Şehîd-i Kerbelâ Hazret-i Hüseyin bin Ali bin Ebî-Tâlib Radıyallahu’anhuma’nın ensâb-ı kirâmından olup Tebrîz’de eş-Şeyh Tâceddîn Ebû Hâmid Abdurrahman et-Tebrîzî’den ulûm-ı şer’iyye ve edebiyyeyi ahzedib devr-i bilâd ederek Amasya’ya geldi.
Sülâle-i ilmiyyesi üç vâsıta ile sâhib-i tefsîr Hüseyin bin Mes’ûd Bagavî hazretlerine müntehidir. Çünkü Mevlânâ Ebû Hâmid Tebrîzî, kendi dedesi Hoca Efzaleddîn Tebrîzî’den, bu da Mevlânâ Ebu’l-Kerem el Mervezî, bu da Hüseyin bin Mes’ûd Bagavî’den telemmüz ü ahz-ı ulûm etmişdi. Amasya’da hayli zaman neşr-i ulûma himmet ederek ümerâ ve halkdan büyük hürmetler gördü. Fakat Anadolu nâzırı sıfatıyla Amasya’da ikâmet eden Kongurtay’ın mezâliminden dolayı Karasenir civârında inzivâ ve çobanlık ederek te’ayyüş eylediğinden “Ser-Çoban Dede” demekle iştihâr etdi.
Mu’ahharan Mahmûd Gazan Hân’ın cülûsuyla beraber şeref-i İslâm ile müşerrref olması üzerine hürmetler gördü. Hân-ı müşârün-ileyhin zamanında dâr-ı na’îme irtihâl edib Kayabaşı ile Kara [232] senir arasındaki tepenin üstünde defnedildi.
İbtidâ mezârı açık, halka ziyâretgâh idi. 1292’de Hicâz kumandanı Karasenirli mîr-livâ Hasan Paşa tarafından üzerine ahşabdan bir türbe ve hücre binâ edildi. O civârın halkı bayramlarda oraya toplanıp kurbanlar keser, ta’âmlar yapar, herkese bezl eder.
Birâderi es-Seyyid Alâeddîn Ali Dede olup Ser-Çoban Dede’nin şark tarafında ırmağın öbür geçesinde kâin bir tepe üzerinde medfûndur. Bunlar ulemâdan ve sülehâdan adamlardı. Her ikisi de Cüneydî meşreblerdi. Ser-Çoban Dede’nin nesebi ve sülâle-i ilmîyesi, tesâdüfî olarak İstanbul kütübhânelerini teftîşe me’mûr olduğum esnâda bir kitabın zahrında görüldü.
In Modern English
He descended from the line of Husayn bin Ali bin Abi Talib, the martyr of Karbala (may God be pleased with them both). In Tabriz he learned the religious and literary sciences from Sheikh Tâceddin Ebû Hâmid Abdurrahman et-Tebrîzî, and wandering from land to land he came to Amasya.
His scholarly chain reaches, through three intermediaries, the exegete Hüseyin bin Mes'ûd el-Begavî. For Mevlânâ Ebû Hâmid Tebrîzî had taken lessons and learned from his own grandfather Hoca Efzaleddin Tebrîzî, who had done so from Mevlânâ Ebü'l-Kerem el-Mervezî, who in turn had done so from Hüseyin bin Mes'ûd el-Begavî. In Amasya he labored for a good while to spread learning and was greatly respected by the beys and the people. But because of the oppressions of Kongurtay, who resided in Amasya as the governor of Anatolia, he withdrew into seclusion near Karasenir, and because he earned his living by shepherding he became known as "Serçoban Dede."
Later, when Mahmud Gazan Khan came to the throne and accepted Islam, he was respected again. He passed to the eternal world in the time of the said khan and was buried on the hill between Kayabaşı and Karasenir.
His grave was at first open and was a place of visitation for the people. In 1292 [1875] a wooden tomb and a cell were built over it by Karasenirli Mirliva Hasan Pasha, the commander of the Hejaz. The people of that area gather there on festival days, slaughter sacrificial animals, cook meals, and distribute them to everyone.
His brother was Seyyid Alâeddin Ali Dede, who is buried on a hill to the east of Serçoban Dede, on the other side of the river. These two were among the scholars and the pious. Both were of Junaydi disposition. Serçoban Dede's lineage and scholarly chain were seen by chance on the back of a book while I was charged with examining the libraries of Istanbul.
Notes and Research
Old Words in the Text
- ensâb: lineages, those descended from a line
- ulûm-ı şer'iyye ve edebiyye: the religious sciences and the sciences of language and literature
- devr-i bilâd: traveling from city to city
- sülâle-i ilmiyye: scholarly chain, the chain of teaching extending from teacher to teacher
- müntehî: reaching, arriving at; telemmüz: being a student
- nâzır: here, the general administrator of the Ilkhanids in Anatolia
- te'ayyüş: earning one's living; ser-çoban: head shepherd
- mu'ahharan: later; cülûs: accession to the throne
- bezl etmek: to distribute generously
- geçe: bank, shore
- Cüneydî meşreb: one who follows the measured, sharia-bound Sufi path of Junayd of Baghdad
- zahr: the back of the first or last page of a book
The Scholarly Chain Reaching Begavî
The chain that Hüsameddin says he found on the back of a book in the libraries of Istanbul ties Serçoban Dede to a great scholar who lived in Khorasan in the early twelfth century. Hüseyin bin Mes'ûd el-Begavî, at the end of the chain, is the hadith scholar, Qur'an exegete and Shafi'i jurist known as Ferrâ el-Begavî. He was called Begavî after the town of Bağşûr (Bağ) between Merv al-Rudh and Herat; he settled in Merv al-Rudh, where he read fiqh and hadith with his teacher Kadı Hüseyin el-Merverrûzî, and he died in Merv al-Rudh in 516 [1122] and was buried beside his teacher. His best-known books are the Qur'an commentary titled Meâlimü't-tenzîl and the hadith works Mesâbîhu's-sünne and Şerhu's-sünne. That the nisba of Ebü'l-Kerem el-Mervezî, said in the text to have taken lessons from Begavî, also points to Merv suggests that the chain followed a road from Khorasan to Tabriz.
The dates of the chain must be read carefully. Begavî died in 1122; Serçoban Dede died in the time of Gazan Khan, that is, between 1295 and 1304. Between them lie about one hundred eighty years and, according to Hüsameddin, only three teachers (Ebü'l-Kerem el-Mervezî, Efzaleddin Tebrîzî, Ebû Hâmid Tebrîzî). This is a compressed chain that requires each generation to have been long-lived. Since Hüsameddin's source is a single note in a book, it was not possible to verify the intermediate names in the chain against other documents.
Kongurtay and Gazan Khan
Kongurtay, who drove Serçoban Dede into seclusion, was one of the oppressive Ilkhanid administrators in Anatolia. Hüsameddin tells of him in detail in the second volume of his work: he writes that because of the terrible oppressions of the Tatar beys in Anatolia, and especially of Kongurtay, the Muslim people rose in revolt group by group and withdrew to mountaintops. Kongurtay accused Sultan Gıyâseddin Keyhusrev bin Kılıç Arslan of aiding the Egyptians and proposed his dismissal to Abaqa Khan, and in 681 [1282] the sultan was indeed dismissed. In the same year Teküdar Ahmed Khan, who came to the throne on Abaqa Khan's death and became a Muslim, dismissed Kongurtay to pacify the people and summoned him to Tabriz, and brought Necmeddin Ferruh Bey to the governorship of Amasya. By these dates Serçoban Dede's teaching in Amasya and his withdrawal to Karasenir fall before 1282.
Gazan Khan is the ruler who made Islam the official religion of the Ilkhanids. He became a Muslim on 19 June 1295 in the Lar valley in the Alborz and took the name Mahmud, came to the throne in November of the same year, and died near Qazvin on 17 May 1304; thousands of Mongol soldiers became Muslims with him. Hüsameddin's saying "Mahmud Gazan Khan" agrees with this name. By this reckoning Serçoban Dede, after his seclusion in the time of Kongurtay, must have lived by shepherding for at least thirteen years, been respected again after Gazan Khan became a Muslim, and died between 1295 and 1304.
The Tomb and Its Present State
The Serçoban Tomb stands today in the center of Amasya, in the Karasenir quarter, on a hill on the west bank of the Yeşilırmak. It is a simple single-story structure with a rectangular plan and a pyramidal roof covered with European-style tiles; on its sides there are two rectangular windows each. Since it is also used today as a small mosque (mescit), it contains a mihrab and a wooden minbar. At the foot of the north wall is a rectangular grave made of concrete with turbans at the head and foot ends. In its garden are simple hearths for cooking, wooden dining tables and trees. Considering Hüsameddin's lines relating that on festival days sacrifices were slaughtered, meals cooked and distributed to everyone, these hearths and tables are traces extending to the present of a tradition a hundred and fifty years old. The tomb was repaired in part in 1980 by the headman's office of Karasenir Village and thoroughly in 1984 by a private person, and the landscaping was done by the Amasya Municipality. In some sources it is also written that the structure was renewed in 2001 by the municipality together with the landscaping.
There is a disagreement about the date the tomb was built. Hüsameddin says that the wooden tomb was built in 1292 [1875] by Karasenirli Mirliva Hasan Pasha; in some sources compiling local accounts it is written that the same tomb was built in 1878 by Karasenirli Hasan Pasha. The person who built it is the same in both accounts; what record the three-year difference rests on could not be established.
Serçoban in Local Accounts
Legends about Serçoban also live among the people. According to one, when Serçoban died each of the animals in his flock turned into a tree and the grove around the tomb came into being in this way; for this reason the local people believe that cutting the trees here brings misfortune. In another account, after long chasing a kid that had run away on the mountain and catching it, Serçoban, intending to slaughter it, was moved by the animal's gaze and let it go, saying, "You have tired me out too, blessed one." The local account also presents him as the brother of İğneci Baba, one of the well-known saints of Amasya; however, the same compilation also records that the learned Serçoban lived about a hundred and fifty years before İğneci Baba. This account of brotherhood does not square with Hüsameddin's biography based on the book note; it appears that the legend and the historical personality have become mixed with each other over time.
No information was found in other sources about the grave of his brother Seyyid Alâeddin Ali Dede, whom Hüsameddin mentions, on the east bank of the river, or about its present condition.
Bibliography
Primary sources
- Abdîzâde Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar, Amasya Tarihi, Amasya Belediyesi Kültür Yayınları, 2022, vol. 6, p. 79. amasya.bel.tr
- Abdîzâde Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar, Amasya Tarihi, vols. 1-4, Amasya Belediyesi e-book, vol. 2, account of Kongurtay and Necmeddin Ferruh Bey.
- "Serçoban", cited from Evliyalar Şehri Amasya (amasya-abdulhalim.blogspot.com, 2007).
Academic studies
- TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, entry "Begavî, Ferrâ" (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/begavi-ferra).
- TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, entry "Gāzân Han" (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/gazan-han).
Official sources
- Kültür Portalı, Kültür Envanteri, "Ser Çoban Türbesi - Amasya" (kulturportali.gov.tr).