Buhûrizâde Abdülkerim Efendi

Among the multitudes of Turkish musicians, Buhûrizâde is still known as one of the greatest. Very little is known about the intimate details of his early life, other than that he spent almost all of it in Constantinople. As a teenager, he entered the Kocamustafapaşa tekke of the Sünbüliyye Sufi order, which was led, at the time, by Nûreddin Efendi. After a period of training and study under his superiors, he was eventually appointed zâkirbaşı, or prayer-leader, of the tekke. He later became the leader of the Şah Sultan Sünbüliyye tekke in Eyüp, a position he held well into his eighties, when he died.

Buhûrizâde, in his compositional work, be it poetry or music, wrote under the name Kemter, which is a typically Sufi pseudonym meaning poor, or pitiful. Judging from his own journals and those of others in his tekkes, it is clear that Buhûrizâde was a highly respected poet and composer. As a result of this, he has come to be known as one of the most important composers of religious music in the mid to late 18th century in the Ottoman Empire. Sadly, and for reasons no one quite knows, only five complete composition of Buhûrizâde have survived to the present day, so while we may marvel at the skill that he has left with us, the rest of his vast repertoire can only be experienced through the contemporary writings of others who heard and experienced it themselves.