Seyfî was a judge (kadı) and poet from Sinop who lived in the second half of the fifteenth century. According to the biographical anthologies of poets (tezkire) of Âşık Çelebi, Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi and Gelibolulu Mustafa Âlî, his friendship with Bayezid II went back to the years when Bayezid was a prince in Amasya; after Bayezid's accession he served as judge in many cities of Rumelia and died while judge of Sofia. According to a story told by Âşık Çelebi and Âlî, he would add a couplet to the end of every petition he wrote to the sultan, and when his petitions were read Bayezid would ask, "Does Seyfî have a couplet again?" The prose texts of these petitions have not survived; all that remains in the tezkires is the couplet he wrote at the end of a petition asking for the banishment of a forger named Tursun, and a satire he composed on the judgeship of Ağlasun. Halûk İpekten's survey based on the tezkires, and Mehmet Arslan, editor of Mihrî Hatun's divan, likewise count him in the literary circle in Amasya during Bayezid's princehood, as "kadı Sinoplu Seyfî". By contrast, the name of Seyfî of Sinop does not appear in Hüseyin Hüsameddin's Amasya Tarihi; Hüsameddin describes a different Seyfî Bey who attached himself to Bayezid in the same period. Since the pen name was used by many poets in the same century, the attribution of some of his poems is also open to debate.

His Life

Nothing is known of Seyfî's name, date of birth or family. Kınalızâde writes that he was of Sinop origin and that, after acquiring learning and accomplishment, he entered the path of scholarship and attained his goal. When Bayezid was a prince in Amasya he attached himself to his household, found a place at the prince's side and never left his service. Kınalızâde describes this closeness by playing on "seyf", sword, in the pen name: like a sword and a falcon, Seyfî held his place on the prince's arm and tightly girded his waist with the sash of service. Âşık Çelebi gives the same information more briefly: he was a judge raised in Sinop and had known Sultan Bayezid since the time of his princehood. Gelibolulu Âlî, too, counts him among the class of judges and writes that he formed a friendship with Sultan Bayezid when the latter was governor "in the city of Amasya".

When Bayezid came to the throne in 1481, Seyfî served as judge in the great and populous cities of Rumelia. After serving for many years as judge of Sofia he died there and was buried in the graveyard of the small mosque (mescid) he had built in Sofia. Âlî adds that he had other charitable foundations in Sofia as well. The date of his death is unknown; according to the article in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, Kâfzâde Fâizî states, without giving a date, that he died in the reign of Bayezid. According to Âşık Çelebi he had a son named Nûh. While his son was studying at a madrasa in Istanbul, Seyfî sent him a letter in verse, advising him to be eager for learning, to learn Persian, to perform his prayers and to leave a good name.

Seyfî's best-known trait is that he adorned the official petitions he wrote to the sultan with poetry. The account of Bayezid looking forward to these couplets, the couplet he wrote at the end of a petition asking for the banishment of a forger named Tursun, and the satire he composed on the judgeship of Ağlasun present him as a judge fond of wit who did not hold his tongue.

The Couplets He Added to His Petitions

The Account in the Tezkires

The most detailed source for Seyfî's habit of adding couplets to the petitions (arz) he wrote to the sultan is Âşık Çelebi's Meşâ'irü'ş-şu'arâ. Right after stating at the beginning of the entry that Seyfî was raised in Sinop and that, while judge of Sofia, he built a small mosque there and died in that city, the biographer describes the habit as follows:

Sulṭân Bâyezîd-i merḥûm ile Amâsiyye'de şeh-zâdelıġı zemânından âşnâlıġı var imiş, her ʿarż ki yazar imiş âḫirinde bir müfred beyt diyüp yazar imiş, anuñ her ʿarżı oḳınduḳda Seyfî'nüñ yine beyti var mı diyü ṣorar imiş.

In modern English: He had been acquainted with the late Sultan Bayezid since the time of his princehood in Amasya. At the end of every petition he wrote, he would compose and write a single couplet; and whenever one of his petitions was read, the sultan would ask, "Does Seyfî have a couplet again?" An arz here is a written report or petition submitted by an official to the sultan; a müfred is a couplet composed on its own, not part of a ghazal or a quatrain. The sentence states plainly that the couplets were written at the end of the petition and that the sultan looked out for them separately. According to the notes of the edition, the word "Amâsiyye'de", in Amasya, is found only in manuscript F, while the word "müfred" is, on the contrary, missing from manuscript F; in the other manuscripts the substance of the sentence does not change.

Gelibolulu Mustafa Âlî, in the section on poets in his Künhü'l-ahbâr, gives the same story more briefly and in slightly different words. Âlî opens the entry with two short sentences identifying Seyfî and tells the story immediately afterwards:

Sinobîdür. Ḳużâṭ ṭâ'ifesindendür. Sulṭân Bâyezîd Ḫan şehr-i Amâsiyyede mîr-i ẕî-şân iken âşinâlıġ itmiş. Her ḳaçan ki manṣıb-ı ḳażâdan ʿarżı gelüp oḳınurmış Seyfînüñ yine nev-güftesi var mı diyü buyururmış. Ṣofyada ḫaylice ḫayrâtı vardur. Vefâtı daḫi anda vâḳıʿdur.

In modern English: He is from Sinop and belongs to the class of judges. He formed a friendship with Sultan Bayezid Han when the latter was an illustrious governor in the city of Amasya. Whenever a petition of his arrived from his judgeship and was read, the sultan would say, "Has Seyfî something newly composed again?" He has a good many charitable works in Sofia, and his death also took place there. Two small differences stand out in Âlî's account. In the sultan's question "nev-güfte", a newly spoken word, a new poem, appears in place of "couplet". Âlî does not say that the couplets were written at the end of the petition; instead he states that the petitions came from Seyfî's judgeship, that is, from the provinces. From this detail it follows that the petitions with couplets were written after Bayezid's accession in 1481, while Seyfî was judge in the towns of Rumelia; this inference is ours.

The other tezkires add nothing to the story. Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi tells Seyfî's life in a more ornate style than Âşık Çelebi and quotes his ghazal, but says nothing at all about petitions or couplets. The tezkires of Sehî, Latîfî and Beyânî have no entry devoted to Seyfî of Sinop; the Seyfî in Beyânî is the treasurer from Istanbul. The entry in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü repeats the story on the basis of the facsimile of Âşık Çelebi published by Meredith-Owens, and says that Bayezid greatly admired Seyfî's poems and awaited them with curiosity. The whole weight of the account thus rests on Âşık Çelebi and Âlî. Since almost all of Âlî's poets appear in earlier tezkires, his entry on Seyfî evidently depends on Âşık Çelebi; Âlî, however, did not take over the Ağlasun couplet and quotes only the Tursun couplet.

Bayezid's eagerness for these couplets may be considered together with the fact that the sultan was himself a poet who wrote under the pen name Adlî; Adlî's poems are collected on our site in the category Adlî (Bayezid II). Seyfî's habit of putting verse into his correspondence was not confined to official petitions either. When his son Nûh was studying at a madrasa in Istanbul, he wrote the letter of advice he sent him entirely in verse; the letter is given on the page Rāḥat-ı Rūḥum Dilde Fütūḥum. The letter is not a petition, but it shows that Seyfî liked to conduct even everyday correspondence in verse.

The Arz and the Judges' Correspondence with the Sultan

To understand Seyfî's habit, one must recall what kind of document an arz was at the time. As Mübahat Kütükoğlu relates, the Kanunname of Mehmed II granted the right to present matters to the sultan orally only to the highest officials, such as the grand vizier, the chief military judges (kazasker), the treasurers and certain palace aghas; beylerbeys, commanders and judges could submit matters to the sultan only in writing. For a provincial judge, the way to lay his concerns before the sultan was thus the arz, written on paper and sent to the capital. Judges' petitions of this kind survive in the Topkapı Palace Museum Archive. As examples, Kütükoğlu cites a petition of the judge of Niğbolu that opens "südde-i seniyye-i saâdet-nişân ve atebe-i adâlet-unvâna arz-ı bende-i nâtüvân oldur ki" (TSMA, E. 5794), and a dated petition from the reign of Bayezid II written by the deputy of the judge of Istanbul at the beginning of Şaban 917 (October-November 1511) (TSMA, E. 6051). Such petitions open with a fixed formula of address, set out the matter in prose, and close at the bottom with a name written after the words "ez'afü'l-ibâd" (the weakest of servants) or with a seal impression. It is reasonable to think that Seyfî's petitions followed the same frame and that the couplet stood where the prose text ended; but this is an inference, since the original of none of Seyfî's petitions has been published to date.

This frame also gives Bayezid's question a particular meaning. Judges' petitions were dry, formulaic documents reporting a legal or administrative matter. Âşık Çelebi's word "oḳınduḳda", when it was read, suggests that the petitions were read aloud in the sultan's presence. In such a setting it is understandable that a witty couplet appearing at the end of an ordinary report should catch attention, and that the sultan should look for it in the next petition as well.

The Petition about Tursun

Having described the habit, Âşık Çelebi gives as an example the subject of one petition and the couplet added at its end. This is the only one of Seyfî's petitions whose subject is known today:

Ṭursun dimekle maʿrûf müzevviri şehrden sürdürmek ʿarż itdükde âḫirinde bu beyti yazmışdur ki:

In modern English: When he wrote a petition to have a forger known as Tursun banished from the town, he wrote the following couplet at its end. According to a note in the edition, the phrase "âḫirinde bu beyti yazmışdur ki", he wrote this couplet at its end, is missing from manuscripts B, A, P and S; in these manuscripts the sentence states only the subject of the petition and the couplet follows directly. The only manuscript that states explicitly that the couplet stood at the end of this petition is F. Even so, the meaning does not change, since the opening sentence found in all the manuscripts already says that Seyfî wrote a couplet at the end of every petition.

Şehirlidür müzevvirdür bu Ṭursun
Şehirde biz ṭuralum ya bu ṭursun

Meaning: This Tursun is a townsman and a forger; in this town either we shall stay or this Tursun shall stay. A müzevvir is a person who fabricates documents and works by lies and fraud. The whole force of the couplet rests on a play on the name: in the old script the proper name Tursun and the verb "dursun", let him stay, are written and read the same way. The second line is thus understood both as "either we stay or this one stays" and as "either we stay or this Tursun". The "we" of the line stands for the judge himself together with the religious court he represents; Seyfî is, in effect, telling the sultan that one of the two is too many for this town. The word "townsman" in the first line shows that Tursun was not someone who had come to the town from outside but a local man known to everyone; Âşık Çelebi, too, describes him as "known as Tursun".

Âlî tells the same incident in two sentences built on rhymed prose. In his text the incident is introduced with "one day", but once again neither the time nor the place is given:

Bir gün Ṭursun-nâm müzevviri ṭarḥ-ı beld içün ʿarż eyler. Mektûb mażmûnında bu beyti yazup nüfûzuñı farż eyler.

In modern English: One day he writes a petition to have a forger named Tursun expelled from the town. Writing this couplet into the content of the letter, he makes its effect all but binding. We have understood Âlî's phrase "nüfûzuñı farż eyler" to mean that the couplet made the request in the petition irresistible; since the sentence is built for the rhyme between "ʿarż eyler" and "farż eyler", its meaning is not certain. Âlî does not place the couplet at the end of the petition; he says "mektûb mażmûnında", in the content of the letter, and gives the first line as "Şehirlü bir müzevvirdür bu Ṭursun". The second line is the same in both tezkires.

Who Tursun was, in which town he lived, what kind of forgery he committed, and whether he was in the end banished from the town are all unknown; the tezkires say not a word on these matters. Âlî's statement that the petitions came from Seyfî's judgeship suggests that the incident took place in one of his judgeships in Rumelia, but the name of the town appears in no source. The original text of the couplet, a modern rendering and a detailed commentary are on the page Şehirlidür Müzevvirdür bu Ṭursun.

The Couplet on the Judgeship of Ağlasun

The second couplet quoted by Âşık Çelebi was composed on the appointment of another judge. The biographer gives it immediately after the Tursun couplet, as a further example of the same witty temperament:

Isparta-zâdelerden ʿAbdü'l-ḥay dirler bir kimesneye Ḥamîdili'nde Aġlasun ḳażâsı virildükde dimişdür.

In modern English: When the judgeship of Ağlasun in Hamîdili was given to a certain man of the Isparta-zâdes called Abdülhay, he said the following. According to a note in the edition, the word "Ḥamîdili'nde", in Hamîdili, is missing from manuscript F.

Çünki ʿAbdü'l-ḥayya virildi ḳażâ-yı Aġlasun
Ol yir ehli ölüsin ḳosun dirisin aġlasun

Meaning: Since the judgeship of Ağlasun has been given to Abdülhay, let the people of that place leave their dead and weep for their living. The couplet is built on two names. The first is the name of the town: Ağlasun can also be read as "ağlasın", let them weep, and Seyfî turns this coincidence into advice for the townspeople. The second is the name of the new judge: Abdülhay means "servant of the Hayy", and Hayy is the name of God meaning "the Living, the Ever-living". The contrast between the dead and the living in the second line is a hidden allusion to this name: since a judge with "living" in his name has arrived, the people should stop weeping for their dead and weep instead for the living who will be left in his hands. The couplet is a harsh satire that openly questions the merit of one of his colleagues.

There is a point about this couplet that common retellings overlook. Âşık Çelebi does not say that the couplet was written in a petition; he only reports that Seyfî "said" it (dimişdür) when the judgeship was given to Abdülhay. Gelibolulu Âlî and Kınalızâde do not quote this couplet at all. Nor were judicial appointments Seyfî's business; in the procedure Kütükoğlu describes, the chief military judges read to the sultan the summaries (telhis) concerning the appointment of judges in their own regions. It is therefore not possible to count the Ağlasun couplet with certainty as a petition couplet. Since Seyfî was a judge who corresponded with the sultan by petition, it is not out of the question that the couplet reached the sultan at the end of a petition; but as the source does not say so, this can be mentioned only as a possibility. It is equally possible that the couplet was spoken as a witticism passed from mouth to mouth.

The tezkire gives no further information about Abdülhay and his family; in the sources we examined we found no record of a family called the Isparta-zâdes. Hamîdili, to which Ağlasun belonged, is the region that also included Isparta; if the family's name came from Isparta, Abdülhay may have been appointed to a judgeship close to his own home district, but this is a conjecture. The original text of the couplet and its commentary are given on the page Çünki ʿAbdü'l-ḥayya Virildi Ḳażā-yı Aġlasun.

The Full Text of the Petition Is Unknown

The prose part of the petition is not quoted in the tezkires; in the sources known today only the couplet added at its end survives. Âşık Çelebi reports only the subject of the Tursun petition, namely that the banishment of a forger from the town was requested; he gives neither the address of the petition, nor the prose part narrating the case, nor its date and signature. Âlî, too, is content to call the matter "ṭarḥ-ı beld", expulsion from the town. Evidently what mattered to the biographers was the couplet that made the petition famous; the petition itself was of little interest to them.

For this section, Filiz Kılıç's edition of Âşık Çelebi together with its manuscript variants, Âlî's Künhü'l-ahbâr, the tezkires of Kınalızâde, Sehî, Latîfî and Beyânî, the entry in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü and the ghazal it quotes from Edirneli Nazmî's Mecma'u'n-nezâ'ir were examined; none of them contains the prose text of the petition. The poem quoted from Nazmî's anthology is likewise a ghazal with no connection to a petition. Nusret Gedik's study publishing the Turkish poems presented to Bayezid II and preserved in the Topkapı Palace Museum Archive contains thirteen poems; none of them bears the pen name Seyfî. Kâfzâde Fâizî's Zübdetü'l-eş'âr, the Meredith-Owens facsimile of Âşık Çelebi, and archival studies publishing judges' petitions from the reign of Bayezid II could not be consulted for this article. It is possible that a petition bearing Seyfî's name will one day come to light in the archives. For now, of the two known couplets only the Tursun couplet can be linked to a petition on the explicit testimony of the source.

Seyfî's link with Amasya goes back to Bayezid II's years as sanjak governor of Amasya; Bayezid was sent to Amasya at the age of seven and remained there until he came to the throne in 1481. Kınalızâde and Gelibolulu Âlî place this link explicitly in Amasya; the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, too, presents him as one of Bayezid's closest companions when he was a prince in Amasya. In Âşık Çelebi's tezkire the situation is slightly different. In Filiz Kılıç's edition the word "Amâsiyye'de", in Amasya, stands in the text, but according to the note this word is missing from four of the five manuscripts used in the critical text (B, A, P, S) and is found only in manuscript F. In these manuscripts the sentence speaks only of an acquaintance with Bayezid "from the time of his princehood". Since Bayezid's princehood was spent entirely in Amasya the meaning does not change; still, it should be noted that the sources naming Amasya directly are Kınalızâde and Âlî. That Seyfî was not from Amasya, but came from Sinop and attached himself to the prince's palace in Amasya, is clear in all the sources.

The State of the Sources and the Debate

The pen name Seyfî was very common in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and several Seyfîs follow one another in the tezkires. Immediately after Seyfî of Sinop, Âşık Çelebi mentions Seyfî Çelebi (Seyfullah) of Istanbul; the other Seyfî in Kınalızâde and Beyânî is a financier from Istanbul who served as treasurer of Aleppo, Damascus and twice of Anatolia. In the margin of one manuscript of Âşık Çelebi (S) a note has also been added to the effect that "one more Seyfî should be written". This crowd makes it difficult to determine to which poet the poems that appear in anthologies under the bare pen name "Seyfî" belong.

In the history of Amasya, too, there are two people bearing the same name. Âbâdoğlu Seyfî Bey, mentioned by Hüseyin Hüsameddin, was the son of Hacı Mehmed Beyzâde Abdullah Bey of Hakala; he studied learning and secretarial skills in Amasya, attached himself to Sultan Bayezid, appears among the registrars (muharrir) in 875 (1470-71), became registrar of the province of Rûm in 882 (1477-78) and sanjak governor at Bayezid's accession in 886 (1481), and died in 892 (1487) in the war against the Mamluks. Hüsameddin describes him as a man of letters, a poet and a man of learning. This Seyfî Bey also came from Bayezid's Amasya circle, but he was from Hakala, was a commander rather than a judge, and died not in Sofia but on the Egyptian campaign; he therefore cannot be the same person as Seyfî the judge of Sinop. Hüsameddin's Seyfî Dede of Lâdik, for his part, was a Sufi, a deputy (halife) of Sheikh Zekeriyyâ-yı Halvetî, who founded a dervish lodge in the village of Şeyhlü.

Seyfî of Sinop should also not be confused with Safâyî of Sinop, who likewise lived in the reign of Bayezid II and whose name closely resembles his. Sehî, Âşık Çelebi and Kınalızâde devote separate entries to Safâyî: Safâyî was a poet who lived in the dervish lodge built by İskender Paşa in Galata, knew the science of navigation and chart-making, and was regarded by seamen as their sheikh. The two poets of Sinop have nothing in common beyond their home town. The identity of Seyfî of Sinop is therefore well documented in the tezkires; what is disputed is the attribution of some of the poems ascribed to him.

His Poetry

No divan of Seyfî is known. Four poems appear in Âşık Çelebi's entry: the Tursun couplet, the Ağlasun couplet, the letter in verse to his son, and the five-couplet ghazal (gazel) beginning "Gerçek güzel durur senüñ ey meh-likâ kaşuñ". Kınalızâde, relying on Âşık Çelebi, gives this ghazal to Seyfî as a "gazel-i meşhur", a famous ghazal; Gelibolulu Âlî also quotes three couplets of the ghazal and the Tursun couplet. According to Âşık Çelebi's notes, the ghazal is missing from manuscript F, and the letter in verse from manuscripts B, A, P and S. The Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü also gives, as the work of Seyfî of Sinop, a ghazal beginning "Kaşlarun virür emân tuğra-yı şâhîler gibi" from Edirneli Nazmî's Mecma'u'n-nezâ'ir, and notes that poems of his are also found in Eğridirli Hacı Kemal's Câmi'u'n-nezâ'ir and in the Pervâne Bey anthology. Since the poems in the nazire anthologies appear only under the pen name "Seyfî", their attribution is not certain.

These poems show two sides of Seyfî. In his ghazals he is a divan poet who treats elements of beauty such as the eyebrow, the eyelash and the stature through images of court and war such as the bow, the arrow and the sultan's monogram (tuğra), and who brings the sword of his pen name into the poem. In his couplets and his letter, by contrast, a witty and admonitory manner close to everyday speech comes to the fore. The five poems that have come down to us are given on separate pages in this category with the original text, a modern rendering and commentary. For Bayezid II's princely circle in Amasya, see our article Amasya Divan Poets and Literary Environment.

Chronology

1450s: Prince Bayezid was sent to the sanjak of Amasya at the age of seven; Seyfî attached himself to his household during his princely years in Amasya.

1481: Bayezid came to the throne as Bayezid II; Seyfî then held judgeships in Rumelia.

Before 1512: According to Fâizî, Seyfî died in Bayezid's reign while judge of Sofia.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Official sources

  • Sehî Beg, Heşt Bihişt, ed. Halûk İpekten, Günay Kut, Mustafa İsen, Hüseyin Ayan, Turgut Karabey, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı, 2017 (e-book) (entry "Safâyî"). https://ekitap.ktb.gov.tr/TR-191370/sehi-beg-hest-bihist.html
  • Halûk İpekten et al., Divan Edebiyatında Edebî Muhitler, Istanbul: MEB Yay., 1996 (as cited in our article Amasya Divan Poets and Literary Environment).

Books