Tâcî Bey was a man of the pen, a munshi (master of chancery prose), a calligrapher and a poet who grew up in Amasya in the second half of the fifteenth century, during the years when Prince Bayezid (Şehzade Bayezid), the future Bayezid II, governed the sanjak, and who rose in his service. His given name is recorded as Tâceddin İbrahim. The biographers of poets note that he was known as "Tâc Beg" and that he used the pen name Tâcî in his verse. His place in literary history has largely been fixed by his two sons: the poet and munshi Tâcîzâde Câfer Çelebi, who rose to the offices of nişancı and kadiasker, and Tâcîzâde Sa'dî Çelebi, the scholar famed for his Arabic. As Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi put it, these two "lofty saplings" grew from the garden of his being. Yet Tâcî Bey was more than a father: he entered the tezkires (biographical dictionaries of poets) under his own name, as one of the known figures of Bayezid's circle of scribes and literary gatherings in Amasya.

His tie to Amasya is clear. Latîfî introduces him as the defterdar (treasurer) of "Sultan Bayezid Khan when he was çelebi sultan in the sanjak of Amasya"; Sehî Bey, Kınalızâde and Beyânî name the same office. Hüseyin Hüsameddin presents him as a native of Amasya, born and raised there, who practised calligraphy alongside Şeyh Hamdullah, and lists him first among the çelebis who emerged during the governorships of Bayezid and Prince Ahmed: "Tâcî, Âfitâbî, Figânî, Kutbî, Münîrî, Ca'ferî and Sa'dî". Since the details of his life are told in the biography on this site, they are kept brief here and the weight falls on his works and on the poems recorded in the sources. These poems are few, and some of them rest on a single source; the examples below mark this distinction.

Life and Years in Amasya

The sources offer two separate accounts of Tâcî Bey's life, and in places they cannot be reconciled. The first rests on the tezkires, on archival documents and on the Münşeât of his son Sa'dî Çelebi; İsmail E. Erünsal's study of Câfer Çelebi and the TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam (TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi) follow this account. The second is found in Hüseyin Hüsameddin's Amasya Tarihi (History of Amasya), which identifies Tâcî Bey with Tâceddin İbrahim Paşa, who rose to be vizier to Prince Ahmed and died in 906 (1500) as beylerbey (governor-general) of Kefe.

According to the first account, Tâcî Bey was born in 836 (1432-1433). The date is derived from Kâtib Çelebi's statement in the Süllemü'l-vüsûl that he died in Muharram 890 at the age of fifty-four. Âşık Çelebi describes his family as a dynasty "known in Rûm for honour and rank", and Latîfî praises his son Câfer Çelebi for the "loftiness of his lineage". The archival records found by Erünsal suggest that Tâcî Bey came from the military class: in the Tokat survey register of Mehmed II's reign he is listed among the ser-askers (military commanders) of Amasya. A ferman of Mehmed II dated 883 (1478) likewise records that Tâcî Bey's wife bought a village from the mother of Prince Bayezid, and in this document Tâcî Bey is described as "one who serves at my son's gate". Erünsal also reports, on the basis of an account register, that one of his wives was named Râbia Hatun.

His post at Bayezid's side is given under different names in the tezkires. Latîfî, Sehî Bey, Kınalızâde and Beyânî call him defterdar. Âşık Çelebi, however, presents him as the prince's "lala" (tutor-guardian). Gelibolulu Âlî objects to this in his Künhü'l-ahbâr: in his view Tâcî Bey was first şehremini (city steward), then defterdar and munshi of the divan; Âşık Çelebi's "he became his lala" is, he says, like answering "lâ lâ" (no, no) to those who hold that lalas were styled pasha. Kâtib Çelebi calls him "müdebbirü'l-umûr" (manager of affairs). A story transmitted by Erünsal also shows the closeness between Tâcî Bey and the prince: according to Câfer Çelebi, Bayezid once gave his father in Amasya a purse of three thousand akçes and asked him to distribute it among the dervishes of Çelebi Halife so that they would pray for a wish of his to be fulfilled.

In this account the date of his death is certain. At the end of Sa'dî Çelebi's Münşeât there are four separate chronogram lines composed on his father's death, and all four give the year 890 (1485). Kâtib Çelebi records the month of Muharram of that year. Müstakimzâde's Tuhfe-i hattâtîn, in the form quoted by Hüsameddin, gives the same date through the abjad reckoning. Erünsal notes that the editors of the Münşeât nevertheless attributed a letter dated 906 to Tâcî Bey, whereas the letter belongs to Câfer Çelebi.

Hüsameddin's account is far more detailed, but in most places he does not name his source. According to him, Tâcî Bey was the son of Safiyyüddin Mustafa Çelebi of the Şirvânî family of Köprü (Vezirköprü); his grandfather was Gazi Mehmed Bey, known as Hacı Bey. In Amasya he learned calligraphy from the calligrapher Hayreddin Hızır el-Mar'aşî, became the "partner", that is the fellow student, of Şeyh Hamdullah, and married the daughter of Murad Beyzâde Câfer Bey, one of the beys of Amasya. Hüsameddin has him enter the prince's service in 866 (1461-1462) in the retinue of his uncle Hacı Beyzâde Halil Bey, and become Bayezid's nişancı in 875 (1470-1471) as one of "the poets of Amasya". He writes that when the inspection committee sent by Mehmed II arrived in Amasya in 882, Bayezid, Mahmud Paşa, Fenârîzâde Ahmed Bey, Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Efendi and Tâcî Bey were at a convivial gathering in Lâdik. The ferman that came the following year ordered the execution of Mahmud Paşa, Tâcî Bey and Müeyyedzâde; Tâcî Bey learned of it in advance and fled to Baghdad, Müeyyedzâde fled to Iran, and Mahmud Paşa was executed.

According to Hüsameddin, Tâcî Bey returned from Baghdad in 887 and became nişancı and then defterdar to Prince Ahmed; in 898 he became vizier with the title "Tâceddin Paşa", and in Sha'ban 900 he endowed his properties for the mosque, soup kitchen and bath he had built in Köprü. In 904, on the death of the lala Mehmed Paşa, he became the prince's deputy (vekîl-i saltanat); unable to get on with the nişancı Ahmed-i Câmî, he was sent off as beylerbey of Kefe in 905 and died there in Muharram 906. Hüsameddin says that he had at first treated Tâcî Bey and Tâceddin Paşa as two different men, and later understood from "official records" that they were one and the same. On the basis of the same records he asserts that Tâcî Bey was never Bayezid's defterdar in Amasya, but his divan secretary and nişancı, and that he served as defterdar to Prince Ahmed.

Erünsal treats this account with caution. He points out that the document in Feridun Bey's Münşeât which Hüsameddin cites for the flight story does not name Tâcî Bey among the accused, and moreover bears a different date, and he finds the rest of Hüsameddin's information "very doubtful". Since the four chronogram lines and Kâtib Çelebi's record point to 890, it is highly likely that the founder of the Köprü endowment, Prince Ahmed's vizier and beylerbey of Kefe Tâceddin İbrahim Paşa, was a different person. Hüsameddin's conviction on this point cannot be verified without the documents he says he held but never published. Below, the dates 836 and 890 are taken as his birth and death, and the dates given by Hüsameddin are marked separately.

Works

No independent work under Tâcî Bey's own name survives today. What the sources attribute to him are his letters, his poems and his calligraphy.

  • Münşeât (letters): Latîfî says that Tâcî Bey's "letters are plentiful and form a compiled book", that is, his correspondence was abundant and gathered into a volume. No copy of this collection has been identified. A collection of letters in the Mevlânâ Museum in Konya bears the heading "Hâzâ inşâ be-hatt-ı Tâcî merhûm" (this is prose composition in the hand of the late Tâcî); Abdülbaki Gölpınarlı attributed it to Câfer Çelebi, while Erünsal rejected that attribution by showing that some of the letters belong to the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent. According to Erünsal, some of the model letters could be by Tâcî Bey, but others concern events after his death. The connection of this collection to Tâcî Bey therefore remains uncertain.
  • Poems: No divan is known. Latîfî says that "his poems are rare and hard to find". According to the TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam, apart from a few couplets quoted in the tezkires and one ghazal in Ömer b. Mezîd's Mecmûatü'n-nezâir (Canpolat edition, p. 96), none of his verse has survived. Hüsameddin, however, quotes seven couplets and opening couplets "seen in the Mecmaü'n-nezâir".
  • Calligraphy: Müstakimzâde's Tuhfe-i hattâtîn lists him among the calligraphers and writes that he practised together with Şeyh Hamdullah. According to Ekrem Hakkı Ayverdi, no example of his hand has survived.

A difficulty concerning the anthology of parallel poems must also be mentioned. Ömer b. Mezîd's Mecmûatü'n-nezâir was completed in 840 (1437), according to the compiler's own chronogram couplet. At that date Tâcî Bey, by the age Kâtib Çelebi gives, was a child of four or five. It is known that later additions were made to the work's Erzurum copy dated 868 (1463); the Tâcî ghazal in Canpolat's edition may therefore come from such an addition, or belong to another poet using the same pen name. The "Mecmaü'n-nezâir" cited by Hüsameddin, judging by its title, must be Edirneli Nazmî's great anthology collecting parallel poems written up to 940 (1533-1534); in that case the couplets he quotes rest on an anthology compiled half a century after Tâcî Bey. As the text of the ghazal could not be found in sources accessible online, it is not given here.

Literary Character

The biographers see Tâcî Bey first as a munshi and only then as a poet. Latîfî's judgement is noteworthy in this respect: "He wrote ordinary prose better than rhymed prose", that is, he was more successful in plain, everyday prose than in ornate rhymed prose. Considering that his son Câfer Çelebi is counted among the pioneers of ornate prose at the end of the fifteenth century, the remark sets up an interesting contrast. The father was known for the plain, workmanlike language of chancery correspondence, while the son, in the same office, turned to a new style of composition laden with Arabic and Persian constructions. Latîfî also praises Tâcî Bey as "the pearl in the jewelled crown among the crowned kings of the realms of learning"; such praise, playing on the pen name (tâc means crown), is a device the tezkires use often.

Kınalızâde continues the same play: Tâcî Bey is "the crown and leader of the people of perfection". Yet as proof of this he does not point to his poetry; he points to his having been Bayezid's defterdar and to his having raised two sons such as Câfer and Sa'dî. Beyânî reduces the entry to a single sentence. Âlî confines himself to debating his offices. This attitude of the tezkires shows that Tâcî Bey's poetry was little known even in his own time, and that his name lived on mainly through his service to the state and through his sons.

The couplets that remain nevertheless reflect a definite taste. All belong to the manner of the ghazal and work with the familiar elements of the classical lover and beloved: the lock of hair, tears, the first down on the cheek, the rose garden, the morning breeze, the mirror and the Tûbâ tree of paradise. In his opening couplets Tâcî Bey takes care that the idea set up in one line is completed from an unexpected direction in the second. The link between the dark night, the rain and the dishevelled locks in the "Göz yaşlu" couplet, the couplet in which the word "zebân" means both tongue and tongue of flame, and the play of sound between "nazar" and "ne zar(ar)" are examples of this care. The "tedbîr ile takdîr" couplet quoted by Latîfî is a didactic utterance that fits a proverbial piece of wisdom into two lines.

Tâcî Bey's literary circle was Bayezid's gathering in Amasya. Hüsameddin names Mahmud Paşa, Fenârîzâde Ahmed Bey, Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Efendi, the poet Âfitâbî Abdurrahman Çelebi and Kerîmî Mehmed Çelebi in this circle. According to Âşık Çelebi, Müeyyedzâde and Tâcîzâde Câfer Çelebi grew up together in Amasya during Bayezid's years as prince. By recording that Tâcî Bey practised calligraphy with Şeyh Hamdullah, Hüsameddin also links him to the calligraphers of Amasya.

Selected Poems

Opening couplet: "Göz yaşlu gönül zülf-i perîşânlar içinde"

Göz yaşlu gönül zülf-i perîşânlar içinde
Kaldum karanu gicede bârânlar içinde

In modern English: "My heart with tearful eyes was left among the dishevelled locks; I was left in a dark night amid the rains." This is the couplet most often quoted from Tâcî Bey, and nearly every tezkire gives it as the poet's only example. It is built on a simile that likens the beloved's dishevelled black hair to the dark night and the lover's tears to the rain falling in that night. The heart is lost in the locks; the lover is like a traveller unable to find his way amid both darkness and rain. The weight carried by the rhyme and refrain ("-ânlar içinde") shows that the couplet opened a ghazal. In Canım's edition of Latîfî the end of the second line reads "su'bânlar", serpents, in place of "bârânlar"; in this reading the image of being trapped among serpents on a dark night merges with the tradition that likens the locks to snakes. Kınalızâde, Beyânî, Âlî and Hüsameddin read "bârânlar". (Latîfî, ed. Canım, p. 158; Kınalızâde, ed. Sungurhan, p. 251; Beyânî, ed. Sungurhan, p. 44; Âlî, tezkire section of the Künhü'l-ahbâr, ed. İsen, p. 71; Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, VIII, 19.)

Couplet: "Haddüñi koyup varalıdan gülşene ey dost"

Haddüñi koyup varalıdan gülşene ey dost
Gül lâle beni yakdı gülistânlar içinde

In modern English: "O friend, ever since I left your cheek and went to the rose garden, rose and tulip have burned me amid the rose gardens." This couplet appears only in Latîfî, immediately after the opening couplet above, and since it carries the same rhyme and refrain it must belong to the same ghazal. The rose garden is normally a place of delight and gaiety; here, for the lover parted from the beloved's rose-like cheek, the red of the rose and the fiery colour of the tulip become burning reminders. The familiar associations of rose with cheek and tulip with fire are used in the couplet to express the pain of separation. (Latîfî, ed. Canım, p. 159.)

Opening couplet: "Başa varmaz kimsenüñ işi dilâ tedbîr ile"

Başa varmaz kimsenüñ işi dilâ tedbîr ile
Ol muvâfık ola evvelde meger takdîr ile

In modern English: "O heart, no one's affair comes to an end by planning alone, unless that plan has from the start agreed with destiny." Latîfî gives this couplet as an illustration of the Arabic saying "Man plans, God decrees": the planning of every wise man and every weak one must accord with fate and decree if the outcome is to be of benefit. In the couplet the words "tedbîr" (planning) and "takdîr" (decree) are also brought close in sound. Latîfî's phrase "this opening couplet is ascribed to him" suggests that the couplet was attributed to Tâcî Bey but that the biographer was not entirely sure of it. Coming from a defterdar and man of the divan, this piece of wisdom also recalls a life in which the results of what one's pen produced were often determined by others. (Latîfî, ed. Canım, p. 159.)

Opening couplet of a kaside: "Tâna tutdu hatt leb-i la'l-i dür-efşânı dürüst"

Tâna tutdu hatt leb-i la'l-i dür-efşânı dürüst
Kıldı yagma leşker-i gam milket-i cânı dürüst

Its meaning in modern English is roughly as follows: "The down encircled the pearl-scattering ruby lip entirely; the army of grief plundered the realm of the soul entirely." Hüsameddin gives this couplet as "the opening couplet of one of his kasides" (odes); it is the only record showing that Tâcî Bey also wrote kasides. "Hatt" means both the first down appearing around the beloved's lips and writing; the double use of the word on the lips of a calligrapher-poet is meaningful in its own right. The down encircling the lip is likened to an army besieging a country, and grief plundering the lover's soul to an invasion. The refrain "dürüst" is used here in the sense of "wholly, completely". The reading of the first word in the digital text is not certain. (Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, VIII, 19.)

Opening couplet: "N'ola ruh-ı zîbâna kalursam nazar ey dost"

N'ola ruh-ı zîbâna kalursam nazar ey dost
Âyînedürür ana nazardan ne zar ey dost

In modern English: "O friend, what if I stay gazing at your lovely cheek; it is a mirror, and what harm comes from looking at a mirror." The couplet rests on the familiar simile of the beloved's shining cheek as a mirror and uses it to excuse the lover's gaze. The real subtlety lies in the refrain: "nazar" (gaze) in the first line and "ne zar" (what harm) in the second are almost identical in sound. If one also recalls that "nazar" means the evil eye, the lover uses the same play to ward off the fear that his gaze might bring the evil eye upon the beloved. (Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, VIII, 19.)

Opening couplet: "Hûblukda mâh iderken şems-i tâbân ile bahs"

Hûblukda mâh iderken şems-i tâbân ile bahs
Cânı yokdur kim ide ol hüsn-i cânân ile bahs

In modern English: "While the moon contends in beauty with the radiant sun, it has no heart to contend with the beauty of that beloved." The beauty contest between moon and sun is a frequent image in divan poetry; Tâcî Bey turns this contest into helplessness before the beloved. The moon is bold enough to measure itself against the sun, but before the beloved it "has no soul" for it. The meeting of the words "cân" (soul) and "cânân" (beloved) in the same line adds a depth of sound to the couplet: no soul can withstand the beloved. (Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, VIII, 19.)

Opening couplet: "Sûz-i dilimle söyledigim âşıkânedür"

Sûz-i dilimle söyledigim âşıkânedür
Benzer zebânım âteş-i aşka zebânedür

In modern English: "All that I speak with the burning of my heart is a lover's speech; my tongue seems a flame of the fire of love." The play in the couplet is between "zebân" and "zebâne": the first means tongue, the second flame, the tongue of a fire. The poet's speaking tongue is imagined as a flame of the fire of love within his heart. Poetry thus becomes the very fire that breaks out from a heart burning within. This couplet can also be read as a brief poetics spoken about the poet's own verse. (Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, VIII, 19.)

Opening couplet: "Ehl-i diller yüzüne cennet-i a'lâ didiler"

Ehl-i diller yüzüne cennet-i a'lâ didiler
Sâye-i kaddine hem sâye-i tûbâ didiler

In modern English: "The people of the heart called your face the highest paradise; and the shadow of your stature they called the shade of the Tûbâ tree." The highest level of paradise and the Tûbâ tree believed to stand there are brought together in the same couplet: the beloved's face is likened to paradise, and the tall stature to the tree of that paradise. The repetition of the word shadow also hints that being near the beloved is a refuge for the lover. (Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, VIII, 19-20.)

Opening couplet: "Gülşende sabânın yine müşkîn nefesi var"

Gülşende sabânın yine müşkîn nefesi var
Yârin ser-i kûyuna meger dest-resi var

In modern English: "In the rose garden the morning breeze again has a musk-scented breath; it seems it can reach the beloved's street." In divan poetry the morning breeze (sabâ) is the messenger that carries news between lover and beloved and brings the beloved's scent. Tâcî Bey explains the fragrance the breeze brings to the garden with a poetic aetiology (hüsn-i talil): the breeze must have passed by the beloved's street. That the wind can reach where the lover cannot also carries an undertone of jealousy. (Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, VIII, 20.)

The last six examples are known only from Hüsameddin's quotation. Bearing in mind that Hüsameddin treated Tâcî Bey and Tâceddin Paşa as the same man and found the couplets under the pen name "Tâcî" in an anthology of parallel poems, the possibility that some of them belong to another poet with the same pen name cannot be ruled out entirely. Until they are compared with the critical edition of the anthology, the attribution remains uncertain.

Chronology

836 (1432-1433): Year of birth, according to the age at death given by Kâtib Çelebi.

840 (1437): Ömer b. Mezîd completes the Mecmûatü'n-nezâir; according to the TDV, a ghazal under the pen name Tâcî appears in the edition of this anthology.

856 (1452): According to Hüsameddin, his son Câfer Çelebi is born in Amasya; the age given by Kâtib Çelebi points to 868 (1463-1464).

866 (1461-1462): According to Hüsameddin, he enters the service of Prince Bayezid.

875 (1470-1471): According to Hüsameddin, he becomes Bayezid's nişancı.

883 (1478): A ferman of Mehmed II records that his wife bought a village from Bayezid's mother; according to Hüsameddin, in the same year he escapes an execution order by fleeing to Baghdad.

Muharram 890 (January-February 1485): Dies, according to Sa'dî Çelebi's four chronogram lines and Kâtib Çelebi.

900 (1495): Tâceddin Paşa, whom Hüsameddin identifies with Tâcî Bey, has the endowment deed drawn up for his mosque and soup kitchen in Köprü.

906 (1500): According to Hüsameddin, dies as beylerbey of Kefe.

1956: Tâcizâde Sa'dî Çelebi Münşeâtı, containing the chronograms on his death, is published by Necati Lugal and Adnan Erzi.

1977: İsmail E. Erünsal brings to light the archival records on Tâcî Bey in his Edinburgh doctoral thesis on Câfer Çelebi.

1982: The Mecmûatü'n-nezâir is published by Mustafa Canpolat.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Latîfî, Tezkiretü'ş-şu'arâ ve tabsıratü'n-nuzamâ, ed. Rıdvan Canım, Ministry of Culture and Tourism e-book, Ankara 2018, pp. 158-159.
  • Âşık Çelebi, Meşâ'irü'ş-şu'arâ, ed. Filiz Kılıç, Ministry of Culture and Tourism e-book, Ankara 2018, p. 195.
  • Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi, Tezkiretü'ş-şu'arâ, ed. Aysun Sungurhan, Ministry of Culture and Tourism e-book, Ankara 2017, p. 251.
  • Beyânî, Tezkiretü'ş-şu'arâ, ed. Aysun Sungurhan, Ministry of Culture and Tourism e-book, Ankara 2017, p. 44.
  • Gelibolulu Mustafa Âlî, Künhü'l-ahbâr'ın Tezkire Kısmı, ed. Mustafa İsen, Ministry of Culture and Tourism e-book, Ankara 2017, p. 71.
  • Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar, Amasya Tarihi, vols. 1-4, pp. 218, 324, 376-377; III, pp. 226-243; VIII, pp. 11-20, 89-93.

Academic studies

  • İsmail E. Erünsal, The Life and Works of Tâcî-zâde Ca'fer Çelebi, with a Critical Edition of His Dîvân, doctoral thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1977 (Istanbul 1983), pp. 9-13, 70.

Official sources

  • Sehî Beg, Heşt Bihişt, ed. Halûk İpekten et al., Ministry of Culture and Tourism e-book, Ankara 2017, p. 38.

Books

  • İsmail E. Erünsal, "Tâcîzâde Câfer Çelebi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 39, Istanbul 2010. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Mustafa Canpolat, "Mecmûatü'n-nezâir", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 28, Ankara 2003, pp. 275-277. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • "Mecmau'n-nezâir", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 28, Ankara 2003, pp. 262-263. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Necati Lugal - Adnan Erzi (eds.), Tâcizâde Sa'dî Çelebi Münşeâtı, Istanbul 1956, pp. 68-69 (via Erünsal).
  • Ömer b. Mezîd, Mecmûatü'n-nezâir, ed. Mustafa Canpolat, Ankara 1982, p. 96 (via the TDV; not consulted).

Online sources