His skill in Persian verse earned Alâeddîn Ali Yâr Çelebi the name "Yârî-i Şîrâzî". Raised in Amasya in a family of scholars from Divriği, he moved in the last quarter of the fourteenth century between Kadı Burhâneddin's Sivas and Ottoman Bursa, and was at once sheikh, teacher and poet. The Müeyyedzâdes, one of Amasya's oldest learned families, descend from his son Müeyyed Çelebi. He died in 818 (1415) as sheikh of the Yâkût Paşa dervish lodge. No heading in Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar's Amasya Tarihi bears his name; what is known of him lies scattered through the chronicle volumes and the entries on his relatives. Of a poet once likened to Hâfız, not one couplet is in hand.

Hüsameddin's Records

When listing the poets of Amasya in his first volume, Hüsameddin places Yârî first among those who carried on in Amasya the path opened by Âşık Paşa, whom he regards as the first great name of Turkish poetry in Anatolia:

Amasya'da bu çığırı ta'kîb edenler içinde ma'lûm olanları "Divriklizâde Yârî" demekle meşhûr "Yâr Ali Çelebi"dir.

Rendered into English: among those known to have followed this path in Amasya, the first is Yâr Ali Çelebi, known as "Divriklizâde Yârî". A footnote in the third volume explains where his byname came from:

Yâr Alî Çelebi, Hâfız-ı Şîrâzî kadar nazm-ı eş'âra kâdir bir zât idi. Bunun için kendisine "Yârî-i Şîrâzî" denmişdir. Mü'eyyedzâdeler'in ceddidir.

Rendered into English: Yâr Ali Çelebi was a man as capable of composing verse as Hâfız of Shiraz; for this reason he was called "Yârî-i Şîrâzî". He is the ancestor of the Müeyyedzâdes. The disputed points about Âşık Paşa and his link with Amasya are discussed on the Âşık Paşa page.

Life

The family's roots go back to the Salur Turkmens of Divriği. His grandfather Sheikh Evrân, son of Doğan, first lived in Tokat, later became a sheikh in Amasya and died in 757 (1356). His father, Mevlânâ Zeyneddîn Siyâvuş Çelebi, was born in Divriği, came to Amasya to study, became a madrasa teacher in 758 (1357) and married the daughter of his teacher Hüsâmeddîn Çelebi. Siyâvuş Çelebi's two sons, Şihâbeddîn Ahmed Bâlî and Alâeddîn Ali Yâr Çelebi, were called "Divriğilizâde" or "Veled-i Difrigî". Bâlî Çelebi's son was the historian Şükrullah, author of the Behcetü't-tevârîh; Hüsameddin writes that Şükrullah studied Arabic and Persian literature with his uncle Yârî.

Among Yârî's own teachers was Cüneydî Ahmed Çelebi, secretary and historian of Hacı Şâdgeldi Paşa. Hüsameddin heard from Vâsi' Çelebizâde Hâfız Ebûbekir Efendi, one of the family's last generations, that Yârî had copied a manuscript of Cüneydî's lost history in his own hand and had added his teacher's biography to it. Yârî was also trained in the circle of Sheikh Şemseddîn Mü'eyyed, known in Amasya as the "Küpeli Şeyh" and called Ebû İshâk Kâzerûnî by Hüsameddin, and became his deputy and son-in-law. The family name Müeyyedzâde came from Müeyyed Çelebi, the son to whom he gave his father-in-law's name; the sheikh's life is recorded in the entry Ebû İshâk Kâzerûnî-eş-Şeyh Şemseddîn Mü'eyyed.

His public life fell in the turbulent years of the Amasya emirate. According to Hüsameddin, Emir Ahmed Bey of Amasya, under pressure from Kadı Burhâneddin, sent Yârî, one of the city's scholars, to Sivas as an envoy, and Yârî, won over by Kadı Burhâneddin, stayed with him. Another entry repeats that he and his brother Bâlî Çelebi lived for a time in Sivas under Kadı Burhân's protection. When Amasya passed to the governorship of the Ottoman prince Bayezid in 788 (1386), those who had taken refuge with Kadı Burhân began to return; Yârî too came back to Amasya, presented the prince with a Persian qasida and was rewarded. Kadı Burhâneddin's career as a poet and his relations with Amasya are told in Kadı Burhaneddin.

The favour Prince Bayezid showed in Amasya ended with his taking Kâzerûnî and his son-in-law Yârî with him when he left the city for the Kosovo campaign in 789 (1387-88). Kâzerûnî became sheikh of the lodge the sultan built in Bursa and died there in 798 (1395-96). The only information Hüsameddin gives about Yârî's years in Bursa is that he held the rank of şeyhülislam there when Timur's soldiers sacked the city after the Battle of Ankara, and that he returned to Amasya after the defeat of 804 (1402).

His last years were spent in Amasya. He was given the leadership of the lodge built on the bank of the Yeşilırmak by Yâkût Paşa, tutor-guardian (lala) of Çelebi Mehmed. Hüsameddin dates the endowment deed of this building to 810 (1407-08) and, in his section on the city's quarters, the building itself to 814 (1411-12); he adds that the trusteeship was assigned first to the descendants of the first sheikh, Mehmed bin Abdullah Buhârî, and after them to "Yâr Ali Çelebizâde Mü'eyyed Çelebi". In the record of the earthquake that destroyed Amasya in Safer 818, "Divriklizâde Alî Yârî Çelebi, sheikh of the Yâkût Paşa lodge" is counted among the notables who died that year, and his son Müeyyed Çelebi succeeded him. His other son, Pîr Mehmed Çelebi, taught at madrasas in Bursa and Edirne, and his signature is found as judge of Edirne in 861 (1457).

Poetry and Works

The records of Yârî's poetry all point to Persian. The qasida he presented to Bayezid was in Persian. In the entry on Temennâyî Ali Çelebi, a poet from Shiraz who settled in Amasya, Hüsameddin tells how the two men were friends of the same gathering and competed in Persian letters, and how Temennâyî gave Yârî the name "Yârî-i Şîrâzî" by likening him to Hâfız. The origin of the byname is thus explained in two places in two ways: in the footnote as a general opinion, in the Temennâyî entry as a name given by a particular poet. The two accounts do not exclude each other, but it is not clear which of them rested on a document in Hüsameddin's hands.

In his entry in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, Şeref Boyraz attributes Sufi works to Yâr Ali Çelebi: the Kitâbü'l-Makâsıdi'n-nâciye, written in Persian in 1375-76 and later translated with a commentary by Abdülmecîd-i Sivâsî; the Lemahât, a Persian commentary on Irâkî's Lemaât; and the Cevâhir-i Nefsiyye, which translates into Turkish and explains certain sayings of Sadreddîn Konevî. The same entry reports that the Bezm ü Rezm, written at Kadı Burhâneddin's request, speaks of Yâr Ali with praise, and that the Sicill-i Osmânî counts him among the "muftis of the Ottoman armies". Boyraz concludes that a poet skilled enough to be compared with Hâfız must have left a collection of poems, yet so far not one of his poems, Persian or Turkish, has come to light.

Yârî's poems have not survived. Hüsameddin, who explains the byname in two places, records not so much as a line of his verse. Nor do the sources show whether "Yârî" was a pen name or simply a byname formed from Yâr Ali; in Metin Hakverdioğlu's inventory of the poets in Hüsameddin's work he appears under the third volume, in the form "Alî Yâr Çelebi". The later generations of the family and the lodge are the subject of The Müeyyedzâdes.

The State of the Sources

His date of death is given three ways. Hüsameddin and Boyraz, who follows him, take the earthquake of 818 (1415); Bursalı Mehmed Tâhir and Bağdatlı İsmâil Paşa give 1409, and the Sicill-i Osmânî 1429-30. On his birthplace, Boyraz notes that while Hüsameddin treats the family as settled in Amasya from his father's time, some sources name Divriği. The title "şeyhülislam" in Bursa should also be read with care: it is the same word Hüsameddin uses for his father-in-law Kâzerûnî, and in the Bursa of that period it probably meant the head of the learned community rather than a formal office. Boyraz, too, explains the word as "head of the men of learning".

Chronology

757 (1356): His grandfather Sheikh Evrân dies.

788 (1386): Prince Bayezid becomes governor of Amasya; Yârî returns from Sivas and presents him with a Persian qasida.

789 (1387-88): He goes to Bursa with Prince Bayezid and his father-in-law Kâzerûnî.

804 (1402): After the Battle of Ankara he returns from Bursa to Amasya.

810-814 (1407-1412): The Yâkût Paşa lodge is founded and its leadership given to Yârî.

Safer 818 (April 1415): The Amasya earthquake; Yârî dies that year and is succeeded by his son Müeyyed Çelebi.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Books

Online sources