Folk poet (b. 1785 / 1800, Bayburt - d.
1859, Trabzon).
His real name was Mehmet Emin. He was taught at Erzurum
and Trabzon Madrasah Muslim
Schools. He came to
İstanbul in 1815 and stayed there for about ten years. He was treated well by
the statesmen to whom he had presented eulogies. Upon the Russian invasion in Eastern Anatolia in 1828, he returned to his hometown. He
wrote sad poems as a reaction to the ruined state of Bayburt. While returning
from Mecca (where he had gone on pilgrimage) in
1834, he went to Egypt,
where he praised Abdülmecid with a special poem on his ascension to the Ottoman
throne. He served Reşit Paşa as clerk in the navy that was leaving for Acre. On his return, he stayed in İstanbul for a period
of time and then worked as a civil servant in Hopa, Karaağaç, Of and Erzincan
after 1847. He lived in Trabzon
from 1855 to 1859. He died in Ulasa village near Trabzon on his way to Bayburt. Later, his
tomb was removed to Bayburt (1936).
Bayburtlu Zihni wrote a Divan* consisting of kaside*, odes and poems
praising the Prophet Muhammad with the influence of classic Divan* poetry.
However, he was known mainly for his folk poems written in syllabic meter and
not included in his Divan (Divan*).
His famous free-form folk poem written for the town of Bayurt that was
destroyed during the Russian invasion in 1828 starts with the following lines:
“As I
arrived, I saw the enemies had forced the people to leave
That the
children were gone, home was deserted”
His Divan-ı Zihnî (Divan* of Zihni)
consisting of prosodic poems was published by his son Ahmed Kehavi Efendi
(1876). In addition he wrote one more work named Sergüzeştnâme (Book of Adventures) that gives information about his
life and also consists of poems most of which are satires.
