Neşâtî

Ahmed, known by the pen name Neşâtî, was an Ottoman divan poet of Edirne and a shaykh of the Mevlevi Order, who died in 1674.¹² The majority of sources give his real name as Ahmed, though one source claims it was Süleyman, and the TDV entry notes that some call him Nişancı Ahmed Dede or Neşâtî Süleyman Dede.¹² He is considered among the masters of the gazel and a pioneer of the "Indian style", sebk-i hindî, of Ottoman poetry.¹³ His faith is recorded as sufi on the attestation of three independent texts, which name him a disciple of the Mevlevi shaykh Ağazâde Mehmed Dede and later shaykh of the Muradiyye Mevlevihane at Edirne.¹³²

He was born in Edirne in the region of Thrace.¹ It is not known exactly when he was born, though it is speculated that it was around the year 1600, on the evidence of a poem commemorating the winter of 1621–22, in which the Bosphorus at Istanbul was covered with ice.¹ The TDV entry says only that he was born at the beginning of the seventeenth century, of a noble family, and learned various sciences in his youth.²

Neşâtî first became affiliated with the Mevlevi order as a disciple of the shaykh Ağazâde Mehmed Dede, first at Gelibolu in Thrace and then at Beşiktaş in Istanbul.¹ The TDV entry, on Sâkıb Dede's information, says he profited greatly from his shaykh, the postnişin of the Gelibolu Mevlevîhâne.² After Ağazâde Mehmed Dede's death, Neşâtî went to Konya in central Anatolia, where he served for a time at the tomb of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, the founder of the Mevlevi order.¹ He finally returned, around the year 1670, to Edirne, appointed in 1081/1670 to the shaykhdom of the Murâdiyye Mevlevîhâne there, left vacant by Osman Dede, and he repaired the tekke during his tenure.¹³²

Neşâtî was not as prolific as many other Ottoman poets, but is nonetheless considered among the masters of the gazel form.¹ He was strongly influenced by, and a great admirer of, the Persian poet Urfî of Shiraz, about whom he wrote a treatise, the Şerh-i Müşkilât-i Urfî, the "Explanation of the Difficulties of Urfî", a work of some twenty pages that shows both his command of Persian and his admiration.¹³ In his qasidas the influence of Nef'i is seen, and he addressed qasidas to sultans Murad IV, Ibrahim and Mehmed IV and to statesmen such as Köprülü Mehmed Pasha and Köprülüzâde Fâzıl Ahmed Pasha.³ His works are his Divan, published in 1933 by Nüzhet Ergun, the Hilye-i Enbiyâ, the Edirne Şehr-engîzi, the Şerh-i Müşkilât-i Urfî, the Kavâid-i Deriyye and the Tuhvetü'l-Uşşak.³ His contemporary Seyyid Mehmed Rızâ, who completed his tezkire while Neşâtî lived, reports that he followed Nef'i and that his poems were fluent and joyful.²

He held the Edirne shaykhdom for about four years and died in office in 1674, and was buried in the courtyard of the Murâdiyye Mosque, in the Mevlevihane's hazire.¹³² Many poets, Nâbî among them, composed chronograms on his death, and the lines of Ammecizâde Rüşdü Mehmed Efendi were inscribed on his gravestone.² The TDV entry pairs his death as 1085/1674.²