Kadı Burhaneddin Ahmed joined in a single life two identities that medieval Anatolian history rarely places side by side: that of the statesman and that of the poet. Born in Kayseri to a family of judges, he studied in the madrasas of Damascus and Cairo, served the Eretna principality first as judge and then as vizier, and in 1381 replaced that principality with a state that bore his own name. During a reign of some seventeen years he dealt with the Ottomans, the Karamanids, the Mamluks, the Aq Qoyunlu and Timur, and he also left behind one of the earliest large divans written in Turkish. Amasya is not outside this story. Hacı Şadgeldi, the master of the city in northern Anatolia, was the most formidable rival Kadı Burhaneddin met on his road to the sultanate, and throughout his reign Amasya remained a contested frontier centre that kept changing hands.

A Family of Judges in Kayseri

Kadı Burhaneddin was born in Kayseri on 3 Ramadan 745 (8 January 1345). His given name was Ahmed; the epithet Burhaneddin and the title of judge (qadi) attached to him later. His father, Şemseddin Muhammed, was the qadi of Kayseri at the time. The family is traced to the Salur clan of the Oghuz, who migrated from Khwarazm to Anatolia in the early thirteenth century and settled first in Kastamonu and then in Kayseri. His contemporary Azîz b. Erdeşîr Esterâbâdî, who wrote his life and reign in Persian, records that all of his known ancestors were judges and scholars. His mother was the daughter of Abdullah Çelebi, the son of Celâleddin Mahmud Müstevfî, one of the influential figures of the Anatolian Seljuks, and she was related to Sultan Gıyâseddin Keyhusrev II. The young Ahmed thus grew up in an environment that combined learning with a tradition of statecraft.

He began his education at the age of four under his father's supervision. Besides Arabic and Persian he studied lexicography, morphology, syntax, calligraphy, prosody, arithmetic and logic, and he is also said to have trained in riding, swordsmanship and archery. In 1356 he travelled with his father to Damascus and two years later to Cairo. Some accounts place the journey to Egypt at the age of fourteen. In Cairo he studied jurisprudence, the law of inheritance, hadith and Qur'anic exegesis, and he is said to have become familiar with the rulings of the four schools of law in these years. In 1362 he went again to Damascus to attend the lectures of Kutbüddin er-Râzî, regarded as the leading authority of his age in the rational and transmitted sciences, and studied the mathematical sciences and theology with him for about a year and a half. At nineteen he made the pilgrimage from Damascus. On the way home his father died at Maarrat al-Nu'man in northern Syria, and he stayed on in Aleppo for about a year, continuing his scholarly work. The learning he had gathered at so young an age was the capital that would carry him, on his return to Anatolia, into a judgeship in a principality.

The Eretna Principality and Amasya

The political ground on which Burhaneddin rose was the Eretna principality, which filled the vacuum of authority left in Anatolia when the Ilkhanid state broke up in 1335. Its founder, Alâeddin Eretna, was of Uyghur origin and one of the noyans who had come to Anatolia with the Ilkhanid army. He first governed Aksaray, Niğde, Kayseri and Sivas as deputy of the Ilkhanid governors, and in 1341 he severed his tie with the Mamluks and declared independence. He had the Friday sermon read and coins struck in his own name, first at Sivas and then at Kayseri. The principality lasted more than half a century over a wide area, from the region of Konya and Ankara to Erzurum and from Samsun to the north of Malatya, and it continued Seljuk and Ilkhanid practice in its political, military and administrative organisation.

Amasya lay within the borders of this principality, but in periods when central authority weakened it became in practice a separate centre of power. Looking at the history of the city, one sees it pass from the Danishmendids to the Anatolian Seljuks, then to Mongol governors, and then to the administration of Eretna and his successors at Sivas. The emir Hacı Şadgeldi, who defeated the Eretnid ruler Ali Bey, took the city for himself. Amasya thus became the base of one of Kadı Burhaneddin's rivals.

From the Judgeship of Kayseri to the Vizierate

When Burhaneddin returned to Kayseri in 1364, the city was under the rule of the Eretnid Gıyâseddin Mehmed Bey. He is known to have had some difficulty in obtaining his father's old post, but Mehmed Bey appointed him judge of the city and gave him his daughter in marriage. He became one of the ruler's close advisers. The sources emphasise the effort he made to apply justice during his judgeship, and how he protected pious endowment revenues and prevented their use for other purposes.

In October 1365 Mehmed Bey was murdered at Sivas by three of his own emirs, Hacı Şadgeldi, Hacı İbrâhim and Kılıcarslan, and the principality was plunged into deep disorder. Whether Kadı Burhaneddin had any part in the affair is disputed; it is said that he was suspected but that his role could not be established with certainty. Mehmed Bey's thirteen-year-old son Alâeddin Ali Bey was placed at the head of the state. Because of Ali Bey's incapacity, state authority quickly dissolved and the emirs began to act on their own in separate provinces. Hacı Şadgeldi behaved as an independent power at Amasya, Mutahharten at Erzincan, Tâceddin at Niksar, Hacı İbrâhim at Sivas, Şeyh Necib at Tokat and Kılıcarslan at Şarkîkarahisar; only the emirs of Kayseri remained nominally loyal to Ali Bey. Raids by Turkmen and Mongol tribes increased, and part of the population emigrated to Aleppo, Antep and western Anatolia.

In the midst of this disintegration the Karamanid Alâeddin Bey seized Kayseri in 1375, and Ali Bey fled to Sivas. Kadı Burhaneddin first withdrew to his farm near the city, but with the support of some men of the state he took Kayseri back from the Karamanids. The episode showed that, besides being a judge, he was a capable commander and politician. In 1378 Ali Bey made him vizier. As vizier Burhaneddin tried to bring the administration of the principality entirely under his own control; this troubled Ali Bey, who wished to break his influence, but Burhaneddin won the contest and took administrative and military powers into his own hands, and he was given the title "malik al-umara" (prince of emirs). During his vizierate the Mongol and Turkmen raids were suppressed and central authority recovered for a time. Following his advice, Ali Bey launched campaigns against Amasya, Develi Karahisar, Niğde, Aksaray, Niksar and Erzincan, but these produced no result because the policy Burhaneddin had drawn up was not observed. Ali Bey died of the plague during his second Amasya campaign. According to the TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam the date of his death is 1380; some accounts give 1381.

From Regent to Sultan

Ali Bey was succeeded by his seven-year-old son Mehmed II. The popular assembly first wished to see Kadı Burhaneddin as regent, but when he demurred the post went to Kılıcarslan, a Turkmen bey of Seljuk descent. Those dissatisfied with Kılıcarslan's rule began to think of placing Burhaneddin at the head of the state with full authority. By then Kılıcarslan had married Ali Bey's widow, and Burhaneddin learned that he was preparing to assassinate him. He acted first and killed Kılıcarslan (14 Dhu'l-Qa'da 782 / 9 February 1381). The popular assembly that met found him in the right and appointed him regent of the young ruler. This is the moment at which real power in the principality came to rest in a single hand.

What followed was swift. He proclaimed his rule at Sivas, had the Friday sermon read and coins struck in his name, and sent envoys to the sultans and emirs of Anatolia, Syria and Iraq to announce his accession. This notification, in keeping with the custom of the Islamic world, was the first step in the effort to win recognition for the new state. He eliminated those members of the Eretna family who might oppose him. Until he had established stability in the country and taken the administration fully into his hands he followed a policy of peace, did not campaign to extend his domain, and lived on good terms with neighbouring principalities. The Eretna principality thus came to an end, and its place was taken by a new political structure centred on Sivas and Kayseri, which entered history as the state of Kadı Burhaneddin.

The Struggle with Hacı Şadgeldi, Emir of Amasya

The most serious rival Kadı Burhaneddin faced was the master of Amasya, Hacı Şadgeldi. Şadgeldi was one of the seasoned figures among the Eretnid emirs. His name appears among those who killed Mehmed Bey in 1365; under Ali Bey he too acted on his own with Amasya as his centre, and he took the city after defeating Ali Bey. The two men's drive to dominate the north of central Anatolia made a clash unavoidable. After Ali Bey's death the local balance of power had changed entirely, and Şadgeldi stood at the head of the emirs who resisted gathering under Burhaneddin's administration.

In the autumn of 1381 Kadı Burhaneddin marched against the emir of Amasya. Şadgeldi was defeated and died in the battle. This victory was one of the turning points that made the subsequent proclamation of the sultanate possible. Older accounts say the engagement took place before the village of Danişmendiye; since this place name does not occur in the encyclopaedia entries consulted, it could not be verified. Likewise, little is known about the details of the battle or the manner of Şadgeldi's death; the sources relate the event in a single short sentence and say only that Burhaneddin removed his rival.

Amasya, however, did not fall easily into his hands. After Şadgeldi's death the leadership in the city passed to his son Ahmed Bey, who, with the support of the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid the Thunderbolt, defended the city against Kadı Burhaneddin. In 1382 Kadı Burhaneddin besieged Tokat. When he besieged it again in the summer of the same year, the commander of the fortress came to terms with the Mongols and left him in difficulty; and when the emir of Amasya broke his word and moved against him, Burhaneddin's army was routed and scattered. With the joining of Halil Bey of Dulkadır and the dispersed emirs he recovered and returned to Sivas.

In 1383 he escaped a conspiracy of some of the beys at Sivas. Ahmed Bey, who wished to avenge his father Şadgeldi, set out with the support of his father-in-law Kötürüm Bayezid of Candar, but Burhaneddin defeated him (1383-84). He then cooperated with the Dulkadırids, formed regular military units and brought the Turkmens of the region stretching from Sivas to the Mediterranean under obedience. He married his sister to the lord of Tokat Castle, and with the support this tie provided he marched on Amasya and defeated the emir of Amasya repeatedly (1384). In the same year Kötürüm Bayezid of Candar, learning of the Ottoman Sultan Murad I's preparations for a campaign, offered Burhaneddin friendship; but when his insincerity became clear he lost both a powerful ally and his throne.

The Years of the Sultanate: Neighbours and Timur

Kadı Burhaneddin's seventeen years as sultan were a defensive struggle that could not be confined to a single front. According to TDV he ruled for seventeen years not counting his regency; those who count the regency speak of eighteen. In 1387, while he was at Kösedağ, he learned that the people of Sivas had risen, and he sent one of his commanders to suppress the revolt. In 1388 Mamluk forces besieged Sivas for forty days. The following year he marched on Cüneyd, emir of Kayseri, who had been inciting his rivals against him, and besieged Develi Castle; Cüneyd surrendered the fortress and declared his obedience. He also campaigned against the Tâceddinids, who had pledged allegiance to the Ottomans.

His relations with the Ottomans remained good until the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. After that date he entered the struggle by taking Kırşehir. Bayezid I's effort to establish political unity in Anatolia drove the Candarids and the state of Kadı Burhaneddin into an alliance. In 1391 Bayezid marched against Süleyman Paşa II of Candar but could not succeed against the forces of his ally Kadı Burhaneddin. The next year he entered Candarid lands again and took Osmancık, but was defeated by Kadı Burhaneddin at Çorumlu and withdrew (1392). Some accounts say this engagement took place at Kırkdilim near Çorum and that Prince Ertuğrul, Bayezid's son, who commanded the Ottoman vanguard, died there. Encouraged by this success, Burhaneddin attacked Sivrihisar and Ankara. In 1393 the Tâceddinids, the Taşanids and the lord of Bafra submitted to the Ottomans. In the same year the Mongol beys urged him to attack Ottoman territory, but the dignitaries of the state did not accept the proposal. Disturbed by the Ottomans' command of the Yeşilırmak basin, Burhaneddin took certain measures to prevent them from descending to the south.

In October 1393 Timur, who had taken Tikrit, wrote to Burhaneddin and the other beys of Anatolia demanding obedience. Burhaneddin rejected the demand and sent a copy of the letter to the Mamluk Sultan Barquq and to Bayezid I. Bayezid, Barquq, Toqtamish, Khan of the Golden Horde, and Burhaneddin formed an alliance against Timur. Timur entered Anatolia in early 1394 and advanced as far as Erzurum, then turned back by sudden decision. With the threat temporarily lifted, Burhaneddin marched against Ahmed Bey, emir of Amasya, who had been attacking his lands, and laid the region waste. Timur knew of his activities and had written to Bayezid that he would punish Burhaneddin for cooperating with the Mamluk sultan. That Burhaneddin paid no heed to these threats can be understood from a poem in his divan.

In these years, when he had to subdue one rival after another and bring neighbours into line, the gains did not last. He managed to establish influence over the Karamanids, the emirate of Erzincan, the emirate of Amasya and the Turkmen principalities of northern Anatolia, but these principalities cooperated with Barquq, Bayezid and Timur in order to regain their former positions. The Ottomans, too, came to an understanding with the Mamluks. The principal events of this period were his defeat by Mutahharten on the plain of Pulur at Erzincan (October 1395), and his renewed enmity with the Mamluks because Barquq had Halil Bey of Dulkadır killed through Umuroğlu İbrâhim, one of his Turkmen beys, and because Burhaneddin sheltered Mintaş, the Mamluk governor of Malatya. Barquq sent a force under Yelboğa to Sivas; Yelboğa besieged it for a while and withdrew. This hostility between Burhaneddin and the Mamluks turned into friendship when Timur came to the Middle East.

Amasya's Passage to the Ottomans

Burhaneddin's state also forms a decisive framework for the fate of Amasya. Ahmed Bey, Şadgeldi's son, leaned on Bayezid, and this played a part in the entry of Ottoman influence into the Yeşilırmak basin. The date on which Amasya was joined to Ottoman territory differs among the sources. One account says that Bayezid conquered the fortresses of Amasya, Merzifon, Turhal and Tokat in 1393 and appointed his son Çelebi Mehmed as governor of the region, and that a balance of peace was thereby established. The TDV entry on Amasya, however, writes that Bayezid, although he had been defeated by Kadı Burhaneddin, annexed Amasya to Ottoman territory in 1398 after renewing the struggle, and left its administration to his son Çelebi Mehmed. The contradiction may be explained by the fact that Amasya changed hands many times during Burhaneddin's lifetime, but no certain dating has been established.

What followed is a well-known story. After the Battle of Ankara in 1402 Çelebi Mehmed withdrew with his forces to Amasya and used the city as a base against his brothers İsa and Süleyman. Until the mid-sixteenth century the city was one of the principal centres to which Ottoman princes were sent to gain administrative experience. That Amasya, which had been the base of Kadı Burhaneddin's rival Şadgeldi, later became a princely sanjak shows how long the contest for dominance in this region lasted.

The Last War with the Aq Qoyunlu

Relations with the Aq Qoyunlu had begun in the years of Burhaneddin's vizierate. The Aq Qoyunlu beys Ahmed Bey and his brother Hüseyin Bey, defeated by Mutahharten, took refuge with Burhaneddin and joined his Amasya and Erzincan campaigns (1394). Burhaneddin gave them the lands from Erzincan to Bayburt as fiefs. Karayülük Osman, son of Kutlu Bey, had also entered his service.

What spoiled the relationship was Burhaneddin's having his nephew Şeyh Müeyyed, governor of Kayseri, killed despite Karayülük Osman's plea (1396). Some sources write that Şeyh Müeyyed had rebelled against him. Later Karayülük asked for a summer pasture for his flocks; when Burhaneddin said he could give one only until autumn, Karayülük grew angry and decided to return to his own country. Burhaneddin, disturbed by this attitude, set off in pursuit. Karayülük withdrew into rugged mountains and in a sudden attack defeated Burhaneddin and took him prisoner (1398).

Karayülük came before Sivas with the captive sultan at his side and demanded the surrender of the city, but the people would not agree. Burhaneddin said that if he were released he could leave Kayseri and its surroundings to the Aq Qoyunlu; Karayülük refused the offer and had his head cut off before the walls of Sivas (probably Dhu'l-Qa'da 800 / July 1398). The notables of Sivas and the emirs placed Burhaneddin's only surviving son, Alâeddin Ali Çelebi, governor of Kayseri, on the throne. Help requested from the Kara Tatars was defeated by Aq Qoyunlu forces. The people of Sivas then appealed to Bayezid, who sent his son Süleyman Çelebi, and Süleyman defeated Karayülük Osman. Tokat, Niksar and Kayseri also passed under Ottoman rule, and the state of Kadı Burhaneddin came to an end. Alâeddin Ali Çelebi, who appears in Ottoman sources under the name Zeynelâbidîn, went to his brother-in-law Nasreddin Mehmed Bey of Dulkadır, then entered Ottoman service, took part in the campaign against the Karamanids in the reign of Murad II, and died in 1442.

The Ruler's Character and Administration

The sources present him as a man of firm character, talented, just, intelligent, a protector of scholars, a good soldier and a brave ruler. He is counted among the rulers of whom Timur was wary. Because of the circumstances he lived in, he had gathered the military and civil powers of the state in his own hands. In the places he took by campaign he undertook building works and adopted measures to revive the economy; he attached great importance to the safety of the roads and avoided imposing new taxes. The Bezm ü Rezm that Esterâbâdî wrote in his name is a private history composed at his command and is one of the principal sources for the period.

The Divan and His Works

Kadı Burhaneddin's place in literary history is less disputed than his political success. He was a poet who contributed significantly to the development of fourteenth-century Turkish literature, but because he lived outside Ottoman borders he found very little place in Ottoman sources. Taşköprizâde, Hoca Sâdeddin Efendi and Kâtib Çelebi are content to say that he was a well-known poet, and the Ottoman biographers of poets do not mention him at all. His language, which is classed within the Azeri area of Old Anatolian Turkish, makes his divan one of the few works that transmit the linguistic material of the period to the present.

The only known copy of the divan was taken to London among the books of Thomas Fiott Hughes, who worked at the British Embassy in Istanbul, and is preserved in the British Museum. The copy was made in 796 (1393-94) by Halîl b. Ahmed, one of Burhaneddin's calligraphers, vocalised and written in a Seljuk naskh hand; its opening is illuminated and its pages are ruled. According to TDV the divan contains more than 1,300 ghazals, twenty quatrains and 115 tuyugs; other counts raise the number of ghazals to 1,500 and the number of tuyugs to 119. The poems are not arranged in the classical order but were probably set down in the order of composition. Burhaneddin used no pen name in his poems and wrote no qasidas. The first study of the divan came in 1895 from the Russian orientalist P. Melioransky, who translated twenty quatrains and twelve tuyugs into Russian. Later E. J. W. Gibb dwelt on the poet's literary personality, and F. F. Godsell published four ghazals and all of the quatrains and tuyugs together with an article by Cenab Şahabeddin (Istanbul 1922). A facsimile of the divan was published by the Turkish Language Association (1944) and the critical edition by Muharrem Ergin (1980); Ali Alparslan's selections appeared in Ankara in 1977.

In Burhaneddin's poetry the beauty of the beloved, her hair, brow, lashes, eyes, face and mouth, recurs constantly; he begins almost every poem with these elements. Among the figures of speech he favours simile, double entendre and paronomasia. His ghazals are sincere and amorous, yet they also reflect a life spent in struggle, and a warrior's harsh, bold stance stands out. The couplet "Sûfîlerin dileği mihrâb namaz / Er kişinin arzusı meydan olur" ("The Sufis wish for the prayer niche and the prayer; the wish of a brave man is the field of battle") is cited as an example of this stance. He worked into his verse a wide stock of terms from Iranian mythology and astrology, grammar, music and Sufism. He leaned more toward worldly themes and gave little space to religious ones. He also wrote Sufi ghazals and uses terms such as ghayb, shuhud, jadhba, tajalli and jam' correctly. Although he was not a Sufi, he was not a stranger to Sufism either; it is recorded that he read a copy of the Fusus al-Hikam written in Ibn al-Arabi's own hand and was moved by it, and that he showed respect to Sufis.

Burhaneddin, who is known to have been influenced by Iranian poets such as Anvari, Hafiz of Shiraz and Omar Khayyam, is noted not to have handled prosody well. This flaw is seen in Turkish poets of the period generally. It should also be borne in mind that this was a poet whose soldier-statesman identity came first and who wrote poetry when he found the time. The tuyug is an old Turkic verse form, and Burhaneddin served as a bridge in carrying this form to Anatolia, joining the wisdom of the old tuyug tradition with the Sufi tradition. Besides Turkish he wrote poems in Persian and Arabic; three Arabic poems appear at the end of his Iksir al-Sa'adat. In Azerbaijan Kadı Burhaneddin is counted among the founders of modern Azerbaijani literature, and in 2019 the Cabinet of Ministers of Azerbaijan declared his works public property.

Two important books are among his scholarly works. Iksir al-Sa'adat fi Asrar al-Ibadat concerns the wisdom of acts of worship, was completed in 798 (1395-96), and shows the author's accumulation in the rational and transmitted sciences. Tarjih al-Tawdih is a gloss on al-Talwih, which Taftazani wrote to criticise Sadr al-Sharia's al-Tawdih; Burhaneddin began writing it on 10 Sha'ban 798 (19 May 1396) and finished it on 4 Sha'ban 799 (3 May 1397). That a sultan should write poetry and complete a gloss on the principles of jurisprudence in the years of his campaigns is an indication that he never abandoned his identity as a scholar.

His Tomb and Memory

There is not enough information in the sources about where he is buried. He is thought to lie in the place at Sivas called the Tomb of Kadı Burhaneddin. This structure, still visited by the people of Sivas, was in a ruined state when the TDV entry was written, and its gravestones were kept in the Gökmedrese. The present tomb was built in 1965 by Vefik Kitapçıgil, then governor of Sivas; it is a baldachin-style structure of cut stone with a single dome on four columns. According to local accounts, residents of the neighbourhood say that in troubled marriages the spouses come to the tomb to pray before separating; it is also told that the tomb was once walled in but that the walls were taken down again in the belief that this was not welcome. These stories have no documentary basis.

Chronology

1345: Born in Kayseri (8 January).

1356-1358: Went with his father to Damascus and then to Cairo.

1362: Continued the lectures of Kutbüddin er-Râzî in Damascus.

1364-1365: Returned to Kayseri and was made judge of the city by the Eretnid Mehmed Bey.

October 1365: Mehmed Bey was killed by his emirs Hacı Şadgeldi, Hacı İbrâhim and Kılıcarslan.

1375: The Karamanid Alâeddin Bey took Kayseri; Burhaneddin recovered the city.

1378: Made vizier by Alâeddin Ali Bey.

1380: Ali Bey died of the plague during the Amasya campaign (1381 in some sources).

9 February 1381: Killed the regent Kılıcarslan and became regent of the young ruler.

Autumn 1381: Defeated Hacı Şadgeldi, emir of Amasya; proclaimed his sultanate at Sivas.

1382: Sieges of Tokat; his army scattered after the attack of the emir of Amasya.

1383-1384: Defeated Şadgeldi's son Ahmed Bey; campaigned against Amasya.

1388: Mamluk forces besieged Sivas for forty days.

1389: Besieged Develi Castle; moved against the Ottomans after Kosovo.

1392: Defeated the vanguard of Bayezid I at Çorumlu.

1393-1394: Rejected Timur's summons; alliance with Bayezid, Barquq and Toqtamish; campaign against Ahmed Bey, emir of Amasya.

October 1395: Defeated by Mutahharten on the plain of Pulur at Erzincan.

1396: Had his nephew Şeyh Müeyyed killed; relations with Karayülük Osman broke down.

July 1398: Captured by Karayülük Osman and killed before the walls of Sivas; his state passed to Ottoman rule.

Sources

Primary sources

  • Muharrem Ergin (ed.), Kadı Burhaneddin Divanı, Istanbul 1980.
  • Ali Alparslan, Kadı Burhaneddin Divanı'ndan Seçmeler, Ankara 1977.

Academic studies

  • İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, "Sivas ve Kayseri Hükümdarı Kadı Burhaneddin Ahmed", Belleten XXXII/126 (1968), pp. 191-245.

Other sources

  • Abdülkerim Özaydın, "Kadı Burhâneddin", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 24, Istanbul 2001, pp. 74-77. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Hatice Tören, "Kadı Burhâneddin (Edebî ve Tasavvufî Şahsiyeti)", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 24, Istanbul 2001, pp. 75-76. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Kemal Göde, "Eretnaoğulları", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 11, Istanbul 1995. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • "Amasya", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (history and princely sanjak sections). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Azîz b. Erdeşîr Esterâbâdî, Bezm ü Rezm (ed. Kilisli Muallim Rifat, Istanbul 1928; trans. Mürsel Öztürk, Ankara 1990).
  • Yaşar Yücel, Kadı Burhaneddin Ahmed ve Devleti (1344-1398), Ankara 1970.
  • "Kadı Burhâneddin", Vikipedi (supplementary source). tr.wikipedia.org