In the Footsteps of a Poet: Is Ahmed Rüşdî from Edirne a Real or an Imaginary Person?
Fatma İmamoğluIn this study, we aimed to answers whether the 17th-century poet Ahmed, nicknamed “Ammeci” and going by the pseudonym “Rüşdî,” is a real or an imaginary person, who actually belongs to the Dîvân, a collection of poems that is attributed to him in biographies and biographical sources. Additionally, we reflect on this question based on works from the old and new periods. In accordance with the purpose of the study, we identified all the poets who used the Rüşdî pseudonym in the Classical Turkish literature period and examined their life stories and works. We sought sources that gave information about the poet and the poems attributed to him and compared them in a document analysis. As the result of our research and examination we determined that all of the poems attributed to Ahmed Rüşdî from Edirne belong to another 17th-century poet, Sahhaf Ahmed Rüşdî from Mostar. We also concluded that Ahmed Rüşdî from Edirne, who is claimed to have lived in the 17th-century, is actually Mehmed Reşîd from Edirne. In Safâyî's tezkire, the mistake started when a poem by Sahhaf Ahmed Rüşdî from Mostar was portrayed as belonging to Mehmed Reşîd from Edirne and the poet’s pseudonym was transferred as Rüşdî instead of Reşîd. This continued over in the following centuries, leading to the emergence of an imaginary person named Ahmed Rüşdî from Edirne who lived in the 17th-century. In addition, the existence of a poet named Ahmed Rüşdî from Edirne, who lived in the 19th-century, made solving the problem more complex.
Bir Şairin İzinden: Edirneli Ahmed Rüşdî Gerçek mi Yoksa Hayalî Bir Şahıs mı?
Fatma İmamoğluÇalışmamızda üzerine yüksek lisans tezleri yapılan ‘Ammeci lakaplı Rüşdî mahlaslı 17. yüzyıl şairi Ahmed’in gerçek mi yoksa hayalî bir şahıs mı olduğu, tezkireler ile biyografik kaynaklarda şaire isnat edilen şiirlerin bulunduğu Dîvân’ın gerçekte kime ait olduğu sorularına cevap aranması amaçlanmıştır. Ayrıca bu iki hususun eski ve yeni dönem çalışmalarına yansımaları üzerinde durulması hedeflenmiştir. Çalışmanın amacı doğrultusunda öncelikle Klasik Türk Edebiyatı döneminde Rüşdî mahlasını kullanmış tüm şairler tespit edilerek hayat hikâyeleri ve eserleri incelenmiştir. Geçmişte ve günümüzde şair ve kendisine isnat edilen şiirlerin bulunduğu Dîvân hakkında bilgi veren kaynaklara ulaşılmaya çalışılmış, bu kaynaklardaki bilgiler karşılaştırılmıştır. Yapmış olduğumuz araştırma ve incelemeler sonucunda Edirneli Ahmed Rüşdî’ye isnat edilen şiirlerden biri dışında hepsinin bir başka 17. yüzyıl şairi olan Mostarlı Sahhaf Ahmed Rüşdî’ye ait olduğu tespit edilmiştir. 17. yüzyılda yaşadığı iddia edilen Edirneli Ahmed Rüşdî’nin ise aslında Edirneli Mehmed Reşîd olduğu sonucuna ulaşılmıştır. Safâyî Tezkiresi’nde Mostarlı Sahhaf Ahmed Rüşdî’ye ait bir şiirin Edirneli Mehmed Reşîd’e aitmiş gibi gösterilmesi ve şairin mahlasının Reşîd yerine Rüşdî olarak aktarılması ile başlayan yanlışa ilerleyen yüzyıllarda başkalarının da eklenmesi Edirneli Ahmed Rüşdî adlı 17. yüzyılda yaşamış hayalî bir şahsın ortaya çıkmasına sebep olmuştur. Ayrıca 19. yüzyılda yaşamış Edirneli Ahmed Rüşdî adlı bir şairin daha oluşu mevcut durumun daha girift hâle gelmesine yol açmıştır.
In Classical Turkish Literature, the primary sources from which we can obtain information about the lives, literary figures and works of poets and writers, apart from their own works, are biographical works and especially biographies. Tezkires include information about the life stories of the poets such as their place and date of birth, name, nickname, family, profession, education level, main teachers, date of death, place of death, as well as poetry samples taken from their works and evaluations about their literary personalities. However, it is not possible to find all this information in the biographies of every poet. The style and method adopted by the tezkire writer while creating his work, the poet's closeness to the literary environment, his degree of importance, etc. matters; It causes the information given about the poet to expand or narrow. The information given in tezkires, especially about poets of secondary importance, is often limited to the date of death, hometown, and nicknames. The fact that poets use pseudonyms other than their own names while creating their works with a traditional understanding, that they do not give much information about themselves in their works, and that the information and poetry examples given in biographies and biographical sources for some poets are insufficient or inconsistent, leads to the problems of creating the life stories of the poets and the real authorship of some of the works. It makes it difficult for researchers to determine who it belongs to.
In this study, we aimed to answer the question of whether Ahmed from Edirne, nicknamed Ammeci and with the pseudonym Rüşdî, who is claimed to have lived in the 17th-century, is a real or an imaginary person and whether the Dîvân, a collection of poems attributed to Rüşdî, actually belong to Ahmed from Edirne. Because the Dîvân has been shown to belong to the 17th-century poet, Ahmed Rüşdî from Mostar, we first performed a literature review to consult all sources that gave any information about both poets and their divans and then performed a document analysis to attempt to solve the puzzle by following the data.
Dîvân, which was written by a poet with the pseudonym Rüşdî in the 17th-century, was written between the years 1107/1695 and 1110/1698. According to Ekici (2006), who prepared the critical text of the Dîvân, there are 196 ghazals, 1 of which is written in tawhid, 4 are written in naat, 193 in Turkish, and 3 in Persian; it consists of 87 historical poems, 403 matlas, 30 curriculums, 12 verses, 7 stanzas, and 1 masnavi, 6 of which were written in Turkish and 1 in Persian. There are three master’s studies on the transfer of the work to today’s letters that were prepared on different dates. Whereas Kayhan and Ekici show the author of the Dîvân as Ahmed Rüşdî from Mostar, Tunadurur points to Ahmed Rüşdî from Edirne as the author of the work, and Dogan and Yörür support that determinotion.
As the result of our research, we conclude that the author of the Rüşdî Dîvân is Ahmed Rüşdî from Mostar, who is known as the Sahhaf. We have determined that the person named Ahmed Rüşdî from Edirne, whom Tunadurur, Dogan, and Yörür claim is the author of the work and who is claimed to have lived in the 17th-century, did not actually exist and was created as a result of the change in the information of Reşîd Mehmed from Edirne. We also conclude that the first source that led old and new period researchers to make this mistake is the information in the Safâyî Tezkiresi. We show that biographers mistakenly gave the pseudonym of Reşîd, Mehmed from Edirne, who famously went by the nickname Ammeci, and that the poem samples given for Ahmed Rüşdî from Mostar and the person in question were taken from the same work, and we argue that this was the first source of the mistakes in later studies.
In contrast, in all sources that gives information about Ahmed Rüşdî from Mostar, there is no hesitation about the poet’s name, pseudonym, or date of death or that the poetry samples belonged to him. Another piece of information that supports the fact that the poems in the Dîvân belong to Ahmed Rüşdî from Mostar is the statement Dîvân-ı Rüşdî-i Mostarî el-Ma’rûf bi-Sahhâf, which is at the beginning of the copy number 505 registered in Yapı Kredi Sermet Çifter Research Library. Additionally, the date of death of the person called Edirneli Ahmed or Mehmed is recorded as 1105/1693-94 in many sources that provide information about him. However, it is known that the Rüşdî Dîvân was written in 1107/1695 or later, based on the date poem that was produced after Bâkî Pasha was promoted to the rank of vizier. It is clear that the poet from Edirne was not alive at this date, so it was not possible for him to see or write about such an event.
