Behind the name of Suphi Mehmed Çelebi stands Amasya's best-known family of physicians. His father İsa Çelebi was physician of the Darüşşifa, the city hospital, and his great-grandfather was Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin, author of the first illustrated surgical book in Turkish. Suphi did not abandon the family profession altogether, but he found his real path in the madrasa and the judiciary. According to the short entry in which Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar calls him a scholar, a man of letters and a poet, he died in 971 (1563-64).

Life

His entry in Amasya Tarihi is less a life story than a long pedigree:

Amasya Dârüşşifâsı hekîmi İsa Çelebi bin Lutfullah Çelebi bin Şerefeddîn İsa bin Alâeddîn Ali Çelebi bin hekîm-i meşhûr Hacı İlyâs Çelebi bin Şa'bân Sâbûnî mahdûmudur. Tahsîl-i ilm ü edeb ederek müderris ve kadı oldu. Ecdâdı gibi ilm-i tıbda intisâbı var idi. 971'de vefât etdi. Âlim, edîb, şâir idi.

The passage translates: He was born to İsa Çelebi, physician of the Amasya Darüşşifa, and the line runs back through Lutfullah Çelebi, Şerefeddîn İsa and Alâeddîn Ali Çelebi to the famous physician Hacı İlyâs Çelebi bin Şa'bân Sâbûnî. Having acquired learning and refinement, he became a madrasa teacher and a judge. Like his ancestors he had a connection with the science of medicine. He died in 971. He was learned, cultivated and a poet.

The entry does not say in which madrasas Suphi taught, where he served as judge or where he died. What is known is that he chose the path of learning without breaking his tie with medicine; the word "intisâb" (attachment) suggests that he kept up medicine not as a profession but as a field of knowledge inherited from his family.

The Sabuncuoğlu Line

The "Şerefeddîn İsa" in the middle of the pedigree is Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin, physician of the Amasya Darüşşifa and author of the Cerrâhiyyetü'l-Hâniyye. In his entry Hüsameddin writes that one of his sons, Sinâneddîn Yûsuf Efendi, became chief physician in Istanbul, while the other, Lütfullah Efendi, stayed in Amasya and took his father's place, and he adds that Lütfullah's sons İlyâs and İsa Çelebi were physicians too. Suphi's father is this İsa Çelebi. With Hacı İlyâs, Şerefeddin, Lütfullah and İsa Çelebi, the family thus gave Amasya four generations of physicians.

The pedigree Hüsameddin gives raises two problems. The "İsa" attached to Sabuncuoğlu's name appears neither in the physician's own works nor in modern research. And in the sixth volume, in the notice of Sabuncuzâde İbrâhim Çelebi, physician and druggist and one of Prince Ahmed's intimates, Lütfullah Çelebi appears as the son of Ali Çelebi, that is, as Şerefeddin's brother rather than his son. Suphi's entry follows the first of these two records, the one that makes Lütfullah Şerefeddin's son. Which is correct cannot be settled from Hüsameddin's text.

Another member of the family in the same century was Hekimî Mehmed Çelebi, physician to Prince Mustafa in Amasya. Hekimî died in 959 (1551-52), and Hüsameddin describes him too as "learned, a poet and a skilled physician". That this relative, who died twelve years before Suphi, was also counted a poet shows medicine and literature going hand in hand in the Sabuncuoğlu household. There is no record that the two knew each other, but it seems unlikely that two poet-physicians of the same family, in the same small city, never met.

Poetry

The pen name "Suphi" means "of the morning". The poems written under it have never come to light; Hüsameddin's entry closes with the sentence "He was learned, cultivated and a poet" and contains not a single couplet. Whether he is mentioned as a judge from Amasya in the great tezkires of the sixteenth century could not be established. In Metin Hakverdioğlu's study of Amasya Tarihi, which lists Hüsameddin's poets one by one, his name does appear.

Chronology

855 (1451): According to Hüsameddin, Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin becomes physician of the Amasya Darüşşifa at the accession of Mehmed II; his son Lütfullah and grandson İsa Çelebi continue in the same profession.

959 (1551-52): Hekimî Mehmed Çelebi, of the same family, dies.

971 (1563-64): Suphi Mehmed Çelebi dies.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Online sources