Alıcıklı Hicabî, whose real name was Satılmış Yıldız and who was known in his district as "Hicabî Derviş" or "Taksici Derviş" (the Taxi-Driver Dervish), was an Alevi-Bektashi folk minstrel (âşık). He was born in 1938 in the village of Alıcık near Merzifon and died on 7 October 2013. Trained under his master Yanyatan Ali, he served as zakir (the minstrel who sings the sacred hymns) at cem ceremonies in the villages of Merzifon, performed deyiş handed down from the line of Kul Hüseyin and Kul Fakir, and composed his own poems within that tradition. His fame hardly reached beyond the Merzifon area. What is known of his life and poetry rests largely on İbrahim Gösterir's monograph published in 2017 and on the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü (Dictionary of Names in Turkish Literature) entry based on that book. Hicâbî Abdülbâki Gül Baba, the Sufi of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who bore the same pen name, and the contemporary poet Hicabi Kırlangıç are different people.
Life
Satılmış Yıldız was the eldest of the five children of Ali and Huriye; he had two brothers, Hasan and Hüseyin, and two sisters, Reşide and Refika. He attended primary school in his village and, until he went to do his military service, helped his family, who lived by farming. He served as a gendarme in Kütahya and, after returning, farmed in the village for a while longer. Between 1978 and 1980 he spent some two and a half years working in Germany, and some time after his return he moved to Merzifon and worked as a taxi driver. His nickname "Taksici Derviş" in the surrounding villages dates from these years. After the 1996 earthquake he settled in his village again and lived there until his death. He married twice and had two daughters and two sons. He died on 7 October 2013.
Connection with Amasya
Hicabî's connection with Amasya is direct, through his birth, his life and his minstrelsy: he was born in the village of Alıcık near Merzifon, spent most of his life in that village and in Merzifon, and received his training as a minstrel in this district. The region where he grew up is the area that takes in Amasya, part of Suluova, and the plains of Merzifon and Gümüşhacıköy, known among the local people as "Gaziler Ovacığı" (the Little Plain of the Gazis). This is a district where Alevi-Bektashi culture is widespread and which has produced a great many minstrels. Because Hicabî travelled with his master through all the villages of Merzifon, he had the chance to know most of the minstrels of the area. An overview of the region's minstrels is given on this site in the article on the minstrel tradition in Amasya.
Minstrelsy
Hicabî's interest in the saz and in song began at an early age. The dedes, zakirs and minstrels who came and went in the village, with what they told and what they sang, were the first source of this interest. His mother Huriye Hanım, though she could neither read nor write, was a woman who improvised fine mani (folk quatrains); Gösterir notes that this gift influenced her son. Before he went into the army Hicabî had begun to compose destans (narrative ballads) on events in his village and to sing laments for the dead. A lament he made for a fourteen-year-old engaged boy from the village of Karatepe who died in an accident is remembered as one of them. The works of this early period were forgotten and have not survived.
He received his real training from his master Yanyatan Ali and from the cem and fellowship gatherings he took part in. After a while he began to serve as zakir at the cem ceremonies held in his own village and district, and he attended the gatherings of Mehmet Derviş of Eşençay (Mehmet Topsakal), İbrahim Ağa of Kumbaba (İbrahim Güven), Dertli Fakir of Konaç (Nesim Doğan) and the dedes who came from the village of Mehmet Dede Tekke. At these gatherings he sang the deyiş of Kul Hüseyin, of Kul Fakir (Ali Oymak) and of other master minstrels. It is recorded that although he was known as an accomplished minstrel he never served as zakir for money, and that because of his dervish character he set no store by wealth.
The question of his pen name shows well the tradition to which Hicabî belonged. Until he received a poet's name from his master he used names such as Sefil, Sefil Abdal, Zefil, Zefil Abdal and Dertli Zefil. According to Gösterir, the use of such names arose from the tendency towards self-concealment found among the minstrels of the Kul Hüseyin branch; in this period he sang mostly deyiş inherited from the masters. Yanyatan Ali offered him two names, Hicabî and Hicranî, and he adopted Hicabî. With the taking of his poet's name, this concealment also came to an end.
Poetry
Copyright note: Since Alıcıklı Hicabî died on 7 October 2013, his poems remain under copyright protection for seventy years after his death, that is, until the end of 2083. For this reason his poems cannot be published on this site as separate pages. Since the sources available to us contain no quotations from his poems, no example is given here either; his poems are collected in Gösterir's book.
Hicabî's poetry leans on the tradition of tekke (dervish lodge) literature and reflects the view of God, humankind and the universe held by the Alevi-Bektashi community in which he lived. He stresses the unity of God and in some poems turns to the understanding that God appears in the human being, advising those who seek God to look into their own being. Love for the Ahl al-Bayt (the Prophet's family), the triad of Hak-Muhammad-Ali and the exaltation of Ali are the subjects he treats most. The Twelve Imams and the events of Karbala also find a place in his poetry, as in that of every Alevi-Bektashi minstrel. Where many minstrels sing of love for a beauty, in him the love of God takes its place; the words "yâr", "cânân", "dilber" and "sevgili" (beloved) in his poems do not describe the beloved of everyday speech but God.
Gösterir notes that Hicabî used poetry as a means of spreading the teaching of the path, and that for this reason he felt no need for ornate expression and said what he had to say directly. His poems use a few well-known pairings of the tradition such as the fire of love, the horse of love, the sea of love, the house of the heart and the rust of the heart; the only figure of speech he uses prominently is allusion (telmih), most often to the story of Leylâ and Mecnun. He used only the eight- and eleven-syllable metres and was mostly content with half-rhyme. Because his concern to convey the teaching took precedence over care for form, some lines carry extra syllables and some rhymes are irregular. These features are the product of an attitude also found among the other minstrels of the Kul Hüseyin lineage, one that values substance and meaning above form.
State of the Sources
Almost all the information about Hicabî rests on a single work, İbrahim Gösterir's book Alıcıklı Âşık Hicabî (Yaşamı-Sanatı-Şiirleri). Altuğ Ortakcı, who wrote the entry in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, also took his information from this book. As we were unable to consult the book itself, the details of his life and poetry are given here through that entry. Naturally his name does not appear in Hüsameddin's Amasya Tarihi or other older sources; nor was it found in a list of the region's minstrels. No information could be found on a recorded collection of his poems or a published sound recording.
Chronology
1938: Satılmış Yıldız is born in the village of Alıcık near Merzifon.
1978-1980: He works for about two and a half years in Germany.
1996: After the earthquake he returns from Merzifon to his village.
7 October 2013: He dies.
2017: İbrahim Gösterir's book collecting his life, art and poems is published.
Bibliography
Academic studies
- Şerife Özer – Mustafa Topal, "Âşıklık Geleneği ve Geleneğin Çerağlarından Amasyalı Âşık Özlemî", Motif Akademi Halkbilimi Dergisi, 14(34), 2021, pp. 654-655 (Gaziler Ovacığı and the region's minstrels). https://doi.org/10.12981/mahder.869864
Books
- Altuğ Ortakcı, "(Alıcıklı) Hicabî/Hicabî Derviş, Satılmış Yıldız", Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, 12.01.2019 (updated 05.12.2020). https://teis.yesevi.edu.tr/madde-detay/alicikli-hicabi-hicabi-dervis-satilmis
- İbrahim Gösterir, Alıcıklı Âşık Hicabî (Yaşamı-Sanatı-Şiirleri), Ankara: Kültür Ajans Yayınları, 2017, pp. 13-33 (as cited by Ortakcı 2019).
Online sources