Şeyḫoğlu Muṣṭafā was
a poet, courtier, and bureaucrat at the Germiyanid and Ottoman courts. He served as financial minister (defterdār)
and head of the chancery (nişāncı) and at the Germiyanid court under the reigns of Meḥmed Bey (r. 1340-1361)محمد بك) and Süleymān Şāh (r. 1361-1381), before transferring to
the Ottoman court under Bayezid I with
the absorption of the Germiyanid principality by the Ottomans. We know nothing of his life after 1401 [1401 CE] except that he appears to have joined the court of the Ottoman prince Emir Süleymān following the fall and death of Bayezid I at Timur's hands. His contemporary and rival, the poet Aḥmedī, considered his verse inferior in style. The early sixteenth-century [1600-1699 CE] Ottoman biographer of poets Sehī Bey confused Şeyḫoğlu with the poet Şeyhī’s nephew Cemālī, a mistake that has continued to be repeated by both European
and Turkish scholars. In some of his works Şeyḫoğlu Muṣṭafā uses the pen name İbn Şeyhī. Zeynep Korkmaz
argues that Ṣadreddīn Şeyhoğlu,
the author of a Turkish Marzubānnāme, is the same individual as Şeyḫoğlu Muṣṭafā.
Cemâlî-i Germiyânî Şeyhoğlu, approximately 1341-
Mustafa, Şeyhoğlu, approximately 1341-
Ṣadr al-Dīn Muṣṭafá, approximately 1341-
Sadrüʼd-dīn Şeyhoğlu, approximately 1341-
Şayh-oğlu, Ṣadr al-Dīn Muṣṭafá, approximately 1341-
Şeyh-oğlu, approximately 1341-
Şeyhoğlu Mustafa, b. ca. 1341
شيخ اوغلو مصطفى
Manuscripts by this author
Kenzü’l-küberāʾ ve mehekkü’l-ulemāʾ
Şeyḫoğlu Muṣṭafā states that
he composed the Kenzü’l-küberāʾ while 62 years old, towards the end of his life in 803
during the reign of Bayezid I in the name of Paşa Ağa b. Ḫoca Paşa, his patron at the Ottoman court. The work deals with the ethics of rulership and statescraft, drawing on
examples from history of prophets and past rulers. The author claims that the work is a translation of the final chapter of Najm al-Dīn Dāya al-Rāzī (1174?-1255)'s Persian Mirṣād al-ʿIbād min al-Mabdāʾ ilā’l-Maʿād,
with many additions and modifications. It consists of four chapters (bāb), the first two of which are devoted to the behavior and examples of rulers and the third to viziers and bureaucrats.
The fourth chapter discusses the ulamāʾ, with a section on the religious sciences. Verses included in the work are taken from the author’s work Ḫurşīdnāme
as well as from Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī and fourteenth-century poets such as Elvān Çelebī,
Gülşehrī,
Ḫoca Dehhānī,
Ḫoca Mesʿūd, and
Yūsuf Meddāḥ.
The work survives in a unique manuscript. The work place of composition is western Anatolia at the Ottoman court
(Edirne).
The Ḫurşīdnāme is a mathnawī romance of
close to 7700 couplets and with 22 ghazals. Şeyhoğlu
Mustafa, completed in 789, and presented it to Bayezid I, Sultan of the
Turks, approximately 1360-1403, although he originally began the work
for Süleymān
Şāh (r. 1361-1381), just prior to the death of the defunct Germiyanid
ruler. Şeyhoğlu Mustafa presents us
with an original story which draws heavily on the motifs and themes found in the
Shāhnāmah and the general Persian literary
tradition. The plot revolves around the love story of Ḫurşīd, the daughter of the
shah of Iran, Siyāvūş, and Feraḥşād, the son of the ruler of the Maghrib (literally
“the West” but, if following Niẓāmī’s use,
refers to the Arab lands including North Africa), both of whom fall in love before
having set eyes on one another. Feraḥşād sets out on a heroic quest in order to
overcome the obstacles presented by Ḫurşīd’s rivals and win Ḫurşīd’s hand in
marriage. The work which exists in different recensions survives in ten known
manuscripts. Show more
