Trained in the offices of the Imperial Council and promoted from secretary of the registers of important affairs to chief of the scribes (reisülküttab), Şemsî Ahmed Bey was a scribe, calligrapher and poet from Amasya who reached the top of the Ottoman bureaucracy in the late seventeenth century. He belonged to the fourth generation of the Şemsî Paşazâdes, a family linked through the female line to Amasya's Gümüşlüzâde dynasty. After his dismissal he was sent back to Amasya in 1107 (1695-96) and died there some time later. One of his ghazals was recorded in a continuation of an anthology of Amasya's poets; when that work burned, the poem was lost with it.

Hüsameddin's Record

The entry devoted to him in Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar's Amasya Tarihi is brief:

Şemsî Ahmed Bey-Şemsi Paşazâde Amasyalıdır. Ümerâdan Mehmed Bey bin Ahmed Paşa bin Ali Bey bin Şemseddîn Ahmed Paşa'nın mahdûmudur. Fâzıl Ahmed Paşa'nın sadâretinde Divân-ı Hümâyûn kalemine girdi. Orada terakkî ederek mühimme kâtibi ve Kara İbrâhim Paşa sadâretinde bir yıl kadar Reisülküttâb olup 1107'de ma'zûlen Amasya'ya gönderildi. 1107'de Amasya'da görüldü. Ba'dehû vefât etdi. Kâtip, hattât, şâir idi. Şeyh Alizâde Ahmed Rüşdi Efendi "Tezkîre"sinde bir gazeli vardır. Hayfâ ki yandı.

Its meaning: A native of Amasya, he was born to Mehmed Bey, one of the beys; Mehmed Bey descended from Ahmed Paşa, he from Ali Bey, and he from Şemseddîn Ahmed Paşa. During the grand vizierate of Fâzıl Ahmed Paşa he entered the office of the Imperial Council. Rising there, he became secretary of the registers of important affairs and, under the grand vizier Kara İbrâhim Paşa, served about a year as reisülküttab; in 1107 he was dismissed and sent to Amasya. He is recorded in Amasya in 1107. He died afterwards. He was a scribe, a calligrapher and a poet. A ghazal of his stood in the anthology of Şeyh Alizâde Ahmed Rüşdü Efendi. Alas, that work burned.

Lineage

The chain of descent given in the entry ties Şemsî Ahmed Bey to one of the most powerful families of seventeenth-century Amasya. At its head, Şemseddîn Ahmed Paşa had risen from the judgeship of Çorum to the treasuries of Konya and Sivas and from there to the governorships of Batum, Sivas and Şehrizor, dying at Şehrizor at the end of 1020 (1611-12); the family name "Şemsî Paşazâde" derives from him. His son Ali Bey was killed on the Baghdad campaign while governor of the sanjak of Bozok. Şemsî Ahmed Bey's grandfather Ahmed Paşa became governor of Bozok in 1048 (1638-39), held the post of beylerbey in some ten provinces from Kars to Kefe, was several times governor of Amasya in between, and in 1067 (1656-57), as deputy grand admiral, took part in the recovery of Lemnos.

The father in the middle of the chain, Mehmed Bey, appears in Hüsameddin only in this genealogy. Ahmed Paşa's own entry lists Ali Bey as his only son and Neslihan Hanım as his daughter; Mehmed Bey's name is not there. This may mean that not all of Ahmed Paşa's sons were recorded, or it may point to a confused link in the chain. Hüsameddin does not compare the two records.

The family had another member with an interest in verse. Şemsî Mehmed Bey, son of Ahmed Paşa's sister, became his uncle's treasurer and council secretary, was later appointed treasurer of Kamaniçe and Temeşvar, and died after his dismissal in 1091 (1680); Hüsameddin counts him among the "erbâb-ı şiir ve inşâ", the masters of verse and prose. The Merzifon poet Harîmî Abdullah Çelebi was also council secretary to Ahmed Paşa. Şemsî Ahmed Bey's turn to the scribal career may be seen against the esteem in which secretaryship and letters were held in his grandfather's household.

From Scribe to Reisülküttab

Şemsî Ahmed Bey entered the Imperial Council during the grand vizierate of Köprülüzâde Fâzıl Ahmed Paşa (1072-1087 / 1661-1676). In these years the Köprülü family's ties to Amasya were strong; Hüsameddin relates that another member of the family, Çelebi İbrâhim Paşa, rose by attaching himself to Fâzıl Ahmed Paşa when the latter came to Amasya in 1069. Şemsî Ahmed Bey advanced in the office that conducted the council's correspondence and became secretary of the mühimme. The mühimme registers recorded the decrees written on important matters discussed in the council; this secretaryship meant access to the state's most confidential and weighty correspondence.

The reisülküttab was head of the scribes of the Imperial Council and managed the grand vizier's paperwork and foreign correspondence. Şemsî Ahmed Bey held this office for about a year under Kara İbrâhim Paşa, who became grand vizier after Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Paşa was executed following the defeat at Vienna (1095-1096 / 1683-1685). Hüsameddin gives neither the date of appointment nor that of dismissal.

The dates in the entry leave a question. Kara İbrâhim Paşa's grand vizierate ended in 1096 (1685), yet Şemsî Ahmed Bey is said to have been "dismissed and sent to Amasya in 1107". More than ten years lie between. Either he held other posts after leaving the reislik and was sent to Amasya after a later dismissal in 1107, or the gap arises from the incompleteness of the documents Hüsameddin had. The sentence that follows, "he is recorded in Amasya in 1107", suggests that Hüsameddin saw him in a court register or similar document of that year. His date of death is unknown.

His Poetry

Not a line of Şemsî Ahmed Bey's verse has come down to us. Hüsameddin writes that a ghazal of his stood in the continuation written by Şeyh Alizâde Rüşdü Ahmed Efendi, the grandson who carried Abdî Efendi's anthology of Amasya's poets down to his own time, but that this work burned. Since Rüşdü Ahmed Efendi died in 1159 (1746), he must either have known Şemsî personally or written a generation after him. With the loss of the continuation, all that remains of the poetry of an Amasya-born reisülküttab is this single sentence of Hüsameddin's. The sequence "scribe, calligrapher, poet" also shows that he was known for his fine hand; no specimen of his calligraphy is known either.

Another Şemsî of the Same Name

"Şemsi Ahmed Bey-Kemâl Paşazâde", the entry immediately before his on the same page of Hüsameddin, is an entirely different person. He went to Trabzon in 896 (1491) as tutor-guardian (lala) of Şehzade Selim at the end of the fifteenth century, became sword-bearer when Selim took the throne, and died in 932 (1525-26). Because the two entries follow one another and the names are spelled almost identically, they are easily confused; the poet and reisülküttab is the seventeenth-century Şemsî Paşazâde.

Bibliography

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