ: a ten-couplet elegy and chronogram on the death in 1291 of Nigârî's son Sirâceddin, the young man who wrote poetry under the pen name Sirâcî.
  • Chronogram 2 — İrtiḥâl itdi diriġâ ‘ârif-i bi-llahımız: a seven-couplet chronogram on the death in 1303 of his sheikh, Nigârî (Seyyid Mîr Hamza).

Chronology

1264 (1847-48): Born in Erzurum.

Safer 1291 (March 1874): Nigârî's son Sirâceddin dies; Sebâtî composes a chronogram on his death.

1303 (1885-86): Mîr Hamza Nigârî dies; Sebâtî composes a chronogram on his death.

1314 (1896-97): Becomes teacher of Persian at the Amasya secondary school.

Safer 1321 (May 1903): Dies in Amasya and is buried in front of the Şirvânî tomb.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

  • Metin Hakverdioğlu, "Mir Hamza Nigârî ve Süfyânîler", Alevilik Araştırmaları Dergisi, year 6, no. 12, 2016, pp. 115-137 (Sebâtî: pp. 128-132; with quotations from Ağabali's Hümâ-yı Arş and from Nagehan Koç's thesis).
  • Metin Hakverdioğlu, "Anadolu'yu Aydınlatan Şirvânîler ve Amasya'daki Şirvânî Şairler", Amasya Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi (ASOBİD), Amasya Special Issue, 2022, pp. 129-155. https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/2588764
  • Nagehan Koç, Hâfız Mehmed Sebâtî Dîvânı'nın Transkripsiyonlu Metni ve İncelenmesi, MA thesis, Sakarya Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, 2006 (as quoted by Hakverdioğlu; the thesis was not seen).

Online sources