A Family of Amasya

Tâcî Bey was a poet, secretary (münşî) and calligrapher raised in Amasya, and an official in the service of Ottoman princes. His name is known today mostly through his sons. Câfer Çelebi became one of the best-known figures of Ottoman chancery writing as chancellor (nişancı) and military judge (kazasker) under Bayezid II and Selim I, while his brother Sâdî Çelebi made his name with his Arabic poetry and prose composition. The life of their father, by contrast, can be read only from lines scattered through tezkire entries, a few collections of poetic parallels (nazire), the biographies of his sons and the notes that Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin Yasar compiled from archival records. These sources complement one another on many points and diverge openly on a few important ones. Any account of him must therefore set what is commonly agreed beside what remains disputed.

Tâcî Bey was a native of Amasya. Modern dictionary entries record him as a member of a family known in the Amasya region as the "Tâcbeyler" ("the Tâc Beys"), which produced a number of scholars and poets. Âşık Çelebi describes the "Tâcî beyliler" as a dynasty of renown, honour and standing in Rûm. This description is said to fit the prominent local family known in Amasya as Hacı Bey-zâde, which Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin treats in his Amasya Tarihi (History of Amasya). Hüsâmeddin traces the family's roots to Şeyh Alâeddîn Ali Şirvânî, a notable of the 800s (the late fourteenth century). Adviser to Şâdgeldi, ruler of Amasya, this sheikh had been settled in the village of Köprü, the nucleus of today's Vezirköprü, and his descendants rose to prominence there. Two branches issued from the Şirvânî line under the names "Gâzi Beyzâde" and "Tâcî Beyzâde"; the first became known in Köprü, the second in Amasya and Istanbul. A further offshoot called "Tezkirecizâde" later separated from the Tâcî Beyzâde branch, and this lineage produced such names as Tâceddîn Paşa, Mahmûd Paşa, the kazasker Câfer Çelebi and the chief scribe (reisülküttâb) Mehmed Bey.

The same man appears in the sources under different forms: Tâcî Bey, Mîr Tâcî, Tâc Bey; according to Hüsâmeddin, in Amasya and Köprü he was known as Tâceddîn Paşa. His sons were known by the epithets "Tâcîzâde", "Tâcî Bey-zâde", "Tâc Bey-zâde", "Tâc Beyoğlu" or "Tâc-oğlu". The multiplicity of names shows that the sources heard of the same family through different ears and set it down in writing accordingly. Hüsâmeddin says that the name "Tâcî Bey" became current in Istanbul and "Tâceddîn Paşa" in Amasya and Köprü; in his view the former took hold during his years as a bey, before he became a pasha, when he travelled back and forth to Istanbul. The explanation found in Müstakimzâde's Tuhfe-i Hattâtîn, that the name "Tâcî" derived from the Tâc palace built in Baghdad by Ja'far the Barmakid, Hüsâmeddin regards as a fanciful attribution; he rejects it by pointing out when the Tâc pavilion was built and that no such palace survived the Mongol destruction.

The most detailed information on his ancestry comes from Hüsâmeddin's works. According to Nişancılar Durağı, Tâcî Bey was "Hacı Beğzâde Tâceddin İbrâhim Paşa, Beylerbey of Kefe", whose genealogy goes back through Safiyyüddin Mustafa Çelebi and Gâzî Mehmed Beğ to Şeyh Alâeddin Ali. The entry in the eighth volume of Amasya Tarihi repeats the same genealogy: his father was Mevlânâ Safiyyüddîn Mustafa Çelebi, that is Safî Çelebi, one of the leading scholars of Amasya; his grandfather was Gâzi Mehmed Bey, known as "Hacı Bey". Hüsâmeddin writes that this grandfather was a bey who gave great help in driving the Taşanzâdes out of Köprü and in taking Koca Kayası from Haydar Bey, that the family was originally from Köprü, and that Tâcî Bey himself was born and raised in Amasya. According to the same work, his uncle was Hacı Beyzâde Halîl Bey of Kedağra and his brother the scribe and calligrapher Hacı Beyzâde Süleyman Bey. İsmail E. Erünsal, author of the entry on Câfer Çelebi, notes that no information on the people named in this genealogy is found in other sources, and that the only one of them who can be credited historically is Tâcî Bey. The governorship of Kefe and the genealogy therefore rest largely on the works of a single author and should be read with caution.

Education and the Art of Calligraphy

Hüsâmeddin writes that Tâcî Bey learned the various scripts (hutût-ı mütenevvia) in Amasya from the city's famous calligrapher Hayreddîn Hızır el-Mar'aşî and was a "şerik", a fellow pupil, of Şeyh Hamdullah along this path. Müstakimzâde likewise says that Mîr Tâcî practised fine writing together with Şeyh Hamdullah. Hayreddin Mar'aşî had served as divan secretary to Prince Alâeddin, governor of Amasya, and after the prince's death devoted himself to training pupils in Amasya; he is thought to have died towards the end of 876 (1472). During Bayezid II's governorship of Amasya a broad calligraphic milieu formed in the city around Hayreddin Mar'aşî, Abdullah Amâsî and Şeyh Hamdullah, and the foundations of the Ottoman script style were laid in this circle. Tâcî Bey's calligraphy has to be understood within this milieu. No specimen of his writing is mentioned in the sources examined, so his calligraphy is known today only through the epithet the sources give him and his line of teachers.

Hüsâmeddin's work contains two separate records of his marriage. According to the entry in the eighth volume, Tâcî Bey married the daughter of Murâd Beyzâde Câfer Bey, one of the emirs of Amasya. In the tenth volume, however, he is named as the son-in-law of İmâdzâde Sa'dullah Çelebi, Prince Bayezid's defterdar in Amasya. The same author records that Sa'dullah Çelebi appears as a witness in a court deed dated 875 (1470-71) as "Mevlânâ Sa'dullâh bin Hacı Mahmûd ed-defterî", and that he left office or died in 878. Whether these two records reflect two separate marriages or a confusion cannot be determined from the sources. It might be supposed that Câfer Çelebi was named after his maternal grandfather Câfer Bey; but this is an inference, and no source says so.

In Prince Bayezid's Divan at Amasya

According to Latîfî and Âşık Çelebi, Tâcî Bey was a poet, secretary and calligrapher; he served in Amasya as defterdar (treasurer) to Prince Bayezid and held the post of commander (serasker) of Amasya. When Ottoman princes went out to govern their sanjaks, they took a small divan organisation with them. The defterdar ran the financial affairs of this organisation and the münşî its correspondence. Tâcî Bey's command of both account books and the pen must have suited him for a post where these two fields met.

The sources diverge on the title of the post. According to the account based on Mehmed Süreyyâ's Sicill-i Osmânî, Tâcî Bey was city intendant (şehremini) in Amasya during Bayezid's princehood and, after Bayezid came to the throne, became defterdar and intendant of the privy purse. In the account based on Âlî's Künhü'l-Ahbâr, he is named as "müdir-i umur", that is, steward of the prince's household (hassa emini), in Amasya during the princehood, and is said to have served for a time as defterdar or nişancı after the sultan's accession, after 887 (1482). Hüsâmeddin objects to all of these records. In his view the official registers show that Tâcî Bey was neither defterdar nor chief steward (müdebbir-i umur) to Bayezid in Amasya, but only his divan secretary and nişancı; the prince's stewards and defterdars in these years were other men. He likewise finds the entry "Tâcî Bey in 905" in the Sicill-i Osmânî's list of defterdars, implying that Tâcî Bey became chief defterdar in Istanbul, contrary to all the financial records, and calls such information "guesses based on hearsay".

The picture Hüsâmeddin draws from the registers is as follows. Tâcî Bey entered the prince's retinue in 866 (1461-62) alongside his uncle Halîl Bey, became divan secretary in 875 (1470-71) and, in the changes that followed the death of the prince's vizier that same year, "Tâcî Bey, of the poets of Amasya" was made nişancı. In the list Hüsâmeddin gives of Bayezid's court at Amasya, the name "nişancı Tâcî Bey, of the poets" appears together with those of the prince's close circle such as the poet Âfitâbî, Kerîmî and Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman. The author relates that when the commission of inquiry sent by Mehmed II (the Conqueror) arrived in Amasya in 882, Bayezid was at a convivial gathering in Lâdik with Hızırpaşazâde Mahmûd Paşa, Fenârîzâde Ahmed Bey, Müeyyedzâde and Tâcî Bey. This detail too shows that Tâcî Bey's literary identity cannot be separated from his office at the prince's court.

The way different titles are scattered across the records itself carries a clue. According to Hüsâmeddin, his brother Süleyman Bey was şehremini in 898, intendant of the registers (defter emini) in 904 and defterdar to Prince Ahmed in 907, while Sa'dullah Çelebi, named as his father-in-law, was Bayezid's defterdar in Amasya. It might be supposed that the titles of şehremini and defterdar given to Tâcî Bey in later sources became confused with the offices of other members of the same family. This is an inference drawn from comparing the sources and has not been confirmed by documents. What all the titles of serasker, şehremini, hassa emini, defterdar and nişancı have in common is that Tâcî Bey belonged to the prince's retinue and was involved in its financial and chancery affairs.

It is also reported that Âşık Çelebi, writing about Tâcî's son Câfer Çelebi, recorded that someone served as lala (tutor-guardian) to Bayezid II during his princehood. The source entries do not make clear whether this note refers to the father or the son. The tutorship is therefore mentioned here as an uncertain record and is not treated as established fact.

The Decree of 883 and the Flight to Baghdad

Bayezid's court at Amasya had come to arouse growing suspicion in the eyes of Mehmed II. According to the biography of Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman, complaints reached the sultan that the prince was being drawn into drinking and revelry, and the sultan issued a decree for the execution of Müeyyedzâde and of the prince's favourite (haseki), Hızırpaşazâde Hacı Mahmud. Müeyyedzâde learned of it before the decree reached Amasya and, with the prince's help, fled to Aleppo, then in Mamluk hands (884/1479), going on from there to Shiraz, where he received a licence (icâzet) from Jalal al-Din al-Dawani.

Hüsâmeddin tells the same story from Tâcî Bey's side. According to him, the vizier Hamza Beyzâde Mustafa Paşa, head of the commission of inquiry, left Amasya after a long investigation, and a decree that arrived in 883 ordered the execution of Mahmûd Paşa, Tâcî Bey and Abdurrahman Efendi and the dismissal of the others. Forewarned of the decree, Tâcî Bey fled to Baghdad and Abdurrahman Efendi to Iran; Mahmûd Paşa was executed. Hacı Hamza Beyzâde Ahmed Bey was appointed nişancı in Tâcî Bey's place. The year of the flight is given variously in the sources as 882, 883 and 884. The report that Tâcî Bey fled to Baghdad has not been found in the other sources examined; Müeyyedzâde's flight, by contrast, is confirmed by independent sources.

Hüsâmeddin writes that Tâcî Bey returned to Amasya after Bayezid's accession in 886 (1481), spent some time in Istanbul and then entered the service of Prince Ahmed, the new governor of Amasya. According to the annual chronology in the third volume, at the beginning of 887 "Hacı Beyzâde Tâcî Bey also came from Baghdad and became the prince's nişancı." In the same year Hamza Beyzâde Mustafa Paşa, who had conducted the inquiry, was killed in Istanbul; Hüsâmeddin interprets this as punishment for the households he had ruined in Amasya.

In the Service of Prince Ahmed

In Hüsâmeddin's account, Tâcî Bey's real rise falls in the years when Bayezid II's son Prince Ahmed was governor of Amasya. He was first nişancı, then the prince's defterdar; in 896 (1491) he received the rank of beylerbey as second head of the divan (sâhib-i dîvân). In the same year a great circumcision feast was held for the prince's sons Murâd and Alâeddin Çelebi, and a quarrel over precedence that broke out among the ulema and emirs at the feast led to a series of changes in the prince's retinue. When the palace guardian Kemâl Paşazâde Süleyman Bey was sent for the second time as sanjak governor of Tokat, he was succeeded by "Tâceddîn Paşa, famed as Nişancı Tâcî Bey". In 898 (1492-93) he became emir of the divan and received the title of Tâceddîn Paşa. From then on the sources refer to him mostly by this name.

In 904 (1498-99), when the prince's lala and first vizier Hızır Paşazâde Mehmed Paşa died, Tâceddîn Paşa succeeded him as regent and administrator of the province (vekîl-i saltanat, müdebbir-i memleket), that is, head of the prince's divan. This elevation did not last long. The influence of scholars and men of letters who had come from Iran was growing around Prince Ahmed. The nişancı Ahmed bin Kutbeddîn el-Câmî, as Hüsâmeddin relates, was an arrogant and obstinate man who held the literature, language and statesmen of Iran in the highest esteem in the prince's eyes. Neither Tâceddîn Paşa nor the kadı of Amasya, Ebu's-Suûd Mehmed Efendi, could get on with this nişancı. Hüsâmeddin narrates the rivalry on the basis of the Mecmûa-i Târîhiyye of Münîrî Mehmed Çelebi, one of the learned men of Amasya, which covered the period of Prince Ahmed; by his own note he found this collection in a house in Amasya, and it was later destroyed by fire. The nişancı's complaints bore fruit, and in 905 (1499-1500) Tâceddîn Paşa was removed from the prince's retinue as beylerbey of Kefe (Caffa). Kâsım Paşa of the Âbâdoğlu family of Hakala took his place.

Ahmed Câmî's name appears once more in Tâceddîn Paşa's life: Hüsâmeddin records that he saw the signature "Ahmed bin Kutbeddîn el-Câmî et-Tevkî'î" in the appendix to the pasha's endowment deed. That two men who had signed side by side in the same divan later fell out shows how close a circle the rivalry at the prince's court was played out in.

It is known that his son Câfer Çelebi was born in Amasya in Şaban 856 (August 1452), grew up in Amasya at his father's side and received his first lessons from the city's scholars. Hüsâmeddin gives his birthplace as the Dârü's-Selâm quarter of Amasya and his date of birth as Ramazan 860. Either way, Tâcî Bey's house was the one in which his sons received their first education, a house steeped in learning and the culture of the pen. While the father served in the prince's divan at Amasya, he raised his sons in the same city, within the circle of madrasa and divan.

The Mosque Complex and Endowments at Köprü

The name Tâceddîn Paşa survives most tangibly today in the district of Vezirköprü in Samsun, the former Köprü. The mosque in the Çanaklı quarter of the town centre, known as "Taceddin Paşa" and "Kurşunlu" (Lead-Roofed), has no building inscription. According to a three-page Arabic endowment deed dated 27 Şaban 900 (23 May 1495) in the archives of the General Directorate of Pious Foundations, the building was commissioned by "İbrâhim Paşa, son of Hacı Beyzâde Mevlânâ Safiyyüddin"; in the marginal note of the deed the founder's name is given as "Tâcüddin". The deed records the building as an "imaret" and states that it was built "in a most orderly and magnificent manner" in three parts: guest quarters (tabhane) of two rooms each with a sofa in front, the mosque, and ancillary buildings such as a kitchen, bakehouse, larder, storehouse, stable and ablution room. The deed also contains provisions on the qualifications, duties and wages of the staff, the villages, hamlets, fields, han, bathhouse, covered market (bedesten), dyehouse and shops endowed to the imaret, the appointment of the administrator (mütevelli), and sanctions against those who act contrary to the terms of the endowment.

Hüsâmeddin reproduces the Arabic title section of the deed in his work and, on that basis, writes that the founder of the mosque and bathhouse at Köprü was Tâceddîn Paşa, vizier and head of the divan of Prince Sultan Ahmed, governor of Amasya, in 900. According to him, when the mosque, soup kitchen and bathhouses the pasha had built at Köprü were completed in Şaban 900, he endowed all his properties in Köprü, Merzifon, Osmancık, Çorum, Tokat, Bafra and Amasya to meet the expenses of these charitable works, and the Binbirdirek in Istanbul was among these properties. The same author relates that in the village of Köprü Şeyh Alâeddîn Şirvânî had built a mescit and his son Lalacık Gâzi Bey a dervish lodge, and that in 900 Tâceddîn Paşa, grandson of this Gâzi Bey, built a mosque, school, imaret and bathhouse, as well as a dervish lodge for Şeyh İbrâhim Baba. Undated endowment account registers for Taceddin Paşa's building at Köprü and for his mosque and imaret at Merzifon survive in the archives, showing that the endowment extended to both towns.

According to Hüsâmeddin, Tâceddîn Paşa also built a palace for Prince Ahmed on the bank of the İstavlaz stream, making it easier for the prince to come to Köprü in the spring months. The prince in turn built a fountain near this palace; known as "Sultan Pınarı" (the Sultan's Spring), it later gave its name to a quarter. The imaret drew the poor and the prince's visits drew the emirs to Köprü, and from this time on the village took on the character of a town. The district of Yumrutaş, covering the south of the kaza, came to be called "Paşa Nahiyesi" (the Pasha's District) because Tâceddîn Paşa's farm lay there. The affairs of the endowment at Köprü were managed by Hâce Resûl Çelebi, son of Paşa Yiğit Bey of Kedağra; the pasha's steward (kethüda) and agent at Köprü, Resûl Çelebi is named in the deed of 900 as interim administrator and died after 910.

Whether the İbrâhim Paşa of the deed is the same person as Tâcî Bey is, however, a matter of debate. M. Sami Bayraktar, author of a doctoral thesis on the Turkish-period architecture of Samsun, states that this İbrâhim Paşa does not appear in the historical sources and that it has been suggested he may be identical with another İbrâhim mentioned in the Kâmûsü'l-a'lâm. This second candidate is "Mevlâyı Seyyid" İbrâhim, son of a sheikh who had settled near Amasya, who tutored Prince Korkut, taught at madrasas in Merzifon, Karahisar and Amasya and served as kadı of Amasya, and who died in 935 at over ninety years of age. Bayraktar also reports that E. H. Ayverdi indicated that "Nişancı Tacüddin Paşa and Taci Çelebi", whom he credited with building a large mosque in Vezirköprü, were one and the same person, but says that he found no such name in the sources. He considers that the "Taczâde" family in the Sicill-i Osmânî, the family of Tâc Bey, father of Câfer and Sâdî Çelebi, may be connected with this man, while noting that the names do not match exactly.

Hüsâmeddin himself hesitated at first. On the basis of the entry in the Tuhfe-i Hattâtîn, which he read in the Murad Molla Library, he initially took Tâceddîn Paşa and Tâcî Bey to be two different people, and later wrote that he had learned from the official registers that they were one and the same. He gives the most important record supporting this view in connection with Câfer Çelebi: after Tâceddîn Paşa's dismissal at the beginning of 905, his eldest son Câfer Çelebi, then professor at the Mahmud Paşa Madrasa in Istanbul, became nişancı, became administrator of his father's endowment in Rebîülevvel 906, and gave power of attorney for its management to his younger brother İsmâil Bey. After Sâdî Çelebi's death, İsmâil Bey and his descendants became administrators of the endowment. If this record is correct, the complex at Köprü is the endowment of the Tâcîzâde family. This information, however, conflicts with the fact that the deed was drawn up ten years after Tâcî Bey's date of death in the tezkires; the contradiction is discussed separately below.

The present state of the mosque is the product of several repairs. It is a mosque with side spaces: its centre and the area before the mihrab are covered by domes, a domed guest room stands on either side, and in front are a five-bay portico and an octagonal ablution fountain. In the 1943 earthquake the dome before the mihrab, the portico and the minaret were completely destroyed (one study gives the date as 1939). In 1955 local residents demolished some further dangerous parts and rebuilt the structure on its original walls in rubble stone, with a wooden ceiling and a tiled roof; the guest rooms, the minaret base, the columns and capitals of the portico and the wooden door leaves came through this repair in their original state. In the restoration begun by the General Directorate of Pious Foundations in 1989, which stalled for many years and was completed around 2000, the domes were rebuilt in reinforced concrete. The Samsun Regional Directorate of Pious Foundations began a new restoration on 1 February 2023, and by November 2025 slightly more than half of the work had been completed. The bathhouse attached to the imaret by the deed survives about 50 metres from the mosque in the basement of a house; an examination in the early 2000s established that its domes had been removed thirty or forty years earlier and a house built on top. According to Hüsâmeddin, in 1143 (1730-31) the head of the imperial gardeners (bostancıbaşı) Köprülü el-Hâc Süleyman Ağa added a madrasa to the mosque courtyard, and the posts of preacher and professor at the Tâceddîn Paşa Mosque kept their place in the learned life of Köprü in the centuries that followed.

His Poetry and His Pen

The sources offer no assessment of Tâcî Bey as a poet. Apart from a few couplets quoted in the tezkires and one ghazal in Ömer b. Mezîd's Mecmûatü'n-nezâir, none of his verse has come down to us. The places of the poems that entered nazire anthologies are, however, known: three are found in the Câmi'u'n-Nezâ'ir of Hacı Kemâl of Eğridir and one in the Mecma'u'n-Nezâ'ir of Nazmî of Edirne. Since these anthologies collected responses written to poems by the well-known poets of the age, it can be said that Tâcî's poems were read among his contemporaries and considered worth recording. Hüsâmeddin, too, when listing the poets who emerged during the governorships of Bayezid II and Prince Ahmed in Amasya, names together the çelebis "Tâcî, Âfitâbî, Figânî, Kutbî, Münîrî, Ca'ferî and Sa'dî".

One ghazal taken from Nazmî's anthology is certainly his, since its signature couplet carries the pen name "Tâcî". In its opening couplet the ghazal describes the sweet basil drawing near the jasmine leaf and the hyacinth drawing near the beloved's hair; the last couplet, the signature couplet, names the poet and his poem in the same sentence.

Reyhân hatuna mahrem-i berg-i semen olmışdur
Sünbül saçuna hem-dem-i yâsemen olmışdur
Bu şi'r-i teri Tâcî çün sûz-ı dem-i Dâvûd
Âvâz-ı Hüseynîde savt-ı Hasen olmışdur

In the poem, garden images such as basil, hyacinth, jasmine, rose and meadow are tied to the beauty of the beloved; the eye is a drunken pupil, the hair resembles the hyacinth. These are expressions proper to the ghazal language of the period and familiar to the readers of the day, and they show Tâcî as a poet writing within the vocabulary of his own age. In the signature couplet he likens his fresh poem to a beautiful voice in the Hüseynî mode.

Some of Tâcî Bey's letters are also included in the Münşeât of his son Sâdî Çelebi. Traces of his skill in prose composition, alongside his poetry, may be sought in these letters. Hüsâmeddin describes him as "a scholar, scribe, poet, calligrapher and a doer of good works and charity". Considering that his son Câfer Çelebi later became known as a pupil of Şeyh Hamdullah and gave a new order to the chancery scripts, especially the tuğra and the divanî hand, the father's descent from the same circle of practice as Hamdullah suggests that the value placed on writing was passed down from generation to generation in this household.

His Sons and Grandsons

Two of Tâcî Bey's sons won a place in Ottoman learned and literary life. Both were born in Amasya. Hüsâmeddin adds İsmâil Bey and Ahmed Bey to them; Tâcî Bey is also mentioned as the grandfather of Ca'ferî, likewise a poet.

Tâcîzâde Câfer Çelebi received his first lessons in Amasya from his father and from the city's leading scholars. The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi entry lists these teachers as Şeyhîzâde Abdi, Muîdzâde Muhyiddin Mehmed and Horasânîzâde Seyyid Abdullah Çelebi. For more advanced study he went to Bursa. He attended the lectures of Hacıhasanzâde, Hatibzâde Muhyiddin Efendi and Hocazâde; according to some sources he received his candidacy (mülâzemet) from Hacıhasanzâde, according to Gökbilgin's entry from Muhiddin Mehmed Câmî. He was first appointed to a madrasa in Simav, served as kadı there, administered the endowment of the Bayezid II İmaret in Edirne, and in 1497 became nişancı of the Imperial Divan. Hüsâmeddin gives this date as Muharrem 905 and notes that the previous nişancı's signature still appears in Zilkade 904. While in this post he took part in the campaign against Modon and Koron and wrote the proclamation of victory (fetihnâme). He is said to have opened a new era in chancery writing, reformed the tuğra and the divanî scripts, and developed the siyâkat script with his own pen. He wrote his masnavi Hevesnâme around 1493-94; it is known for its section describing Istanbul and the architectural works of the period. His Mahrûse-i İstanbul Fetihnâmesi is counted among the most brilliant examples of sixteenth-century Ottoman prose.

Hüsâmeddin also relates an incident from Câfer Çelebi's youth that is not found in other sources. After the death of Mehmed II, a letter he had written to Cem Sultan was seized and presented to Bayezid II with its date falsified and its meaning distorted. Before his father's death, Cem had asked Câfer Çelebi for some cypress saplings for his garden, and the letter was a reply stating that the saplings had been sent; but "cypresses" was interpreted as soldiers and "cypress saplings" as young soldiers. Câfer Çelebi was brought to Istanbul in chains and held for about two years in the Yedikule dungeon, and was released in 891 when his innocence was established. Hüsâmeddin writes that the years in which Tâcî Bey was Prince Ahmed's defterdar in Amasya were also the years in which his son became professor at the Mahmud Paşa Madrasa.

In the struggle for the throne among the princes in Bayezid II's last years, Câfer Çelebi took the side of Prince Ahmed and addressed him in a qasida as "vâris-i mülk" (heir to the realm). His father's long years in Ahmed's divan at Amasya make this choice understandable. It is related that in September 1511, when the Janissaries who supported Prince Selim plundered the houses of Ahmed's partisans, he barely escaped with his life, was then dismissed, and refused the daily pension of one hundred akçe offered to him. When Selim came to the throne he was reappointed nişancı, took part in the Çaldıran campaign and on the return was promoted to kazasker of Anatolia. While the sultan and his army were wintering in Amasya, Janissaries who rose in revolt in February 1515 also burned Câfer Çelebi's house. This revolt prepared his end. Selim I (the Grim), back in Istanbul in July 1515, investigated those who had incited the Janissaries, and Câfer Çelebi was executed on 18 August 1515. His brother Sâdî Çelebi buried the body in the graveyard of the mescit he had built himself in Balat. That the revolt which brought about his end broke out in Amasya, where his father had served for so many years, is one of history's striking coincidences.

The influence of Ahmed Paşa of Bursa is evident in Câfer Çelebi's poetry; in his divan he wrote most of his nazires to him, and he was also influenced by Necâtî and Şeyhî. Poets such as Basîrî, Mesîhî, Revânî, Kemalpaşazâde and Zâtî wrote nazires to his poems, and the number of nazires written to him in the anthology of Nazmî of Edirne reaches 146. His divan, with twenty-eight qasidas, 255 ghazals and other verse forms, has been published from eight manuscripts. Not every poet held the same opinion of him: Âlî did not much admire him and described the Hevesnâme as "insipid verse"; Müeyyedzâde, too, found his Persian "engürî", sour as unripe grapes. Most tezkire writers, on the other hand, preferred his prose to his verse and his qasidas to his ghazals. This judgement shows that the family's real renown was built on the pen, on prose composition and correspondence, more than on poetry, and it coincides with Tâcî Bey's own field.

The accounts of Câfer Çelebi's death also diverge in the sources. Historians stress his responsibility in the Janissary revolt; Âlî, on the other hand, citing a weaker report transmitted from Celâlzâde, writes that a satire composed on Selim's encounter with his father during his princehood was later attributed to Câfer by certain ill-wishers. Hüsâmeddin argues that the real instigators were Dukakinzâde Ahmed Paşa and some aghas of the palace, and that the blame was laid on Câfer Çelebi and İskender Paşa. It is related that before his execution, to the sultan's question "What is the punishment for one who incites the soldiers of Islam to revolt?", Câfer replied "If it is proven, death", thus pronouncing his own sentence. The same sources also record that Selim later repented and, during a fire, said: "These flames are the sparks of the fire of the sigh of the innocent Câfer Çelebi." The date 920, given by the tezkires through the line "Vah gitti bu cihandan Ca'fer" ("Alas, Ca'fer has left this world"), is not accepted as correct, since it does not match the day of his execution, 8 Receb 921.

Tâcîzâde Sâdî Çelebi (d. 922/1516) probably studied in Bursa with teachers such as Kadızâde Kâsım and Hacıhasanzâde and became professor at the Gazi Murad Madrasa. Notes in his own anthology show that he was in Bursa between 1492 and 1501. In 1503 he is recorded in Istanbul as professor at the Ali Paşa Madrasa, and later moved to one of the Semâniye madrasas. Hüsâmeddin writes that he was born in Amasya around 871, received his first lessons in Amasya from Şeyhîzâde Abdî, and gives his date of death as Şaban 923. His Arabic poems, chronograms in Arabic, Persian and Turkish, and letters are collected in the Sâdî Çelebi Mecmuası. The tezkire writers say that his Arabic poetry was superior to his elder brother's; Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi writes that he surpassed Câfer in prose composition as well. Shortly after Câfer Çelebi's death, when a letter had to be written to the Mamluk sultan Qansuh al-Ghawri, Sâdî was summoned to the palace; Selim I, greatly pleased with the letter, granted him 30,000 akçe and raised his daily salary by 30 akçe. At one point he went on the pilgrimage, and on his return retired with 80 akçe. On his death he was buried in the garden of the primary school he had built in Balat. Hüsâmeddin also records that he wrote a work called Hayrü'l-ahlâm describing the beauties of the city of Amasya; this information is transmitted from a single source.

The branch of the family that remained in Amasya and Köprü can be traced through Hüsâmeddin's work. İsmâil Bey became divan secretary to Prince Ahmed and later şehremini; in 918, after Ahmed lost the struggle for the throne, he lived for a time in banishment, and he died in 932 as a sanjak governor (mirliva), a rank he owed to the support of his elder brother Câfer Çelebi. He was a calligrapher and the administrator of his father's endowment. Ahmed Bey remained for many years at Köprü as administrator and overseer of his father's mosque there, and later as emir of Kedağra, and died around 930. İsmâil Bey's son Tâceddîn İbrâhim Bey was known as "Mâverâünnehirli" because he lived in İçerişehir in Amasya; he learned writing from the calligrapher Ebu'l-Fazl A'rec and, through the good offices of his great-uncle Câfer Çelebi, entered the chancery of the Imperial Divan. After Câfer Çelebi's execution and Sâdî Çelebi's death he was seized by fear and returned to Amasya, and on his father's death became administrator of the Tâceddîn Paşa endowment. In 945 Prince Mustafa, who came to Amasya as governor, admired his handwriting and took him into his retinue; this grandson, first the prince's divan secretary and then his nişancı, became known as "Küçük Tâc Bey" (Little Tâc Bey), recalling his grandfather's name, and died around 955. His skill in the siyâkat and divanî scripts shows that the family's tradition of the pen passed on to a third generation as well.

His Death and the Question of Dates

The date of Tâcî Bey's death has been established as 890 (1485) from four separate chronogram lines at the end of his son Sâdî Çelebi's Münşeât; another record gives 890/1485-86. Kâtib Çelebi, in Süllemü'l-vüsûl, says that he died in Muharrem of that year, when he was over fifty-four years old. The TDV entry calculates his date of birth from this as 836 (1432-33). Another dictionary entry, however, gives his birth as 826 (1422-23). The ten-year difference has not been resolved in the sources.

Hüsâmeddin's account cannot be reconciled with this date. According to him, Tâceddîn Paşa was sent to the governorship of Kefe at the beginning of 905 and died shortly after arriving there, in Muharrem 906 (July-August 1500). Hüsâmeddin points out that Kâtib Çelebi's book was written exactly one hundred and fifty years after Tâcî Bey's death, and does not accept the date 890 that Müstakimzâde took from it. The Sicill-i Osmânî implies a third possibility, through the entry in its list of defterdars, that Tâcî Bey became chief defterdar in 905 and died in 908; Hüsâmeddin finds this, too, contrary to the financial records.

This divergence in the sources can be explained in two ways. First, Sâdî Çelebi's chronogram lines are a contemporary testimony from within the family; if they are correct, then the Tâceddîn Paşa who drew up the deed of 900, took charge of the prince's divan in 904 and went to Kefe in 905 must be a different person from Tâcî Bey, perhaps another Hacı Beyzâde of the same family. This possibility gains weight when one recalls that Hüsâmeddin himself had counted them as two separate people at the start of his research. Second, if the official registers on which Hüsâmeddin says he relied are correct, especially the record showing that Câfer Çelebi became administrator of his father's endowment in 906, it might be supposed that the date 890 rests on a misreading or belongs to the death of another member of the family. Both possibilities are inferences drawn from comparing the sources; with the published documents available today it cannot be said with certainty which is correct.

If the date given by the tezkires is taken as the basis, Câfer Çelebi was about thirty-two when his father died and was not yet nişancı; the father did not live to see his son's rise in the Imperial Divan. If Hüsâmeddin's chronology is followed, however, Câfer Çelebi's appointment as nişancı falls in almost the same months as his father's removal from Amasya to Kefe. No information on the place of his death or burial has been found in the sources examined.

His Legacy

The traces that belong to Tâcî Bey with certainty are slight but real: a few poems preserved in nazire anthologies, a few letters included in his son's collection of correspondence, and a family name carried from Amasya to Istanbul. No building or tomb of his own within the city of Amasya has been identified in the sources. The mosque, bathhouse and imaret at Köprü can be counted as his work only if Hüsâmeddin's identification is accepted; if it is, Tâcî Bey must also be remembered as a founder who had a share in turning Vezirköprü from a village into a town. In either case, the standing his two sons achieved in Istanbul shows that a tradition of the pen rooted in Amasya was carried to the Ottoman centre. Those who carried his name into the Ottoman chancery as a family name were the sons and grandsons he raised: the Tâcîzâdes.

His son Câfer Çelebi built a mescit in Balat in Istanbul, a mosque and bathhouse in Simav, a caravanserai in Bergama and a primary school in Edirne. These buildings are the son's work. Of the endowment of the complex at Köprü, according to Hüsâmeddin, Câfer Çelebi, İsmâil Bey, Ahmed Bey and their descendants were administrators for generations.

Chronology

1422-23 (826): Birth, according to one dictionary entry; the TDV, relying on Kâtib Çelebi, calculates 1432-33 (836).

1452 (Şaban 856): His son Câfer Çelebi was born in Amasya; Hüsâmeddin gives Ramazan 860.

1461-62 (866): According to Hüsâmeddin, he entered Prince Bayezid's retinue alongside his uncle Halîl Bey.

1470-71 (875): According to Hüsâmeddin, he became divan secretary and then the prince's nişancı.

1478-79 (883): Mehmed II's execution decree against the prince's circle in Amasya; according to Hüsâmeddin, he fled to Baghdad.

1482 (887): According to Hüsâmeddin, he returned from Baghdad and became Prince Ahmed's nişancı; according to other sources, he served for a time as defterdar or nişancı after Bayezid's accession.

1485 (890): His death, according to the chronogram lines of his son Sâdî Çelebi and to Kâtib Çelebi.

1491 (896): According to Hüsâmeddin, he became second head of the divan (sâhib-i dîvân) under Prince Ahmed.

1492-93 (898): According to Hüsâmeddin, he became emir of the divan and received the title of Tâceddîn Paşa.

1495 (27 Şaban 900): The Arabic endowment deed of the mosque, imaret and bathhouse at Köprü was drawn up.

1497 (903): His son Câfer Çelebi became nişancı of the Imperial Divan; Hüsâmeddin gives Muharrem 905.

1498-99 (904): According to Hüsâmeddin, Tâceddîn Paşa became Prince Ahmed's lala and first vizier.

1499-1500 (905): According to Hüsâmeddin, he was sent as beylerbey to Kefe.

1500 (Muharrem 906): According to Hüsâmeddin, he died in Kefe; in Rebîülevvel of the same year Câfer Çelebi became administrator of his father's endowment.

1515 (921): Câfer Çelebi was executed on 18 August.

1516 (922): Sâdî Çelebi died and was buried in the garden of the primary school he had built in Balat.

2023: The Samsun Regional Directorate of Pious Foundations began restoration of the Taceddin Paşa (Kurşunlu) Mosque in Vezirköprü.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

  • Erünsal, İsmail E., "Tâcîzâde Câfer Çelebi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 39, Istanbul 2010 (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Erünsal, İsmail E., "Tâcîzâde Sâdî Çelebi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 39, Istanbul 2010 (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • "Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Efendi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/mueyyedzade-abdurrahman-efendi). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • "Hayreddin Mar'aşî", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/hayreddin-marasi).
  • Bayraktar, M. Sami, Samsun ve İlçelerinde Türk Mimari Eserleri, doctoral thesis, Atatürk University Institute of Social Sciences, Erzurum 2005, pp. 47-49 (Vezirköprü Taceddin İbrahim Paşa Mosque) and the section on the Tahta Bathhouse (atauni.edu.tr). atauni.edu.tr
  • Primary sources transmitted through these works: Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin Yasar, Nişancılar Durağı; Latîfî, Tezkire; Âşık Çelebi, Meşâirü'ş-şuarâ; Âlî, Künhü'l-Ahbâr; Kâtib Çelebi, Süllemü'l-vüsûl; Müstakimzâde, Tuhfe-i Hattâtîn; Mehmed Süreyyâ, Sicill-i Osmânî; Nazmî of Edirne, Mecma'u'n-Nezâ'ir; Tâcîzâde Sâdî Çelebi, Münşeât; M. E. Yurdakul, "Taceddin İbrahim Paşa'nın Vakıfları ile Vâkıfın Merzifon'da İnşa Ettirdiği Hana Bitişik Mescidinde Yapılan Restorasyon Çalışmaları", VIII. Türk Tarih Kongresi Bildirileri, vol. III, Ankara 1983.

Official sources

  • Vezirköprü Municipality, "Taceddin Paşa (Kurşunlu) Camii" (vezirkopru.bel.tr). vezirkopru.bel.tr

Other sources

  • Köksal, M. Fatih, "Tâcî, Tâcî Bey, Mîr Tâcî", Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, Yesevi University (teis.yesevi.edu.tr), 2013, updated 2020. teis.yesevi.edu.tr
  • Gökbilgin, M. Tayyib, "Cafer Çelebi", Gökbilgin Kütüphanesi (wiki.gokbilgin.com).
  • "5 asırlık camiye restorasyon", TGRT Haber, via İHA, 1 November 2025 (tgrthaber.com).