Manuscript copies of Tayyibî Mehmed Efendi's divan have survived to our day. He was a secretary trained in the chancery of the Imperial Council, and his career as divan secretary to Hacı Efendizâde Ömer Pasha, a vizier from Amasya, stretched from Egypt to Baghdad. Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar's Amasya Tarihi attaches him to the city's Tayyibzâde family and records that he died in Baghdad in 1096 (1684-85). The biographical dictionaries of poets, for their part, know a Mehmed Çelebi whose pen name is read "Tıybî" or "Taybî", said to have been from Istanbul and to have died in 1090 (1679); he too was a secretary of the Imperial Council, served as Ömer Pasha's divan secretary and left a divan. That the two records describe the same man is largely clear, but the sources part ways on his birthplace and the year of his death. Although copies of the divan exist, its text could not be examined, and so his poems could not be reached.

Hüsameddin's Entry

Having dealt with the family's two Tayyib Efendis, Hüsameddin turns to Tayyibî:

Amasyalıdır. Kudâtdan Abdurrahman Efendi bin Tayyib Efendi bin Abdürrahîm Efendi'nin mahdûmudur. Amasya'da Hâfız Fazlullah Efendi'den türlü yazıları öğrendi. İstanbul'da Divân-ı Hümâyûn kalemine girip orada tahsîl-i ilme çalışıp kâtib oldu. 1074'de Amasyalı Hacı Efendizâde Ömer Ağa silâhdârlıkdan vezâretle Mısır vâlisi oldukda divân kâtibi olup maiyyetinde devr-i vilâyât etdi. Ömer Paşa'nın Bağdat vâliliğinde yanında bulunup 1096'da Bağdat'da vefât etdiği "Gülşen-i Hulefâ"da yazılıdır. Kâtib, şâir, sâhib-i divân'dır.

Put into English: He was from Amasya, born to the judge Abdurrahman Efendi, son of Tayyib Efendi, son of Abdürrahîm Efendi. In Amasya he learned the various scripts from Hâfız Fazlullah Efendi. In Istanbul he entered the chancery of the Imperial Council and, pursuing his studies there as well, became a secretary. In 1074, when Hacı Efendizâde Ömer Ağa of Amasya passed from the post of sword-bearer to the rank of vizier and became governor of Egypt, he became his divan secretary and travelled from province to province in his retinue. He was with Ömer Pasha during his governorship of Baghdad, and the Gülşen-i Hulefâ records that he died in Baghdad in 1096. He was a secretary, a poet, and the author of a divan.

The source Hüsameddin cites for the date of death is the Gülşen-i Hulefâ, Nazmîzâde Murtazâ's history of Baghdad. Where the other details of the entry come from is not stated.

His Family

The lineage Hüsameddin gives connects Tayyibî with the sixteenth-century Tayyibzâdes. His father was the judge Abdurrahman Efendi. His grandfather Tayyib Efendi was judge of Çorum in 1033 (1623-24), later held the judgeships of Çankırı and Antalya, had the Hâtun Paşa mosque in İçerişehir and a mosque in Çorum restored, and died after 1045. That Tayyib Efendi's father was Abdürrahîm Efendi, who died in 1005 (1596-97) as judge of Diyarbekir. Abdürrahîm in turn was a son of Tayyib Efendi, the judge and poet close to Şehzade Mustafa, and a brother of the poets Ehlî Mehmed Efendi and Şeyhî Abdullah Efendi. Tayyibî was thus the great-great-grandson of that first Tayyib Efendi.

Egypt and Baghdad

Hacı Efendizâde Ömer Pasha, the patron Tayyibî attached himself to, also appears in Hüsameddin's year-by-year narrative: in Şaban 1074 (February-March 1664) Hacı Efendizâde Ömer Ağa, son of Hacı Abdülbâkî Çelebi, an Amasya man who was the sultan's sword-bearer, was made vizier and governor of Egypt, and was nicknamed "Öküz Ömer Paşa", Ömer Pasha the Ox. In later years the pasha also became governor of Baghdad; according to other entries of Hüsameddin he was dismissed from Baghdad in 1095 (1684) and died in 1102 (1690-91). His steward, his imam and many of his men were from Amasya, and several of them have entries of their own in Hüsameddin. Tayyibî was the secretary of this Amasya retinue.

The abstracts of two master's theses on Tayyibî's divan report that the biographical dictionaries describe him as divan secretary to the governors of Egypt, Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus. Müstakimzâde calls him "divan secretary of the vizier Ömer Pasha, governor of Baghdad", and the Tuhfe-i Nâilî describes him the same way. Safâyî's dictionary calls him "hoş-nüvîs ü hoş-tab'", a fine hand and a gifted poet. That phrase agrees with Hüsameddin's note that Tayyibî learned the various scripts from Hâfız Fazlullah Efendi in Amasya.

The State of the Sources

The pen name Hüsameddin reads as "Tayyibî" is written طيبى in Arabic script and can also be read "Tıybî" or "Taybî". Scholars working on his divan have given it as Tıybî or Taybî. Hüsameddin's Tayyibî and the Tıybî of the dictionaries have a great deal in common: both are named Mehmed, both were secretaries of the Imperial Council, both served as Ömer Pasha's divan secretary and were in Egypt and Baghdad, both left a divan, and both wrote a fine hand. So much agreement points to one and the same man; Hüsameddin, however, never joins the two names, and the identification is ours.

They differ on two points. According to the thesis abstracts, all the dictionaries give Tıybî's birthplace as Istanbul and agree on 1090 (1679) as the year of his death, while no source states where he died. Hüsameddin makes him a native of Amasya and, relying on the Gülşen-i Hulefâ, says he died in Baghdad in 1096. It is not impossible for a son of an Amasya family of judges to have been born in Istanbul; a secretary who entered the Imperial Council and made his name in the capital may also have been taken for an Istanbul man by the biographers. The evidence at hand is not enough to settle the six-year difference in the date of death.

His Divan and Poetry

Tayyibî's poems could not be reached. A critical edition of his divan forms part of a master's thesis prepared by Halil İbrahim Bulan at Selçuk University in 1995, and his Turkish divan is the subject of Sabiha Tak's 1999 master's thesis at Marmara University; neither thesis is available in open access. According to Bulan's abstract this divan is the poet's only surviving work; it contains ghazals, quatrains, tahmis, terkib-i bend, kıt'as and kasides, and a Persian ghazal, a Persian quatrain and a sâkînâme show his command of Persian. The abstract judges him a poet with a divan of middling size, under the influence of the Indian style, of melâmî temperament and turned towards his inner world. Tak's abstract adds that the Safvet anthology contains two of Tıybî's ghazals and that in his works the poet complains of poverty and of not being appreciated. Since the manuscripts of the divan and the text in the theses could not be examined, not a single couplet of Tayyibî's can be quoted for now.

Chronology

1033 (1623-24): His grandfather Tayyib Efendi is judge of Çorum.

Şaban 1074 (February-March 1664): Hacı Efendizâde Ömer Pasha becomes governor of Egypt; Tayyibî is with him as his divan secretary.

1090 (1679): Tıybî Mehmed Çelebi dies, according to the biographical dictionaries.

1095 (1684): Ömer Pasha is removed from the governorship of Baghdad.

1096 (1684-85): Tayyibî dies in Baghdad, according to Hüsameddin.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

  • Halil İbrahim Bulan, Taybi Mehmed Çelebi Hayatı Eserleri-Edebi Kişiliği Divan'ın Tenkidli Metni, master's thesis, Selçuk University Institute of Social Sciences, 1995 (YÖK thesis no. 42433; abstract). https://tezara.org/theses/42433
  • Sabiha Tak, Tıybi ve Türkçe Divanı, master's thesis, Marmara University Institute of Social Sciences, 1999 (YÖK thesis no. 89795; abstract). https://tezara.org/theses/89795

Online sources