The pen name Tecellî was a nickname given to Ahmed Çelebi before he began to write poetry. As Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar tells it, this son of Hasan of Amasya was such a handsome youth that those smitten with him called him "tecellî", the light that appears and shines; Ahmed Çelebi later adopted the word as his pen name (mahlas). Known in seventeenth-century Amasya as a calligrapher, secretary and poet, Tecellî served as secretary of the crown estates, turned to Sufism late in life and died in 1081 (1670-71). His poems were included in Abdî Efendi's biographical anthology of the poets of Amasya (tezkire); since that work is lost, not a single line of his remains in our hands today.

The Record in Amasya Tarihi

The story of the pen name is told in the opening sentences of the short entry Tecellî Ahmed Çelebi-Bakkalzâde, on the pages of the eighth volume given to the letter "te"; the entry runs to two paragraphs:

Amasyalı Hasan'ın oğludur. Evâ'il-i hâlinde hüsn ve cemâle mâlik bir nev-civân olduğundan üftâde-gânı tarafından kendisine "tecellî" denmişti. Mu'ahharan kendisine mahlas oldu. Ulemâ vü üdebâdan tahsîl-i ma'ârif ve Dervîş Alî Efendi'den yazı temeşşuk edib ilm u kitâbet öğrendi.
Şu'arâdan Şeyhzâde Abdî, Kâdızâde Abdullah, Remzi Efendilerin sohbetlerinden isti'fâza edib hâslar kâtibi oldu. İçerişehir'de eş-Şeyh Hızır Efendi'den inâbet edib tasavvufa meyl etdi. 1081'de vefât eyledi. Kâtib, hattât, şâir, ehl-i ma'ârifti. Abdî Efendi'nin tezkiresinde eş'ârı var idi.

Paraphrased: Hasan of Amasya was his father. Because in the first years of his youth he was a young man of beauty and grace, those who had fallen for him called him "tecellî"; the word later became his pen name. He acquired knowledge from scholars and men of letters, and by practising calligraphy with Derviş Ali Efendi he learned learning and the secretarial art. Benefiting from the conversation of the poets Şeyhzâde Abdî, Kadızâde Abdullah and Remzî Efendi, he became secretary of the crown estates. In İçerişehir he became a follower of Sheikh Hızır Efendi and turned to Sufism. He died in 1081. He was a secretary, calligrapher, poet and a man of learning. His poems were in Abdî Efendi's tezkire.

His Name and Pen Name

In divan poetry "tecellî" is used in the sense of God's beauty becoming visible in a created being, shining in a face; the story Hüsameddin tells shows how this sense of the word had turned, in the poetic circles of Amasya, into an everyday compliment for a beautiful face. The nickname's becoming a pen name tells us that Ahmed Çelebi accepted the compliment and used it as his signature in his poems. The family name "Bakkalzâde" (son of the grocer), for its part, suggests that his father Hasan was a grocer; the entry says nothing else about the father's occupation.

His Life and Circle

His year of birth is unknown. The only person named as his teacher is Derviş Ali Efendi, who taught him calligraphy; no entry devoted to this calligrapher has been found in the book. The companions to whose conversation Tecellî owed his poetic training, by contrast, are known figures. Şeyhzâde Abdî Efendi was sheikh of the Ya'kûb Paşa lodge and a teacher who died in 1055 (1645), a poet whose verse entered the work of the anthologist Abdî Efendi; he should not be confused with his namesake, the anthologist. The phrase "Kâdızâde Abdullah, Remzi Efendiler", separated by a comma in the entry, may in fact point to a single person: in the tenth volume Remzî Abdullah Efendi is recorded as the son of Kâdızâde Mehmed İlmî Efendi, known as "Küçük Hâce"; this teacher, who wrote poetry in Arabic, Persian and Turkish, died in 1063 (1653). If this reading is right, Tecellî could be said to have been formed in the gatherings of two poets rather than three; the source is not clear on this point.

The secretaryship of the crown estates was a scribal post keeping the accounts of the hass estates in Amasya belonging to the sultan and the sanjak governor, that is, sources of revenue belonging directly to the state or the governor. When Tecellî was appointed to this post and how long he held it are not recorded. Nor does the entry reveal the identity of Sheikh Hızır Efendi, whom he followed in İçerişehir. The first name that comes to mind is the Halveti sheikh Şeyhzâde Hızır Efendi, who preached for some forty years in the Câmi-i Enderûn in İçerişehir in the same period and died in 1063 (1653); but this identification is a guess.

His Poetry

On Hüsameddin's own testimony, Tecellî's poems stood in Abdî Efendi's anthology of the poets of Amasya. He carried not one couplet from them into his entry, and so the verse has not survived. The tezkire covered the poets who had flourished in Amasya between 1000 and 1081; the year of Tecellî's death coincides with the last year of that period. The incomplete copy in Hüsameddin's hands was later burned, and no other copy is known. Nor do the entries on other poets for whom Hüsameddin quotes couplets from the same tezkire fill the gap; Tecellî's name never comes up in them.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Online sources