Müneccimbaşı Ahmed Dede

Ahmed ibn Lütfullah, known by his court title Müneccimbaşı, "Chief Astrologer", was an Ottoman historian, astronomer and Sufi poet born at Salonica in 1631 and died at Mecca on 28 February 1702 — the English article gives 27 February.¹² In his youth he affiliated himself to the sheikh of the Salonica Mevlevi lodge and became a Mevlevi, spent fifteen years under the sheikh of the Kasımpaşa lodge in Istanbul, and ended as sheikh of the Mevlevi lodge of Mecca.¹³ His Jami' al-Duwal is among the most important Ottoman universal histories.²

His father Lütfullah, a native of Ereğli in Konya, had settled at Salonica, and the son first practised his father's trade of shawl-weaving, learning Italian and Spanish in his dealings with Salonica's Jewish community.¹ He then affiliated himself (intisap) to Sheikh Mehmed Efendi of the Salonica Mevlevi lodge and became a Mevlevi, beginning his studies there; in 1665 he moved to Istanbul, served Arzî Dede of the Galata lodge, read tafsir, hadith and fiqh with leading scholars, and then attached himself to Sheikh Halil Efendi at the Kasımpaşa Mevlevihanesi, in whose lessons he spent fifteen years, also studying logic, philosophy, astronomy and medicine.¹ The English article agrees on the fifteen years at the Kasımpaşa Mevlevi lodge under Sheikh Halil Dede.² The Arabic article names him outright al-Mawlawi, the Mevlevi.³

He was appointed chief astrologer in 1668 on his predecessor's death and became one of Sultan Mehmed IV's imperial companions.¹² When Mehmed IV was deposed in 1687 he was dismissed and exiled to Egypt; he moved with his adopted son Moralı Hasan Pasha, the governor, to Mecca in 1690 and then to Medina, teaching in both cities, and returned to Mecca, where he became sheikh of its Mevlevi lodge in 1700 and declined a recall to the chief astrologer's post in Istanbul on account of his age.¹²

His chief work is the Jami' al-Duwal, "The Compendium of Nations", a world history in Arabic commissioned by the grand vizier Kara Mustafa, running from Adam to 1678 and preserving material from lost sources, above all for the Muslim dynasties of Adharbayjan, Shirvan and Arran; he was also the first Islamic historian to treat dynasties such as the Babylonians and Seleucids, using Roman, Jewish and West European sources alongside his own.² The work became best known through Ahmed Nedim's eighteenth-century Turkish rendering, the Saha'if al-Akhbar.¹² He also wrote a diwan of mystical verse under the pen name Âşık, treatises on geometry, music, logic and mysticism, a commentary on al-Baydawi's tafsir, and annotations on Qadi Adud al-Din's ethics.²³

He died at Mecca in 1702, past seventy, and was buried near the mausoleum of Khadija.³² The Turkish article dates the death to 28 February 1702 and the English article to 27 February, while the Arabic article gives 29 Ramadan 1113 AH; all readings are preserved in his record.¹²³