Cemâl-i Halvetî, known in the history of the Halveti order as "Çelebi Halife," is the sheikh who enabled the order to take root in the Ottoman capital. The Cemâliyye, one of the four main branches of the Halvetiyye, bears his name; the Sünbüliyye, the Şâbâniyye and the many sub-branches that grew from them also trace their chains of initiation to him. He is said to have performed the first Halveti ritual in Istanbul. Yet the road to this fame passed through Amasya. Guiding disciples in Amasya during the years when Prince Bayezid was governor of the sanjak, Çelebi Halife became the first sheikh of the Hoca Sultan Zaviye (dervish lodge) built by the prince's tutor Şemseddin Ahmed Çelebi, won the devotion of the prince and his circle, and, when Bayezid came to the throne, went to Istanbul at his invitation.
Information on his life comes from two kinds of sources. On one side are sixteenth-century works such as Lâmiî Çelebi's translation of the Nafahāt al-uns, Taşköprizâde's al-Shaqā'iq al-Nu'māniyya and Mecdî's translation of the latter; on the other are Halveti hagiographers such as Yusuf b. Yakub, Hulvî and Hüseyin Vassâf. Lâmiî saw him in person and heard part of his story from his own lips; later sources embellish the narrative and sometimes confuse him with others. The main source for his traces in Amasya is Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar's History of Amasya, though the dates it gives differ considerably from those in the encyclopedic sources.
Name, Lineage and Birthplace
According to the article in the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, his full name was Ebü'l-Füyûzât Muhammed b. Hamîdüddin b. Mahmûd b. Muhammed b. Cemâleddin el-Aksarâyî. He is said to have used the pen name Cemâlî in his poems. His lineage goes back to the great scholar Cemâleddin Aksarâyî (d. 791/1388-89), regarded as a teacher of Molla Fenârî; hence the family was known as the "Cemâlîzâdes." The Halveti hagiographer Yusuf b. Yakub attributes the title "Çelebi" to the distinction of his family and to his being the son of a military judge (kazasker). One branch of the family had settled in Amasya. According to Hüsameddin, some of Cemâleddin Aksarâyî's descendants went to Egypt and Konya, some to Aksaray, and some remained in Amasya, while part of those who had gone to Aksaray later returned to Amasya and settled in the Temenna quarter. The branches of the grand vizier Pîrî Mehmed Pasha and of the şeyhülislam Zenbilli Ali Efendi were tied to Istanbul, while that of Çelebi Halife remained tied to Amasya.
His date of birth is unknown. On his birthplace the sources divide in two. Sâdık Vicdânî's Tomâr-ı Turuk-ı Aliyye and Bursalı Mehmed Tâhir's Osmanlı Müellifleri state that he was born in Amasya, and Hüsameddin opens his entry with the words "He is from Amasya." Most other sources, however, say he was born in Aksaray, and Lâmiî refers to him with the epithet "Karamânî." Hasan Karataş, in his doctoral dissertation, accepts that he was born and raised in Aksaray and stresses that he came to Amasya later.
The family ties do not fully coincide in the sources either. Hüsameddin presents him as the son of Cemâlîzâde Mahmûd Çelebi and a paternal cousin of the şeyhülislam Zenbilli Ali Efendi. Himmet Konur, comparing the information on Zenbilli with the family tree, notes that Zenbilli may in fact have been the cousin not of Çelebi Halife but of his father. According to another record in Hüsameddin, Zenbilli Ali Efendi's son Molla Çelebi Cemâleddin Mehmed was born of Çelebi Halife's daughter; in other words, the two households were also joined by marriage.
In Search of a Sheikh: Karaman, Tokat and Erzincan
The earliest account of Çelebi Halife's turn to Sufism is Lâmiî's, and it is related in the sheikh's own words. According to it, while he was at the beginning of his madrasa studies, reading Taftazani's Mukhtasar al-Ma'ānī, he decided to enter the Sufi path. Karataş, considering the place of this book in the madrasa curriculum, thinks he was then at a small madrasa in Larende, the capital of Karaman. According to the TDV article, which draws on the Sefîne, and to Reşat Öngören, he first became a disciple of the Zeyniyye sheikh Seyyid Abdullah el-Kastamonî, known as Hacı Halife, and received a licence from him, but his inner dissatisfaction did not pass. Konur recalls that part of this information comes from Hulvî, who at some points confuses Çelebi Halife with his namesake Cemâl Halife, and says it should be treated with caution.
His acquaintance with the Halvetiyye began in Karaman. He entered seclusion (halvet) under Abdullah Karamânî, a deputy of Alâeddin Halvetî (d. 867/1462-63). By his own account, one day Alâeddin Halvetî, in the years when Mehmed the Conqueror had sent him away from Istanbul, rode into Larende dressed in black from head to toe and mounted on a black horse. On seeing him the young dervish felt a deep affection and wished to become his disciple; Alâeddin Halvetî at once offered him the mantle of deputyship, but he declined, saying he had not completed his path. The sheikh is reported to have said, "From now on you will need my disciples for a Halveti training." Shortly afterwards both Alâeddin Halvetî and Abdullah Karamânî died.
He then went to Tokat and became a disciple of Ümmî Şeyh Tâhirzâde, popularly known as Tâhiroğlu. His recollection, preserved by Lâmiî, is one of the most vivid descriptions of early Halveti training. This illiterate Turcoman sheikh was, in his words, so unlettered that he confused the words "feyz" (divine grace) and "hayz" (menstruation), yet his spiritual power was strong. He first set him to work building his lodge and mosque, then placed him with other dervishes in a pit dug in the ground and trained them through hunger. When the other dervishes could not bear it and brought food from a nearby village, the sheikh dismissed them all; Çelebi Halife, however, held out until he was close to dying of hunger. When his state was reported, the sheikh is said to have replied, "Let him die." This harsh training lasted until he experienced an unveiling (kashf) and told his sheikh of it. Hüsameddin places Tâhirzâde's death in the month of Dhu al-Hijja 867. Karataş interprets Çelebi Halife's emphasis on his Tokat sheikh's illiteracy and "Turcoman" origin as the retrospective view of a sheikh who, in later years, was trying to address the ulema of Istanbul.
After Tokat he set out for Baku to join Seyyid Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî, regarded as the second founder of the Halvetiyye. In Erzincan he met Yahyâ's deputy Muhammed Bahâeddin Erzincânî. He did not stay with this sheikh, who also appears in the sources as Pîr Muhammed, Şeyh Pîrî or Molla Pîrî, but continued on his way; two stages later he received the news that Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî (d. 868/1463-64) had died, returned to Erzincan and became Erzincânî's disciple. He completed his spiritual journey under him and received his licence. Later Halveti writers played down Erzincânî's role in order to establish a more direct link between Çelebi Halife and Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî; the seventeenth-century author Muhammed Nazmi regards Erzincânî as merely his "sheikh of the mantle and garb." Erzincânî's date of death is also disputed: Hulvî gives 869 (1465), but according to the TDV article Erzincânî himself states that he wrote his book in 873 (1468-69), and late sources give his death as 879 (1474).
The biography in Hüsameddin's History of Amasya tells this route somewhat differently: after studying in Amasya with İbrîzâde Muhyiddin Mehmed and Cendîzâde Rükneddin Ahmed, he joined the company of "Pîr Abdullah Çelebi," one of the Halveti deputies, went to Tokat at his direction, passed from there to Erzincan, completed his path in the service of "Pîrî Halife" in Erzincan and came to Amasya. The name Abdullah appears in both accounts; the difference lies in Hüsameddin's placing the start of his education in Amasya.
Arrival in Amasya and the Hoca Sultan Zaviye
When exactly Çelebi Halife came to Amasya is not known. Karataş reports that Hüsameddin records him as having been sent to Amasya by force when the Karamanid lands were annexed by the Ottomans after 1466; he himself attributes the young sheikh's choice of Amasya after receiving his licence to the region of Konya having become a war zone in those years and to the strength of the Zeynis there. Mehmet Koçak writes that after his licence he first guided disciples in Tokat for a time and then moved to Amasya, and adds, on the basis of one view, that when he first arrived he may have served at the Gümüşlüoğlu lodge founded by Pir İlyas; Hüsameddin, however, contains no direct record of this. According to Konur, he was sent to Amasya before Erzincânî's death, and the companionship of Prince Bayezid and the sheikh in Amasya lasted at least seven years, until 1481.
His principal place in Amasya was the Hoca Sultan Zaviye. Şemseddin Ahmed Çelebi, Prince Bayezid's tutor, a member of his inner circle and one of the wealthy notables of Amasya, built in 880 (1475) a large hospice above the Dârüsselâm quarter, together with a guesthouse and a public kitchen. Because of his title, people called the building the Hoca Sultan Zaviye. According to Hüsameddin, Şemseddin Ahmed Çelebi had the lodge built for Çelebi Halife because he was "deeply devoted" to him, gave him the post of sheikh and endowed all his properties to its expenses. The endowment deed stipulated that the trusteeship should belong to the founder's descendants and the supervision to those of the first sheikh, that is, Çelebi Halife. Kadir Özköse locates the lodge in the old Dârüsselâm quarter, around today's Fethiye quarter. Hüsameddin relates that in his own day the lodge was in ruins, the founder's grave remained in front of its door, a house had been built on the plot, and he found the lost gravestones in that house's garden wall.
According to Hüsameddin, Çelebi Halife won the affection of both the ulema and the people with his asceticism, piety and learning, and Bayezid, as governor of Amasya, visited his lodge from time to time and made gifts to it. Hulvî's Lemezât takes this closeness further: the prince had "complete faith" in the sheikh and had pledged allegiance to him. The prince's head gatekeeper and companion, Hacı Mustafa Ağa, was also the sheikh's disciple and acted as intermediary between prince and sheikh for the interpretation of the prince's dreams and for his consolation. This Mustafa Ağa is Koca Mustafa Pasha, the future grand vizier. The TDV article counts Bayezid II's acquaintance with him in Amasya and the gatekeeper's becoming his disciple among the main reasons for the sheikh's later standing in Istanbul.
Hüsameddin gives one or two further details on his relations with the learned circles of Amasya. He wrote his treatise Şerh-i Dü Beyt-i Celâlî, an Arabic commentary on two famous couplets of the Masnavi, in 888 (1483), at the prompting, as he says in its introduction, of Kasım, a teacher at one of the madrasas of Amasya. It is also recorded that in his works he warmly praised İmâmzâde Ahmed Şemseddin Çelebi, sheikh of the Mahmud Çelebi Zaviye in the inner city of Amasya, who died in 894.
The Struggle for the Throne and Karamânî Mehmed Pasha
The event that ties Çelebi Halife's name to Ottoman history is the struggle for the throne between Bayezid and his brother Cem after the death of Mehmed the Conqueror. The earliest account is Lâmiî's, written some forty years after the event; Lâmiî heard it from the military judge Tâcîzâde Cafer Çelebi. Cafer Çelebi's father, Tâcî Bey, was treasurer at Bayezid's court in Amasya and acted as intermediary between the prince and the sheikh in this affair.
According to this account, Bayezid one day gave Tâcî Bey three thousand silver coins and asked him to take them to Çelebi Halife for the dervishes' table, saying, "I have a wish; may he kindly concern himself with it." When Tâcî Bey wished to ask what the wish was, he answered, "They will turn their attention to it and know my wish." The sheikh at first grumbled, "It would have been good had he stated his wish"; the next day he called Tâcî Bey and told him that the prince's wish was the destruction of the grand vizier Karamânî Mehmed Pasha. The pasha, however, carried on his head a "sad ender sad" talisman (vefk) prepared by the Zeyniyye sheikh Şeyh Vefâ, which warded off every misfortune; Şeyh Vefâ had also drawn around him a circle that no one could enter. Çelebi Halife nonetheless gave the good news that the prince's wish would be fulfilled, saying that a great event would occur in thirty-three days and that the pasha would die before forty days had passed. When the message reached him, Bayezid blushed with shame and said, "By God, I would never consent to anyone's destruction without cause, but this oppressor sides with my brother Cem and keeps slandering me to my father." Thirty-three days later news of the Conqueror's death reached Amasya; on the thirty-ninth day, Bayezid, by then on the road, received word that the janissaries had killed Mehmed Pasha.
Taşköprizâde tells the same story with other details. In his version there is no money; the sheikh first refuses, then, at the prince's insistence, turns his attention to the unseen world and sees the saints of Karaman standing with Cem. They hurl fire at the sheikh; one of the flames strikes Çelebi Halife's daughter, who falls ill and dies a few days later. In his second attempt the sheikh tells them that Karamânî Mehmed Pasha has abolished the pious endowments of the Muslims and transferred them to the treasury; thereupon the saints of Karaman, all except Şeyh Vefâ, withdraw their support from the pasha. Taşköprizâde adds a curious detail he heard from a relative of Çelebi Halife: during the sheikh's effort, forty people named Mehmed in Amasya suffered various misfortunes, and the narrator himself, then a child, split his head when the branch of the tree he had climbed broke. Hulvî, for his part, names Hacı Mustafa Ağa rather than Tâcî Bey as the intermediary.
The historical value of these accounts is disputed. John J. Curry concludes that Çelebi Halife was actually involved in the events; some scholars, on the other hand, see the story as a group's later attempt to weave its own history into the founding narrative of the Ottomans. Karataş argues that at its core the account reflects the struggle of two orders, the Zeyniyye, favoured at court in the Conqueror's reign, and the rising Halvetiyye, over their future in Istanbul. Under the Conqueror the Halveti sheikh Alâeddin Halvetî had been removed from Istanbul, and Karamânî Mehmed Pasha's measure converting endowment and freehold lands into military fiefs (timar) had also affected the dervish lodges; the words Çelebi Halife addressed to the saints of Karaman carry this resentment. Konur likewise reads the episode as a rivalry between Amasya and Karaman: on one side Prince Bayezid, Çelebi Halife, the treasurer Tâcî Bey and the gatekeeper Mustafa Ağa; on the other Prince Cem, the Konya-born grand vizier Karamânî Mehmed Pasha and the Zeyniyye sheikh Şeyh Vefâ.
Karataş also recalls that the emphasis on the name "Mehmed" has been interpreted by some modern writers as a sign that the Halvetis were involved in the Conqueror's death, and he does not find this convincing: none of the contemporary sources speaks of poisoning, even Taşköprizâde writes that the Conqueror died of wrong medical treatment, and three thousand silver coins is a laughably small sum for such an undertaking. The later Halveti writer Yusuf b. Yakub's rendering of the grand vizier's name as "Ahmed" instead of "Mehmed" can, in Karataş's view, only be understood as an attempt to cover up such a rumour.
A building in Amasya is also connected with this period. According to Hüsameddin, when Cem's bid for the throne troubled Bayezid in Amasya, two of the city's Halveti sheikhs, Gümüşlüzâde Pîr Hayreddin Hızır Çelebi and Cemâlîzâde Pîr Cemâleddin Mehmed Çelebi Halife, consoled him, gave him the good news that the throne would be his, and asked him to build a mosque, a madrasa and a public kitchen in Amasya. On his accession Bayezid kept his word; he sent an order to his son Prince Ahmed, governor of Amasya, and the Bayezid II Complex was begun in Rajab 886 and completed in Rajab 891. Özköse also writes that the complex was built at Çelebi Halife's request and gives the date as 1485.
The Istanbul Years
A few years after his accession, Bayezid II invited Çelebi Halife to Istanbul. According to Koçak, the sheikh set out from Amasya with about a hundred disciples, was received by the dignitaries of the state at the Üsküdar landing, and was first lodged as a guest in the mansion of the head gatekeeper Mustafa Ağa near the Gül Mosque in Ayvansaray. According to the same source, he arrived in Istanbul in 1485 and in 1486 settled in the lodge that Koca Mustafa Pasha had built for him. Yusuf b. Yakub records that Mustafa Pasha asked the sultan for the place called the Convent of the Maidens (Kızlar Manastırı) so that the sheikh might stay in Istanbul, and built there a complex comprising a hospice, a public kitchen, a mosque, a madrasa and a bath. This lodge, converted from a former Byzantine convent, is known today as the Sünbül Efendi Mosque in the Kocamustafapaşa district and, according to Karataş, became one of the most influential centres of the Halvetiyye in the empire; like the Çilehane in Amasya, it contained many cells for seclusion.
In Istanbul Çelebi Halife soon became one of the city's well-known sheikhs. According to Hüseyin Vassâf, he performed the first Halveti ritual in Istanbul. Bayezid and his Amasya circle visited his lodge regularly. The sheikh, for his part, sought acceptance among the ulema: he frequented the Sahn-ı Semân madrasas and wrote works in Arabic. Lâmiî relates that while studying with Kasım Çelebi, a teacher at the Semâniye, he saw Çelebi Halife come to visit his teacher, held his stirrup as he left, and observed in the sheikh a state of great ecstasy.
His departure for Istanbul did not leave the lodge in Amasya empty. According to the first volume of Hüsameddin and to Özköse, who relies on it, he was succeeded by his son Bedreddin Mahmud Çelebi, after whom Hayreddin Hızır Çelebi, Muhyiddin Mehmed Çelebi and Alâeddin Çelebi became sheikh in turn. Hüsameddin's biographies in the eighth volume give a different order: Çelebi Halife was succeeded by his nephew Muhyiddin Mehmed Çelebi b. Kâsım, and on the latter's death in 915 Bedreddin Mahmud Çelebi served as sheikh for about seventeen years.
Pilgrimage and Death
When a great plague struck Istanbul, Bayezid II sent Çelebi Halife on pilgrimage with forty dervishes to pray for the epidemic to be lifted. Some of the sources cited by Konur add an earthquake to the plague. According to the TDV article the sheikh left Sünbül Sinan as his deputy; Karataş, however, writes that Sünbül Sinan was then in Egypt and that the sheikh summoned him to meet him in the holy lands. Çelebi Halife died near Tabuk before reaching Mecca. In his will he asked that Sünbül Sinan succeed him at the Koca Mustafa Pasha lodge and marry his daughter Safiye Hatun. Lâmiî records that the absence of plague for years after this journey was attributed to the sheikh's self-sacrifice.
His date of death is the most disputed point in the sources. The TDV article, Konur and Karataş give 899 (1494), on the basis of the chronogram "kad mâte şâh-ı evliyâ" ("the king of saints has died") composed for his death. Koçak writes 1497; the title of Curry's article mentions the possibilities 900/1494 and 905/1499 together. Hüsameddin gives two different dates: in the chronicle section of the History of Amasya he writes that the sheikh was sent to the Hejaz because of the plague of 903 and died in Mecca, while in his biography in the eighth volume he records that Bayezid sent him to the Hejaz with forty disciples in 887, that he continued his guidance on his return, that in 903, on the death of Pir Abdurrahman Çelebi, he became the sheikh of Prince Ahmed, and that he died at the beginning of Muharram 908, though it is also reported that he died on the pilgrimage road. Hüsameddin's narrative never takes him to Istanbul and shows him in Amasya to the end of his life; this contradicts all the other sources. On the evidence available, the strongest date is 899 (1494), which the chronogram also supports.
Works and Mystical Teaching
According to Mehmet Serhan Tayşi, author of the TDV article, Cemâl-i Halvetî was one of the most prolific Sufi authors of the Ottoman period, and he wrote almost all his works in Arabic. Most of his treatises concern the mystical interpretation of certain suras and verses. Among them are a commentary on the suras al-Fātiha and al-Duhā, the Kitāb al-Nūriyya, a commentary on the Throne Verse, the Risālat al-Kawthariyya, which interprets the last verses of the sura al-Hashr in terms of the seven stages, the Asrār al-wudū', which explains the secrets of ritual ablution in seven chapters, the Risālat al-Rahīmiyya on the formulas of seeking refuge and of the basmala, a commentary on forty sacred hadiths, an explanation of forty hadiths on asceticism and piety, a chapter on the etiquette of remembrance (dhikr), and commentaries on a couplet of Mullā Jāmī and on some couplets of Farīd al-Dīn 'Attār. He first wrote the Sirāj al-sālikīn in Turkish and later translated it into Arabic. He also left a small collection of poems. Hüsameddin adds to these the Şerh-i Dü Beyt-i Celâlî, written in Amasya. Karataş notes that the intended readers of his Arabic works were the ulema of Istanbul and that through them the sheikh sought to build ties with the educated elite.
His best-known work is Anwār al-qulūb li-talab ru'yat al-mahbūb. Here, drawing on verses of the sura al-Isrā', he lists seven stages of the mystical path: the breast, the heart, the spirit, the secret, annihilation in God, bewilderment, and annihilation of annihilation. He matches them with seven journeys: the journey to God, for God, upon God, by God, with God, in God and from God. In the same treatise, starting from the opening verses of the sura al-Mu'minūn, he explains the seven modes known as "atvâr-ı seb'a" and speaks of four kinds of paradise: the paradise of deeds, the reward of good works; the paradise of inheritance, earned by sincere devotion to the Prophet; the paradise of attributes, born of the manifestation of the divine names and attributes; and the paradise of the Essence, attainable only through purification, refinement and illumination.
His Deputies and the Cemâliyye Branch
The Cemâliyye is one of the four main branches of the Halvetiyye, and four secondary branches grew from it: the Sünbüliyye, the Şâbâniyye, the Assâliyye and the Bahşiyye. Among his famous deputies listed by Hüseyin Vassâf are Sünbül Sinan Efendi, İdris Efendi, Cemal Efendi, Kasım Efendi, Alâeddîn-i Uşşâkî, Hayreddin Tokadî, Üveys Dede, Cemşâh-ı Karamânî, Sinân-ı Erdebîlî, Muslihuddin Efendi, Selâhaddin Efendi, Bayezid Halife, Ali Dede and Dâvud Dede.
A good number of these deputies were connected with Amasya. In Hüsameddin's list, his nephew and successor at the Hoca Sultan Zaviye Muhyiddin Mehmed Efendi, Hayreddin Hızır el-Amâsî and Sünbül Sinan of Merzifon stand out. Sünbül Sinan was, in Karataş's phrase, "another son of Amasya"; at first a madrasa student who looked down on Çelebi Halife's dervishes, he was called to the path through dreams and after his sheikh's death took charge of the Koca Mustafa Pasha lodge. Hayreddin Hızır Tokâdî, according to Hüsameddin, served as sheikh at the Mahmud Çelebi lodge in the Karatay quarter of Amasya's inner city, originally founded for the Nakşibendis, and carried on the Halveti customs there.
The Çelebizâdes in Amasya
Çelebi Halife's descendants continued in Amasya for centuries under the name "Çelebizâdes." According to Hüsameddin, his sons Bedreddin Mahmud and Şemseddin Ahmed Efendi were also scholars and sheikhs. Bedreddin Mahmud Çelebi learned the religious sciences and Sufism from his father, travelled with him to the Hejaz, on the way back spent some time studying with the scholars of Egypt, returned to Amasya, served as sheikh of the Hoca Sultan Zaviye and died around 932. His grave is in the Çelebioğlu Tomb at the head of the Uzun Yol Cemetery, in front of the Taksim near Hoca Sultan. Hüsameddin also lists from the same family Çelebi Şeyhzâde Ahmed Efendi, a teacher at the Torumtay Madrasa in the seventeenth century, and Çelebizâde Hacı Hüseyin Efendi, mufti of Amasya, who died in 1192. The supervision of the lodge remained in this family for a long time; according to Özköse, when the Amasya branch of the Çelebizâdes died out in 1686 the lodge passed to the Zanalı family, and in the mid-eighteenth century it was divided as an inheritance and ceased to function.
The best-known member of the family, however, is the grand vizier Pîrî Mehmed Pasha. According to his article in the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, Pîrî Mehmed Pasha was Çelebi Halife's son; probably born in Konya in 1463, he began his madrasa education in Amasya, where his father was a Halveti sheikh, served for a time as a clerk at the Amasya court (896/1491), and after the accession of Bayezid II, who knew him through his father from his governorship of Amasya, rose to judgeships and then to the post of treasurer. Konur also records him as Çelebi Halife's son. Hüsameddin, however, counts Pîrî Pasha among the branch of the family that went to Istanbul and does not mention him among Çelebi Halife's sons. Koçak writes that Çelebi Halife went to Istanbul first and later brought his son Pîrî Mehmed Pasha and his cousin Ali Cemâlî to join him, while some of his children remained in Amasya.
A Confusion of Names: Cemâl Halife
There was another Halveti sheikh who lived in Amasya in the same years and was known as "Cemâl Halife"; the two have at times been confused in the sources. According to Hüsameddin's History of Amasya, this was Karamânîzâde Cemâleddin İshak Efendi, son of a Mehmed Çelebi who had migrated from Karaman to Amasya. He was born in the Temenna quarter of Amasya, grew up together with Pîrî Mehmed Pasha, learned calligraphy from the Amasya calligrapher Abdullah Efendi, studied at the madrasas of Istanbul, and then returned to Amasya and became a disciple of Habîb-i Karamânî. On his sheikh's death in 902 he became sheikh of the Selâmet Hatun lodge, where for some twenty-two years he preached and taught Qur'anic exegesis and hadith; Prince Ahmed too attended his lessons from time to time. After the accession of Selim I he left Amasya for Istanbul, became sheikh of the lodge that the grand vizier Pîrî Mehmed Pasha built for him in the Molla Gürânî district, and died in 940 (933 according to the Shaqā'iq).
Cemâleddin İshak Karamânî belongs to the line of Habîb-i Karamânî, whereas Çelebi Halife is linked to Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî through Erzincânî. Karataş argues that the Halvetiyye in the Ottoman lands divided into "Rumi" and "Karamani" branches through the membership of these two founders, Çelebi Halife and Habîb-i Karamânî, in different political circles. Konur points out that some information Hulvî attributes to Çelebi Halife in the Lemezât appears in the earlier Shaqā'iq as belonging to Cemâl Halife. For this reason, when reporting information about either sheikh, one must pay attention to the names Cemâleddin Mehmed and Cemâleddin İshak.
Chronology
867 (1462-63): His sheikhs in Karaman, Alâeddin Halvetî and Abdullah Karamânî, died; Çelebi Halife went to Tokat to Ümmî Şeyh Tâhirzâde. Hüsameddin places Tâhirzâde's death in Dhu al-Hijja 867.
868 (1463-64): Death of Seyyid Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî; Çelebi Halife returned to Erzincan and became a disciple of Muhammed Erzincânî.
880 (1475): Şemseddin Ahmed Çelebi built the Hoca Sultan Zaviye in the Dârüsselâm quarter of Amasya and appointed Çelebi Halife its sheikh.
886 (1481): Death of Mehmed the Conqueror and accession of Bayezid II; according to Halveti sources, Çelebi Halife gave the prince spiritual support in this process.
886-891 (1481-1486): According to Hüsameddin, the Bayezid II Complex in Amasya was built at the request of Çelebi Halife and Pîr Hayreddin Hızır Çelebi.
888 (1483): According to Hüsameddin, he wrote the Şerh-i Dü Beyt-i Celâlî.
1485-1486: According to Koçak, he came to Istanbul and settled in the lodge Koca Mustafa Pasha built for him.
899 (1494): Died near Tabuk on the pilgrimage on which he had been sent to pray against the plague (TDV, Konur, Karataş). Other sources give the dates 1497, 905 and 908.
915 (1509-10): According to Hüsameddin, his nephew Muhyiddin Mehmed Çelebi, sheikh of the Hoca Sultan Zaviye, died and was succeeded by his son Bedreddin Mahmud Çelebi.
1686: According to Özköse, the Amasya branch of the Çelebizâdes died out; the Hoca Sultan lodge passed to the Zanalı family.
Bibliography
The following sources were used in this article:
- Mehmet Serhan Tayşi, "Cemâl-i Halvetî", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 7, Istanbul 1993, pp. 302-303. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/cemal-i-halveti
- Himmet Konur, "Amasya'dan İstanbul'a Saltanat Yolunda Bir Şehzade ve Bir Şeyh: II. Bâyezîd ve Cemâl-i Halvetî", Sufiyye, 13, 2022, pp. 227-244. https://doi.org/10.46231/sufiyye.1152572
- Mehmet Koçak, "XV. ve XVI. Yüzyıllarda Siyaset, İlmiye ve Tasavvuf Üçgeninde Cemâlî Ailesi", Bartın Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, 9(2), 2024, pp. 111-126. https://doi.org/10.70916/buefd.1595047
- Hasan Karataş, The City as a Historical Actor: The Urbanization and Ottomanization of the Halvetiye Sufi Order by the City of Amasya in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2011, pp. 94-118. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7nv104fk
- Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar, Amasya Tarihi, vol. 1 (sections on the Hoca Sultan lodge, the Mahmud Çelebi lodge, the Çelebioğlu Tomb, the Sultan Bayezid Mosque and the old families); vol. 3 (events of the year 903, around p. 483); vol. 6 (pp. 123-124 ff.) (entries "Ahmed Şemseddîn Çelebi-Hoca Sultan", "Ahmed Şemseddîn Çelebi-İmâmzâde"); vol. 8 (entries "Bedreddîn Mahmûd Çelebi-Çelebi Halîfezâde", "Cemâleddîn Mehmed Çelebi-Çelebi Halîfe", "Cemâleddîn İshâk Efendi-Karamânîzâde", "Cemâleddîn Mehmed Çelebi-Molla Çelebi"), Amasya Belediyesi Kültür Yayınları.
- Kadir Özköse, "Amasya'da Bulunan Halvetiyye Tekkeleri", Akademiar, 5, 2018, pp. 91-118.
- Zaur Şükürov, "Muhammed Bahâeddin Erzincânî", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, Ankara 2020, pp. 502-503. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/muhammed-bahaeddin-erzincani
- Yusuf Küçükdağ, "Pîrî Mehmed Paşa", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 34, Istanbul 2007, pp. 280-281. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/piri-mehmed-pasa
Online sources
