Tâcîzâde Sâdî Çelebi is an Amasya native who is remembered mostly in the shadow of his elder brother, Câfer Çelebi. Câfer Çelebi entered history through his poetry, his office as chancellor and his execution in 1515, whereas Sâdî Çelebi left a quieter trace as a madrasa professor, a master of Arabic epistolary prose and a letter writer. What is known of his life is limited, and even his date of birth is unrecorded. Even so, the surviving records are enough to sketch a scholar who grew up in a family of pen-wielders around the princely court at Amasya, followed a madrasa career from Bursa to Istanbul, and earned the respect of his contemporaries for his command of Arabic. The fact that his name became confused with other Sâdî Çelebis of the same century, above all with the şeyhülislam Sâdî Çelebi of Süleyman the Magnificent's reign, makes him harder still to pin down; that confusion is taken up separately towards the end.

The Tâcîzâdes: A Family of the Pen in Amasya

Sâdî Çelebi was born in Amasya. The sources give no exact year of birth; all that is known is that he died in 922 (1516). The family to which he belonged appears in Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin's Amasya Tarihi (History of Amasya) among the city's old lineages under the name of the "Şirvânî lineage". According to Hüsâmeddin, the lineage descended from Şeyh Alâeddin Ali Şirvânî, a notable of around the year 800 of the Hijra, and in time split into two branches: the "Gâzi Beyzâdes", known in Köprü, today's Vezirköprü, and the "Tâcî Beyzâdes", who won renown in Amasya and Istanbul. From the second branch a further offshoot later separated under the name "Tezkirecizâde". Among those raised in this line Hüsâmeddin names Tâceddin Paşa, Mahmud Paşa, the chief judge (kazasker) Câfer Çelebi and the chief secretary (reîsülküttâb) Mehmed Bey. Sâdî Çelebi's name is not on this list, but elsewhere in the same work he is called "Tâcî Beyzâde" and "Tâcîbeyzâde", that is, by the family's name.

The only member of the family known with historical certainty is Sâdî Çelebi's father, Tâcî Bey. The sources call him Tâcî Bey, Mîr Tâcî and Tâc Bey. According to Latîfî and Âşık Çelebi, he served in Amasya as chief treasurer (defterdar) to Prince Bayezid and held the post of military commander (serasker) of Amasya. It is also recorded that he had earlier been city superintendent (şehremini) of Amasya and, according to the Sicill-i Osmânî, became treasurer and commander of the household troops after Bayezid's accession. Âşık Çelebi, writing about his son Câfer Çelebi, adds that Tâcî Bey served Bayezid as lala (tutor-guardian) during his years as prince. This falls squarely in the period when Amasya operated as one of the Ottoman princely sanjaks, where prince-heirs set up small councils of their own and worked with treasurers, chancellors and scribes. Running the ledgers and correspondence in a prince's council was one of the most suitable paths by which a talented secretary (münşî) could rise.

Tâcî Bey's poetic legacy is very slight. Apart from a few couplets quoted in the biographical anthologies (tezkires) and a handful of poems taken into the nazire anthologies, no work of his survives. One ghazal appears in Ömer b. Mezîd's Mecmûatü'n-nezâir, three poems in Eğridirli Hacı Kemâl's Câmiu'n-nezâir and one in Edirneli Nazmî's Mecmau'n-nezâir. Some of Tâcî Bey's letters are also said to be found in his son Sâdî Çelebi's Münşeât, so that the father's pen lived on among the texts the son collected. His date of death has been established as 890 (1485) from four separate chronogram lines at the end of that same Münşeât. Kâtib Çelebi writes that he died in the month of Muharram of that year, aged over fifty-four, from which his birth year is calculated as 836 (1432-33). Another literary dictionary, however, gives his birth as 826 (1422-23); which record lies behind the ten-year difference is not clear.

The Inquiry of 881 and Tâcî Bey's Flight

Hüsâmeddin relates that Tâcî Bey's brilliant years in Amasya were severely interrupted. In his account, Mehmed II (the Conqueror), while in Amasya in 878 (1473), removed Prince Bayezid's lala Çandarlızâde İbrâhim Paşa, appointed Hızır Paşazâde Mahmud Paşa in his place, and sent Mevlânâ Halîmî Çelebi, who had won esteem in the prince's circle, away as judge of Sivas. Some time later Halîmî Çelebi was dismissed and shut up in the dungeon at Tokat; after his acquittal he went to Istanbul, described what had befallen him in an Arabic qasida and presented it, with a commentary, to the sultan. The Conqueror then sent Hamza Beyzâde Mustafa Paşa, one of the dome viziers, to Amasya to investigate the complaints. According to Hüsâmeddin, in 881 (1476), on the strength of the pasha's report, an order was issued for the execution of the prince's lala Mahmud Paşa, of Tâcî Bey and of the young scholar Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Efendi. Mahmud Paşa and some other officials were put to death, while Bayezid, before the order arrived, gave Müeyyedzâde ten thousand akçe, a few horses and provisions for the road and had him spirited away by night. Müeyyedzâde fled to Iran and Tâcî Bey to Baghdad, and both escaped the sentence.

This episode appears only in Hüsâmeddin's work; the encyclopaedia entries on Tâcî Bey and his sons say nothing of such a flight, and its details could not be confirmed from any other source. Since we learn from the chronograms composed by his son that Tâcî Bey died in 890, it may be supposed that he returned to Ottoman lands after a time; this, however, is an inference. As Sâdî Çelebi's age in those years is unknown, it is also impossible to say how his father's exile affected his childhood and education. It is clear nonetheless that the family knew both the prestige and the danger that came with closeness to the prince's council; the same pattern would recur forty years later, in far graver form, in the life of Câfer Çelebi.

Brothers and Relatives

Sâdî Çelebi's elder brother, Tâcîzâde Câfer Çelebi, was born in Amasya in August 1452 according to Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin's Nişancılar Durağı. This work is the only source that gives detailed information about the family. There Câfer Çelebi is introduced as the son of "Hacı Beğzâde Tâceddin İbrâhim Paşa, governor-general of Kefe, famous as Tâci Beğ", and the father's line is traced back to Şeyh Alâeddin Ali. Modern researchers point out that of all the persons named in this genealogy, Tâcî Bey is the only one about whom other sources say anything; the identification of Tâcî Bey with Tâceddin İbrâhim Paşa therefore also remains Hüsâmeddin's account.

In the biographical volumes of the Amasya Tarihi, Hüsâmeddin records other members of the family as well. One of them, Ahmed Bey, is listed with the same genealogy as "Tâceddin Paşazâde". He became administrator and supervisor of the endowment of the mosque his father had built at Kedağra, that is, Köprü, later served for many years as emir of Kedağra, and died around 930 (1523-24). His son Ekmel Bey was also one of the beys. On this record Ahmed Bey was the brother of Sâdî and Câfer Çelebi. Hüsâmeddin further introduces İbrâhim Bey, son of Tâceddin İbrâhim Paşa's brother Hacı Süleyman Bey, as "the paternal cousin of Kazasker Tâcî Beyzâde Ca'fer Çelebi". No record of Ahmed Bey or of this cousin has been found outside Hüsâmeddin. A literary dictionary, for its part, presents Tâcî Bey as the grandfather of another poet who wrote under the pen name Ca'ferî; it does not say from which son this grandson descended.

Câfer Çelebi received his first lessons in Amasya from Şeyhîzâde Abdi, Muîdzâde Muhyiddin Mehmed and Horasânîzâde Seyyid Abdullah Çelebi, and then went to Bursa, where he attended the lectures of Hacıhasanzâde, Hatibzâde Muhyiddin Efendi and Hocazâde. Hacıhasanzâde, one of the teachers under whom Sâdî Çelebi studied, also belonged to this circle. That the two brothers went to the same teacher shows that the family set its sons on the same path of learning, leading from Amasya to Bursa.

Education and the Bursa Years

Sâdî Çelebi probably studied in Bursa under teachers such as Kadızâde Kâsım and Hacıhasanzâde. Hüsâmeddin mentions a Hacı Hasanzâde Muhyiddin Mehmed Efendi who died early in 911 (1505-1506) while serving as chief judge of Rumelia; it may be supposed that Sâdî Çelebi's teacher was this scholar, but the sources do not make the identification explicitly. After completing his education Sâdî Çelebi became professor at the Gazi Murad Madrasa in Bursa. Certain notes in his own miscellany show that he was in Bursa between 897 and 906 (1492-1501). These notes appear on various folios of the Sâdî Çelebi Mecmuası, held in the Veliyyüddin Efendi collection of the Beyazıt State Library under number 3258.

The private letters he wrote from Bursa to his brother Câfer Çelebi are also preserved in this miscellany. In them he generally laments their separation, and the tone is warm and heartfelt. Known in official correspondence as a master of ornate prose, Sâdî Çelebi switched to a plain and sincere language when writing to his brother. At the time, Câfer Çelebi was serving in turn as madrasa professor and judge in Simav and as administrator of the endowment of Bayezid's soup kitchen in Edirne, and in 899 (1493-94) he was appointed to the Mahmud Çelebi Madrasa in Istanbul. When Câfer Çelebi became chancellor (nişancı) of the Imperial Council in 903 (1497), one brother stood at the head of the state's chancery while the other held a madrasa chair in Bursa. The longing in the letters reads more clearly against this distance.

Another trace from the Bursa years is the news of the Modon campaign. Câfer Çelebi, who took part in the campaign against Modon and Koron between Ramadan 905 and Muharram 906 (April-August 1500), wrote the victory proclamation (fetihnâme) sent from Modon to Bursa. This text is found in Sâdî Çelebi's Münşeât. That the proclamation was sent to the city where the younger brother lived and found its way into his collection suggests that Sâdî Çelebi also gathered his brother's writings and that his miscellany served as a kind of family register.

Professor and Stylist in Istanbul

Sâdî Çelebi must have gone to Istanbul before 909 (1503-1504). In an entry dated Jumada al-awwal 909 (November 1503) in the İn'âmât Defteri, the register of gifts from the reign of Bayezid II, he is mentioned as professor at the Ali Paşa Madrasa. Some time later he was appointed to one of the Sahn-ı Semân (Semâniye) madrasas. The same register shows that he presented qasidas to Sultan Bayezid II on various occasions. The İn'âmât register is a series of records noting the gifts the sultan gave to various people and the reasons for them. Considering that his brother Câfer Çelebi also appears often in the same register, a period emerges in which the two brothers were mentioned together in the palace circle. Indeed, on 13 December 1503 Câfer Çelebi was rewarded for writing a letter to be sent to the Mamluk sultan of Egypt, and that same year he presented a qasida.

The endowment deed (vakfiye) Sâdî Çelebi composed for Vizier Ali Paşa is the most frequently cited example of his mastery of ornate prose. Kâtib Çelebi counts it among the rarest texts in the world and reports that Sâdî Çelebi was regarded as an expert in Arabic composition. Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi likewise says that the deed written for Ali Paşa was without equal. It may be supposed that the Ali Paşa Madrasa where Sâdî Çelebi taught and the Vizier Ali Paşa whose endowment deed he wrote point to the same person, that is, that the scholar was attached to a patron in whose madrasa he taught and whose foundation he put into words; but the sources do not draw this link explicitly, and it is an inference.

The epithet "münşî" (stylist, secretary) used for Sâdî Çelebi does not mean that he was a chancery scribe or a chancellor. No official chancery post of his is recorded in the sources; his career was a madrasa career from beginning to end. His standing as a münşî comes from his mastery of artistic prose, especially Arabic composition, and from the occasional texts he was called upon to write in the name of the state. The office of kazasker, by contrast, was held by his brother Câfer Çelebi, and Sâdî Çelebi never held such a post; since the titles of the two brothers are sometimes confused, the distinction needs to be made.

His Brother Câfer Çelebi's Pen and End

To understand Sâdî Çelebi's milieu one must look at his elder brother's career with the pen, because the writings of the two brothers are often intertwined in the sources. Câfer Çelebi became chancellor of the Imperial Council in 903 (1497) and, unlike his predecessors, did not rank below the treasurers but took a position above the treasurer in grade. According to the İn'âmât records, he broke new ground in chancery writing, reformed the tughra and the divanî script, and the siyâkat script developed under his pen. Hüsâmeddin goes a step further, writing that Câfer Çelebi invented the siyâkat script and placing him beside Yâkut and Hamdullah among the pioneering calligraphers Amasya produced; modern assessment, however, sees his share less as an invention than as an important reform. In a qasida in his divan he describes the conquest of Modon in detail.

Câfer Çelebi's best-known prose work is the Mahrûse-i İstanbul Fetihnâmesi, an account of the conquest of Istanbul. Adorned with Quranic verses, hadith and couplets in Arabic, Persian and Turkish, it is considered one of the finest examples of sixteenth-century Ottoman prose, though the intricacy of its language has made it difficult to use as a historical source. Sadettin Nüzhet Ergun describes it as a work of literature rather than a work of history. Even so, part of its information on the Conquest appears more reliable than the accounts of historians such as Tursun Bey, Neşrî and Âşıkpaşazâde. Câfer Çelebi's divan contains twenty-eight qasidas, 255 ghazals and examples of other verse forms. His mesnevi Hevesnâme, which tells a love story, has drawn attention above all for its introduction describing Istanbul and the buildings of the period. He also translated Mevlânâ Şükrullah's ethical work Enîsü'l-ʿârifîn from Persian into Turkish. The first comprehensive study of his life and works is the doctoral thesis İsmail E. Erünsal prepared at the University of Edinburgh in 1977, which also contains a critical edition of his divan.

In the struggle for the throne among the princes during Bayezid II's last years, Câfer Çelebi had backed Prince Ahmed, calling him "heir to the realm" in a qasida he wrote for him. It is said that in 1511, when the janissaries supporting Prince Selim attacked the houses of Prince Ahmed's partisans, he barely escaped with his life. Hüsâmeddin tells this episode from Amasya's point of view: as Prince Ahmed, governor of Amasya, set out for Istanbul in hope of the throne, the janissaries raided the mansions of his supporters and plundered those of the chief judge of Rumelia, Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Efendi of Amasya, and of the chancellor Tâcî Beyzâde Ca'fer Efendi, also of Amasya. That Müeyyedzâde, whose name had appeared in the same order as Tâcî Bey's thirty-five years earlier, should now be named in the same plundering as Câfer Çelebi shows how closely two Amasya families remained bound to princely politics. After this revolt Câfer Çelebi was removed from the chancellorship, probably remained without official post for about two years, and is mentioned as chancellor again only in December 1513. In one of the qasidas he addressed to Selim I (Selim the Grim) he complains of his situation and asks the sultan for an appointment.

Câfer Çelebi then took part in the Çaldıran campaign. While the army was at İzmit in April 1514 he prepared a letter in Persian to be sent to Shah Ismail, and in the course of the campaign he wrote two more letters in Turkish, one at Erzincan and the other a month later at Çermük. When Shah Ismail was routed in August 1514 and fled, leaving behind his treasury and his wife Taclu Hanım, Selim gave Taclu Hanım to Câfer Çelebi. On the return he was appointed chief judge of Anatolia. In December 1514 the sultan wished to winter in Amasya in order to resume the campaign the following year. In February 1515 the janissaries, who wanted to return to Istanbul, rose at the instigation of certain viziers, attacked the houses of Pîrî Mehmed Paşa, Halîmî Çelebi and Câfer Çelebi, and set them on fire. When Selim returned to Istanbul in July, he investigated those who had incited the janissaries. Among those held responsible were Vizier İskender Paşa, Kazasker Câfer Çelebi and the head of the sekban corps, Balyemez Osman Ağa. İskender Paşa and Osman Ağa were killed at once. Câfer Çelebi was summoned to the sultan's presence, interrogated and executed on 18 August 1515 (8 Rajab 921).

Sâdî Çelebi buried his brother's body in the graveyard of the small mosque his brother had built on the slopes of Fener, on the Balat side. A gravestone thought to be Câfer Çelebi's stands today in the garden of the Museum of Turkish Construction and Art Works. The tezkires that relate Selim's deep remorse at having executed Câfer Çelebi unjustly give the line "Vah gitti bu cihandan Ca'fer" (Alas, Ca'fer has left this world) as the chronogram of his death. Yet since every source places the execution in 921, the line's numerical value does not fit, and the chronogram is evidently wrong. Besides his mosque in Istanbul, Câfer Çelebi had built a mosque and a bathhouse in Simav, a caravanserai in Bergama and a primary school in Edirne.

The Letter to Qansuh al-Ghuri and His Last Years

Shortly after his brother's death, when a letter had to be sent to Qansuh al-Ghuri, the Mamluk sultan of Egypt, Sâdî Çelebi was summoned to the palace. According to the account based on Âşık Çelebi, the letter he wrote was greatly admired; Selim I granted him 30,000 akçe and raised his daily stipend by 30 akçe. It is striking that one of the state's weightiest pieces of correspondence was entrusted to the brother of the executed chancellor. It may be supposed that a master of Arabic was being sought to fill the place left by Câfer Çelebi's pen and that one was found within the family; this, too, is an inference the sources do not state. There is no information in the sources about how Sâdî Çelebi responded to this summons and reward in the face of his brother's death.

The sources state that Sâdî Çelebi remained in Istanbul until the end of his life, went on the pilgrimage at some point and, on his return, retired on 80 akçe. He died in 922 (1516), about a year after his brother's execution, and was buried in the garden of the primary school he had built in Balat. That both brothers left charitable foundations in the same quarter of Istanbul and were buried there shows that the family from Amasya had made a place for itself in the capital on the slopes between Fener and Balat.

His Poetry and Arabic Prose

Sâdî Çelebi's Arabic poems, his chronograms in Arabic, Persian and Turkish, and his official and private letters were brought together in the compilation known as the Sâdî Çelebi Mecmuası. Although the Arabic poems in the miscellany are arranged in the order of a divan, this divan is incomplete. The tezkires also include a few samples of his Turkish poems, yet it is clear that he wrote mostly in Arabic. The tezkire authors judge his Arabic poems superior to those of his brother. Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi says that he surpassed Câfer Çelebi in ornate prose as well.

The comparison is telling, because Câfer Çelebi is counted among the pioneers of ornate prose in his generation. At a time when plain expression dominated the Turkish of the day, he preferred a loftier register, placing Turkish words side by side with Arabic and Persian words and phrases in his poetry. He is known to have been the subject of 146 nazires, poems written in response to his own. That his brother stood out mainly in Arabic suggests that two distinct literary tendencies developed within the same family. Where Câfer Çelebi's language moved back and forth between Turkish and Arabic-Persian, his contemporaries remembered Sâdî Çelebi above all as a master of the Arabic pen.

Hüsâmeddin gives the two brothers a special place in his account of Amasya's literary history. According to him, during the period when Bayezid II governed Amasya for twenty-six years and his son Prince Ahmed for some thirty-two years after him, poets such as Tâcî, Âfitâbî, Figânî, Kutbî, Münîrî, Ca'ferî and Sâdî grew up in the city, and of these Tâcî Beyzâde Ca'ferî and Sâdî won fame in Istanbul as men without equal. In the same work Sâdî Çelebi is named among the Amasya "allâmes", scholars considered expert in all the sciences of exegesis, hadith, jurisprudential method, law, theology, philosophy and logic, alongside Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Efendi and Ahmed Şemseddin Efendi, the grandson of Kemalpaşazâde. The judgement carries a local historian's admiration for his fellow townsmen, but it also reflects the old conviction that Sâdî Çelebi left his mark both in poetry and in the madrasa sciences.

Works

The works of Sâdî Çelebi that survive or are mentioned in the sources show that he worked in both the literary and the scholarly fields.

  • Münşeât: Some of his letters were published by Necati Lugal and Adnan Erzi in Istanbul in 1956 under the title Tâcizâde Sa'dî Çelebi Münşeâtı, in the İstanbul Enstitüsü series of the İstanbul Fethi Derneği. Because the same two scholars published a separate collection of letters from the reign of Mehmed II in the same year and in the same series, the two works are sometimes confused. The victory proclamation sent from Modon to Bursa (August 1500) is included in Sâdî Çelebi's Münşeât; its text was written by Câfer Çelebi, who took part in the Modon and Koron campaign. The work also contains some letters of his father Tâcî Bey and the chronogram lines composed on his death. The chronograms by Câfer Çelebi in the Sâdî Çelebi Mecmuası were also published by Lugal and Erzi.
  • Endowment Deed of Vizier Ali Paşa: Kâtib Çelebi counts this deed among the rarest texts in the world; Kınalızâde too finds it without equal.
  • Glosses and commentaries: According to Taşköprizâde, he wrote glosses on Seyyid Şerîf Cürcânî's gloss on Şerhu'l-Miftâh and on the "martyr" chapter of Sadrüşşerîa es-Sânî's Şerhu'l-Vikâye. These works were textbooks taught in the madrasas.
  • Creed Poem: He versified the Akâidü'n-Nesefî in Arabic. This 234-couplet poem, which contains the basic tenets of the Maturidi tradition, is registered in the Ahmed III collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library under number 1777. According to the 2021 study by Kamile Ünlüsoy and Mohammad Shakib Asım, the work is one of the two verse works written in Anatolia on the Akâidü'n-Nesefî. In that study the text was established by collating two manuscripts, in the Topkapı Palace and the National Library, and then translated into Turkish. The same study presents Sâdî Çelebi as one of the scholars who won fame for his mastery of the Arabic language at a time when the Ottoman state was strong politically, economically and intellectually.
  • Semâ'î Müennes Qasida: A 90-couplet qasida written to make it easier to memorise the Arabic words that are treated as feminine, that is, irregularly considered feminine (Ömer İshakoğlu, 2008).
  • Hayrü'l-ahlâm: Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar records in his Amasya Tarihi that Sâdî Çelebi wrote a literary work in Arabic under this title to describe the vineyards and flowers of Amasya and the pleasure and delight they gave. No information has been found in the sources as to whether the work has survived.

The spread of his works shows that Sâdî Çelebi pursued literature and madrasa learning side by side. Versifying a creed text and gathering feminine words into a qasida both aimed to make the material easier to memorise. Writing glosses points to a professor working on the texts he taught. The official letters and the endowment deed, for their part, show that he possessed a talent close to that of the chancery pen.

Hayrü'l-ahlâm and the Fernak Vineyards

The text that binds Sâdî Çelebi most directly to his native city is Hayrü'l-ahlâm, known today only through Hüsâmeddin's report. Hüsâmeddin says that the work was written to describe the vineyards and flowers of Amasya and quotes an Arabic quatrain from it. In his own translation of the quatrain, Amasya is a garden adorned with flowers, spread over a long and broad stretch like the gilded straps of a sword; the channels drawn from the river that flows through its middle run between the vineyards, and when the nightingales begin to sing, no trace of grief or sorrow remains in the heart. The city, free of dirt and distress and cleansed of the harshness peculiar to other towns, is likened to the gardens of paradise, its nightingales to the morning breeze in the gentleness of the air and the delicacy of their song, its trees to the pavilions of paradise in their order and height, and its flowers to the lamps that light those pavilions.

Hüsâmeddin quotes one more short phrase from Sâdî Çelebi, this time to explain an old place name of the city. According to him, Sâdî Çelebi, describing a vineyard in Amasya, wrote "vehiye'l-cennetü'n-nakiyye fi'r-riyâzi'l-Fernakiyye", that is, "it is the pure paradise among the gardens of Fernak". Hüsâmeddin writes that the slopes known today as Çakallar were formerly called the "Fernak Vineyards", that the name appears in many documents, above all a deed of sale dated 691 (1291-92), and that Sâdî Çelebi's phrase reflects this old name. Hüsâmeddin does not say whether this phrase is taken from Hayrü'l-ahlâm or from another text by Sâdî Çelebi. Read together, however, the two quotations show that a native of Amasya teaching in Istanbul recorded the vineyards of his homeland in Arabic prose and verse. No information about a manuscript of the work has been found; what is known is limited to what Hüsâmeddin transmits.

The Other Sâdî Çelebis and the Confusion of Attribution

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries there were several scholars and scribes known as "Sâdî Çelebi" or "Sâdî Efendi", and their lives and works are sometimes attributed to Tâcîzâde Sâdî Çelebi. The main source of confusion is the şeyhülislam Sâdî Çelebi of Süleyman the Magnificent's reign. This scholar, whose real name was Sadullah b. Îsâ, was born in Daday in Kastamonu, came to Istanbul with his father as a child, taught at the Taşlık madrasa in Edirne, the Mahmud Paşa madrasa in Istanbul, the Sultan madrasa in Bursa and in the Sahn-ı Semân, became judge of Istanbul in 930 (1524), was appointed şeyhülislam in succession to Kemalpaşazâde in 940 (1534), and died on 2 Shawwal 945 (21 February 1539). His grave is near Eyüp Sultan. In the sources he is also called "Mevlânâ Sâdî" and, because of his gloss on Beyzâvî's Quran commentary, "Muhaşşî-i Beyzâvî" (the glossator of Beyzâvî).

The lives of the two scholars resemble each other to a surprising degree. Both taught in Bursa and in the Sahn-ı Semân, both entered the poets' tezkires with their verse, both wrote glosses on the basic texts of Hanafi law and both composed scholarly works in verse. Against Tâcîzâde's gloss on Şerhu'l-Vikâye and his creed poem stand the şeyhülislam's gloss on el-İnâye fî Şerhi'l-Hidâye and a poem on jurisprudence. This makes it easy for the şeyhülislam's Hâşiye ʿalâ Tefsîri'l-Beyzâvî and Fetâvâ-yı Sa'diyye to be ascribed to Tâcîzâde, and for anecdotes such as Tâcîzâde's letter to Qansuh al-Ghuri to be attached to the şeyhülislam. That one of the şeyhülislam's well-known students, Abdurrahman b. Ali, known as Kızıl Molla, was also from Amasya may have helped carry the link with Amasya over to the wrong Sâdî; this is an inference. The fact that the encyclopaedia entries on both scholars cite roughly the same folio of Âşık Çelebi's tezkire also suggests that the two Sâdîs are treated one after the other in that work. The chronological distinction is clear-cut: Tâcîzâde died in 922 (1516), while the şeyhülislam's judgeship of Istanbul, his office as mufti and the completion of his Beyzâvî gloss in 1537 all came after that date.

In Hüsâmeddin's Amasya Tarihi, two more Sâdî Efendis connected with Amasya appear. The first is the imperial chancery scribe Sâdî Efendi, a descendant of the Sadeddin Çelebi who gave his name to the Ahî Sadeddin quarter. Hüsâmeddin writes that he built a small mosque and a dervish lodge in the quarter and set up their endowment; he gives the date as 871 in one place and as 878 in another. It may be supposed that the "Sâdî" whom Hüsâmeddin lists among the statesmen who won renown in Amasya in the reign of Mehmed II is this man; this too is an inference. In either case he is a separate person who lived a generation before Tâcîzâde Sâdî Çelebi. The second is Sâdî Efendi of Akşehir, who in 952 (1545), on the death of the Amasya mufti Sinan Efendi, came from a Sahn professorship to be mufti of Amasya and professor of the Sultaniye madrasa. According to Hüsâmeddin, this mufti was dismissed in 953 because he objected to everything during Prince Mustafa's governorship of Amasya. A reader who comes across the phrase "Sâdî, mufti of Amasya" may easily identify him with Tâcîzâde, but when Tâcîzâde died this muftiship was still thirty years in the future.

His Ties to Amasya

No verified information has been found about any building or monument in Amasya bearing Sâdî Çelebi's name. His link with the city can be traced through his birth, his family, the fragments of Hayrü'l-ahlâm transmitted by Hüsâmeddin and the phrase about the Fernak vineyards. His father's post in Bayezid's council at Amasya, the account of the inquiry of 881 and his brother's targeting in 1511 as a partisan of Prince Ahmed, governor of Amasya, show how tightly the family's fortunes were bound to the princely court of Amasya. His year of birth, the order of his madrasa posts in Istanbul and the dates of composition of most of his works remain uncertain.

Chronology

826 or 836 (1422-23 or 1432-33): Birth year of his father Tâcî Bey, which varies between sources.

856 (August 1452): His elder brother Câfer Çelebi is born in Amasya, according to Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin.

881 (1476): According to Hüsâmeddin, at the end of Mehmed II's inquiry an execution order is issued against Tâcî Bey; Tâcî Bey flees to Baghdad.

890 (1485): His father Tâcî Bey dies.

897-906 (1492-1501): His presence in Bursa is attested by notes in his miscellany.

906 (August 1500): The Modon victory proclamation written by Câfer Çelebi is sent to Bursa; the text enters Sâdî Çelebi's Münşeât.

909 (November 1503): He is mentioned in the İn'âmât Defteri as professor at the Ali Paşa Madrasa.

917 (1511): The janissaries plunder the mansion of the chancellor Câfer Çelebi.

921 (1515): His elder brother Câfer Çelebi is executed; Sâdî Çelebi buries him in the graveyard of the small mosque on the slopes of Fener.

922 (1516): He dies and is buried in the garden of the primary school in Balat.

1956: His Münşeât is published by Lugal and Erzi.

2021: The Creed Poem is published with a Turkish translation by Ünlüsoy and Asım.

Bibliography

The following sources were used for this article:

  • İsmail E. Erünsal, "Tâcîzâde Sâdî Çelebi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 39, Istanbul 2010, p. 356. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • İsmail E. Erünsal, "Tâcîzâde Câfer Çelebi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 39, Istanbul 2010, pp. 353-356. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • 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 (abstract).
  • M. Fatih Köksal, "Tâcî, Tâcî Bey, Mîr Tâcî", Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, 2013.
  • Mehmet İpşirli - Ziya Demir, "Sâdî Çelebi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 35, Istanbul 2008, pp. 404-405. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Yeter Meryem Kurutaş, Sa'di Sadullah Çelebi'nin Hayatı ve Fetâvâ-yı Sa'diyye Çerçevesinde Fetvaları, master's thesis, Hitit University Institute of Social Sciences, Çorum 2020. earsiv.hitit.edu.tr
  • Faruk Sümer, "Prof. Necati Lugal", Belleten, 28/110 (1964), pp. 305-309.
  • Kamile Ünlüsoy - Mohammad Shakib Asım, "Osmanlı Klasik Dönemine Ait Bir Manzûm Akâidnâme Örneği", Kafkas Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, 8/16 (2021), pp. 612-646.
  • Ömer İshakoğlu, "Tâcizâde Sa'dî Çelebi ve Semâ'î Müennes Kasidesi", Şarkiyat Mecmuası, 12/1 (2008), pp. 59-72.
  • Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, vols. 1-4, p. 78 (Hayrü'l-ahlâm), 123 and 152 (the scribe Sâdî Efendi), 147-148 (Amasya poets and scholars), 181 (the Şirvânî lineage), 275 (Fernak Vineyards), 491 (the plundering of 1511), 507 (Sâdî Efendi of Akşehir), e-book: https://amasya.bel.tr/uploads/e-kitap/kitap/1-4/files/basic-html/page78.html
  • Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, vols. 6-8, p. 36 (İbrâhim Bey Gâzibeyzâde), 130 (Ahmed Bey Tâceddin Paşazâde), e-book: https://amasya.bel.tr/uploads/e-kitap/kitap/6-8/files/basic-html/page130.html
  • Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, vols. 9-12, p. 75 (entry on Hamdullah Efendi), 101-103 (entry on Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Efendi), e-book: https://amasya.bel.tr/uploads/e-kitap/kitap/9-12/files/basic-html/page102.html
  • Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin Yasar, Nişancılar Durağı, pp. 68-73 (via the TDV entry).

Online sources