AI Summary & Key Takeaways
AI InsightThe study concludes by urging critical editions of both Envâru’l Kulûb and Menâkıbu’l Cevâhir, and by providing, as an appendix, brief catalog notes on the identified Envâru’l Kulûb manuscripts to facilitate future textual work.
📌 3 Key Takeaways
Abstract
TThis article reassesses the biographies and corpora of two authors/poets bearing the same name within the orbit of Emîr Sultan Yahyâ b. Bahşî (Yahşî) and Hacı Mustafaoğlu Yahyâ and corrects a chain of misattributions that has shaped modern scholarship on the circle of poets/authors around Emîr Sultan. After situating Emîr Sultan as a pivotal Bukhara born mystic who settled in Bursa and exerted broad religious and literary influence across western Anatolia through his khalifas, the study argues that insufficient attention to primary texts, manuscript variants, and the menâkıbnâme tradition has fostered mistaken conclusions about which “Yahyâ” authored which works. The investigation begins with Envâru’l Kulûb, a mesnevi commonly grouped under the menâkıb ı çâr yâr genre but which, due to sections on the imamate of Hasan and Hüseyin and a verse exposition of the ḥadīth “Islam is built on five pillars,” also approaches catechetical genre. Copying practices aggravated confusion: in some witnesses only the “five pillars” section was transcribed, and in others this section was moved forward. Internal evidence in the mesnevî, however, is decisive. The author explicitly names himself twice as Yahyâ and mentinons himself as “Hacı Mustafa oğlu Yahyâ” stating that he composed the work in Bursa in the hijri year 898(1493) under the spiritual aegis of Emîr Sultan. These self identifications confirm that Envâru’l Kulûb does not belong to Yahyâ b. Bahşî, contra a tradition stemming from Bursalı Mehmed Tahir’s Osmanlı Müellifleri and echoed (with varying consistency) by later writers; rather, it is by Hacı Mustafaoğlu Yahyâ as already correctly noted, albeit briefly, by Kâtip Çelebi in Keşfü’z Zünûn. With this anchor established, the article reopens the authorship of Menâkıbu’l Cevâhir, long ascribed to Yahyâ b. Bahşî. The text names the author only as “Yahyâ,” but its closing verse cluster mirrors the hâtime of Envâru’l Kulûb almost verbatim, and throughout the prose narrative the writer refers to “babamuz Hacı Mustafa/our father Hacı Mustafa” praising his virtues and recounting episodes that position the narrator as Hacı Mustafa’s son. The menâkıbnâme also narrates a visionary directive from Emîr Sultan to train and guide the author motifs that align with Hacı Mustafaoğlu Yahyâ’s self presentation elsewhere. Together these internal signals strongly indicate that Menâkıbu’l Cevâhir, too, is by Hacı Mustafaoğlu Yahyâ, not by Yahyâ b. Bahşî. The study then undertakes a close reading of the lengthy autobiographical passage appended to the menâkıbnâme. There the author reviews his oeuvre: a mevlid (Mecmaʿu’l Envâr, completed 25 Muharram 896/8 December 1490), Envâru’l Kulûb, a prose menâkıb of Hacı Îsâ Dede, and a prose treatise titled Risâle i Envâriyye a suite of titles that coheres around the “envâr” motif and reinforces single authorship. The same passage states that the menâkıbnâme was finished in the hijri year 932, that the author had presented a work to Sultan Selim I and later visited the prince Suleiman in Manisa, and that he composed his last text in Gönen, where he had settled in old age. These details allow a cautious reconstruction of Hacı Mustafaoğlu Yahyâ’s life: born after Emîr Sultan’s death (traditionally hijri 833), active in Bursa in the 1490s, later relocating to Gönen, and dying there sometime after 932. Turning to Yahyâ b. Bahşî, the article sifts biographical entries from Şekâik, its translations, and later compendia to separate stable data from accretions. The works securely attributable to Yahyâ b. Bahşî are reduced to two: (1) an Arabic commentary on Şirʿatü’l İslâm and (2) a Turkish verse Maktel i Hüseyin penned in Yaylacık (where his tomb stands), which openly affirms his devotion to Emîr Sultan. By contrast, the mevlid often printed under his name lacks internal cues tying it to him and likely belongs to another poet named/pen named Yahyâ. The article also flags uncertainties surrounding the Sıhâh ı ʿAcem lexicon, which some sources ascribe to a Yahyâ er Rûmî el Emîrî a nisba that could connote affiliation with Emîr Sultan’s path but cannot, on current manuscript evidence, be equated safely with Yahyâ b. Bahşî. Its outcome is a revised map of poets/authors circulating around Emîr Sultan in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries: Envâru’l Kulûb, Menâkıbu’l Cevâhir, Mecmaʿu’l Envâr, Risâle i Envâriyye, and the Hacı Îsâ Dede menâkıbı all belong to Hacı Mustafaoğlu Yahyâ; Yahyâ b. Bahşî emerges primarily as jurist commentator and maktel poet. The study concludes by urging critical editions of both Envâru’l Kulûb and Menâkıbu’l Cevâhir, and by providing, as an appendix, brief catalog notes on the identified Envâru’l Kulûb manuscripts to facilitate future textual work.
Özet
Bu makalede Emîr Sultan’ın çevresinde bulunan aynı isme sahip iki müellifin/şairin Yahyâ b. Bahşî (Yahşî) ile Hacı Mustafaoğlu Yahyâ biyografileri ve eserleri incelenecek ve eser müellif eşlemelerindeki yanlış bilgiler düzeltilmeye gayret edilecektir. Öncelikle mesnevî formunda yazılmış ve genel itibariyle menâkıb ı çâr yâr türü içerisinde değerlendirilebilecek olan Envâru’l kulûb adlı eserin müellifinin bu iki Yahyâ’dan hangisi olduğu kesinleştirilecektir. Bu bilgiden hareketle bugüne kadar süregelen akademik çalışmalarda Menâkıbu’l cevâhir adlı Emîr Sultan menâkıbının müellifi olarak gösterilen Yahyâ b. Bahşî’nin aslında bu eserin müellifi olmadığı, metnin Hacı Mustafaoğlu Yahyâ tarafından telif edildiği metin içi delillerle gösterilmeye çalışılacaktır. Menâkıbnâme müellifinin tespitinden sonra menâkıbnâmenin sonunda yer alan ve müellifin kendine dair bilgiler verdiği otobiyografik kısmın ayrıntılı bir çözümlemesi yapılarak şimdiye kadar Yahyâ b. Bahşî’ye atfedilen birçok eserin de aslında Hacı Mustafaoğlu Yahyâ’ya ait olduğu ortaya konulacaktır. Bu sebeple bu makalede ortaya çıkarılan yeni bilgiler ışığında Yahyâ b. Bahşî’ye atfedilen eserler incelenerek bunların müellife isnadı meselesi sıhhatli bir sonuca ulaştırılacaktır. Yahyâ b. Bahşî’ye aidiyeti kesin olan eserlerden hareketle yaşadığı yer ve vefat tarihi gibi biyografik bilgilerde de düzeltmeler yapılacaktır. Kaynakların hakkında çok fazla bilgi bulunmadığını ileri sürdüğü Hacı Mustafaoğlu Yahyâ’nın biyografisi elde edilen bilgilerle kurulmaya çalışılacaktır. Biyografinin kurulması için Hacı Mustafaoğlu Yahyâ’nın farklı çalışmalara konu edinilen fakat aradaki bağın tesis edilememesi sebebiyle tam bir listesi verilemeyen eserleri zikredilecek, bu eserlerin arasındaki bağlar gösterilecektir. Bununla birlikte Hacı Mustafa oğlu Yahyâ’nın mahlası ve eserlerini telif ederken bir plan dahilinde hareket edip etmediği konusu üzerinde durulacaktır. Son olarak yeniden bir tenkitli neşrinin elzem olduğu düşünülen Envâru’l kulûb’un tespit edilen nüshalarının kısa katalog bilgileri ek olarak verilecektir.