Muhyi Gulshani
Muhyi Muhammad Gulshani ibn Fath-Allah ibn Abu Talib, best known as Muhyi Gulshani was a Oghuz Turks scholar and author who worked and lived in the Ottoman Empire. He wrote in Turkish and Persian. Due to his excellent command of Persian, Gulshani was known to his Turkish contemporaries as Acem-i Küçük. He was also known by the Turks as Acem Fethioglu, Muhyi Celebi and Dervish Muhyi. In addition to his literary output, Gulshani may have been the inventor of Balaibalan, a constructed language.
Biography
Gulshani was born in Adrianople to a family originally from Shiraz and Qazvin in Iran, at a time when these cities were ruled by the Ak Koyunlu. Muhyi's grandfather, Abu Talib, lived in Iran during the reign of Uzun Hasan and was killed during the conquest of the Ak Koyunlu realm by Shah Ismail I. As a result of the political upheaval created by the rise of the Safavids, Abu Talib's son, Fath-Allah, moved to the Ottoman realm, and settled in Adrianople. He married in Adrianople and joined a scholarly and Sufi social netwerk that encompassed the cities of Adrianople, Cairo and Constantinople.Muhyi attended the Üçşerefeli and Bayezid madrasas in Adrianople. In 1546, he moved to Constantinople to complete his education at the Sahn-i Seman madrasa. There, he attended lectures of contemporaneous scholars such as Ebussuud Efendi and Gelibolulu Süruri. In 1552 he moved to Cairo in order to join his brother Muhammad who served in the local Ottoman bureaucracy of Egypt. Gulshani became deputy judge in Egypt, and became a student of Ahmad Kayali, son and successor of Shaykh Ibrahim Gulshani. He stayed in Egypt until his death and functioned as custodian of the main Gulshani order hospice in Cairo.
In the Ottoman Empire, Gulshani's family were known as the Etmekçizadeler. Muhyi Gulshani married the daughter of Shaykh Ibrahim Gulshani.