ḤĀMEDI EṢFAHĀNI

 

ḤĀMEDI EṢFAHĀNI (or Ḥāmedi ʿAjam), a poet of Persian origin (b. Isfahan, 843/1439; d. Bursa, ca. 890/1485) at the court of the Ottoman Sultan Moḥammad Fāteḥ (Mehmed the Conquerer). There is no information on his family background. He completed his education in his hometown, and gained recognition as a poet at a young age. Deeming that there was no one in Isfahan worthy of panegyric, he left the city (Divān, p. 36). After passing through many cities and residing for a time at the court of the Šarvānšāhs (550-958/1155-55), he finally came to Kastamonu and entered the service of its ruler, Esmāʿil. Ḥāmedi probably went to Istanbul when this ruler surrendered his territories to the Ottomans in 861/1457. There he won the attention of the Ottoman grand vizier Maḥmud Pasha with a qaṣida that he wrote him and, through him, became Sultan Moḥammad’s court poet and companion. He remained a favorite companion of the sultan for nearly twenty years, copying books for his library in addition to praising him in his poetry. He was dismissed from the court, in 881/1476, due to an indiscreet remark that he made after the sultan had rewarded him with several robes of honor and two concubines for a qaṣida that he had penned on the occasion of the sultan’s conquest of Caffa. He was sent away to Bursa as the custodian of the tomb of Sultan Morād I. Some time later he returned to Istanbul and sought to ingratiate himself with the sultan, but his enemies spread the rumor that he had taken to drinking during his tenure at the tomb. He denied this, and was eventually reinstated and his salary restored. He spent the rest of his life in Bursa. He had two sons, Maḥmud and Jalili. His younger son, better known as Ḥāmedizāda Jalili, was a poet in Persian and Turkish in the early 17th century.

Works. Ḥāmedi is the author of three works, the Divān, the Jām-e soḵanguy, also known as Fāl-nāma, and a history, Tawāriḵ-e āl-e ʿOṯmān. He wrote poems in Turkish as well as in Persian, his mother tongue. His poetry, despite leaving much to be desired in terms of artistic value, displays a pleasant simplicity. His Divān, in addition to ḡazals and qaṣidas, includes an autobiographical maṯ-nawi (Ḥasb-e ḥāl-nāma) in Persian, which contains some useful information on the dates of the sultan’s victories and the books that Ḥāmedi copied for the royal library. The great majority of his poems is in Persian, and they consist mainly of panegyrics praising the sultan and his grand viziers.

ʿĀšeq Čelebi mentions also a Naṣiḥat-nāma which, according to him, Ḥāmedi wrote for his son Jalili, but no trace of it has come to light.

 

Bibliography:

ʿĀšeq Čelebi, Mašāʿer al-šoʿarāʾ, ed. G. Meredith-Owens, London, 1971.

ʿAṭā Beyg, Tārikò, Istanbul, 1293.

Ahmed Ateş, “Fetihten az sonra bir İstanbul tasviri,” in Fatih ve İstanbul I/1, Istanbul, 1953, pp. 17-18.

Esmāʿil Baliḡ, Goldasta-ye riāż-e ʿerfān, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Aşir Efendi 264, fols. 167b-168a.

Ḥāmedi, Kolliyāt-e divān-e Mawlānā Ḥāmedi, ed. İsmail H. Ertaylan, Istanbul, 1949; reviewed by Ahmed Ateş, “Külliyât-i Divân-e Mevlânâ Hâmidi,” Türk Tarih Kurumu 14/53, 1950, pp. 116-26.

Jalili, Ḵosrow o Širin, Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Kütüphanesi, ms. 44923, fol. 159b.

F. Köprülü, Edebiyat Araştırmaları Ankara, 1966.

Idem, “Meddahlar,” Türkiyat Mecmuası, Istanbul, 1925, I, p. 16.

İsmail Ünver, “Hâmidî’nin Türkçe şiirleri,” Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Türkoloji Dergisi 6, 1974, pp. 197-233.

Idem, “Hâmidî,” in Türkiye Dīyanet vakfi; İslâm Ansıklopedisi, Istanbul, 1997, XV, pp. 461-62.

Abdülkadir Karahan, “Ḥāmidī,” in EI2 III, pp. 133-34.

(Tahsin Yazici)

Originally Published: December 15, 2003

Last Updated: March 6, 2012

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