Fedâî Baba, whose real name was Konaşoğlu Hüseyin, was a Hak âşığı, a minstrel-poet of divine love, born in 1855 in the village of Yassıçal near Amasya, where he also died in 1940. He did not play the saz, but he composed his verse extempore. He spent his life reading and writing, farming, and travelling in the winter months through Amasya and the villages around it. The two hundred and fifty-two poems he left behind were collected by Abdullah Çelebi and published in 1991 under the title Amasya'lı Fedayi Baba Divanı. These poems carry the voice of the Alevi-Bektashi world of belief around Amasya at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century; the same divan brings together the basic concepts of Sufism, love for the Ahl al-Bayt and for Karbala, the villages and tombs he visited, the Turkish War of Independence and Atatürk.

Fedâî Baba's life is told in a separate article in the Historical Figures section of our site. Here the weight falls on his poetry, his divan, his literary persona and the world of belief on which his poems rest. Those of his poems whose texts are found in the sources appear in this section as separate articles, each with the original text, a modern Turkish rendering and a commentary.

His Life

His father was Konaşoğlu İsmail and his mother Zehra Bacı; his paternal line goes back to Seyyid Bali Ergonaş, who lies buried at Uluköy in the district of Taşova, and the name "Konaşoğlu" derives from him. As the only son of the family, his father wanted him to become a madrasa teacher; the boy, however, would not stay at home and spent his nights sleeping in tombs. He studied for two years in Amasya at the Kapıağa Madrasa at the head of the Kunç Bridge. According to a story told in the introduction to the divan, he left the madrasa because he could not bear to hear his teacher praise Muawiya, and gave himself to Sufism; Cafer Özdemir, on the other hand, suggests that the deep learning in his poems may be taken as a sign that he completed his madrasa education. He received his Sufi training at the Keçeci Baba Ocağı in Erbaa, in the province of Tokat, from Derûnî Baba, a descendant of Sheikh Mahmud Velî, and stayed with his spiritual guide for seven years, serving as imam in the village of Keçeci. He married three times: with Gülizar Bacı he had a son and two daughters, with Hanife Bacı a daughter, and finally he married a widow named Huma. In 1934 he took the surname Gümüş, and he died on 26 October 1940. For the details of his life, see the article Fedâî Baba: The Hak Âşığı of Yassıçal.

His Ties to Amasya

Fedâî Baba's connection with Amasya is plain both in his life and in his poetry. Yassıçal, his birthplace, formerly called Ebemü, is a settlement belonging to central Amasya; the Turkish abstract of Özdemir's article describes it as one of the "central neighbourhoods", while the English abstract calls it one of the central villages. He received his madrasa education in Amasya, spent most of his life farming there, and passed on what he knew by travelling through the Alevi-Bektashi villages of the Amasya region. The poet names his homeland in his own lines as well. In the first of two quatrains that Özdemir quotes from the divan, Amasya is called "our home province":

Amasya vatan ilimiz
Arzumuz Hubuyar Sultan
Hakka mâlumdur hâlimiz
Arzumuz Hubuyar Sultan

In the other he names both his town and the village of his birth, and praises the streams that swell in spring:

Fedayi'nin her yeri methetmektir huyu
Şehrimiz Amasya Ebemü köyü
Baharda şenlenir dereler suyu
Coşkun coşkun akar seli Dive'nin

Today Fedâî Baba's tomb stands in Yassıçal and is counted among the places of visitation in the area. For the village itself and the name Ebemü in the poet's quatrain, see the article Yassıçal (Yaylagöl); for the general setting of the minstrel tradition in Amasya, see the minstrel tradition in Amasya.

His Divan and the Sources of His Poems

The main way to reach Fedâî Baba's poems today is Amasya'lı Fedayi Baba Divanı, prepared by Abdullah Çelebi and published in Istanbul by Can Yayınları in 1991. The divan contains two hundred and fifty-two poems; the introduction to the book also relates the poet's life, his family, the legends told about him and his dream. Most of what is known of his life rests on this introduction and on the accounts of relatives such as his daughter Zehra Demir.

The text of the edition is not without problems. Özdemir notes that word errors and grammatical mistakes were frequently made when the poems were transcribed and that the divan therefore needs to be revised; he states openly that he made spelling and grammatical corrections in his own quotations. Sabri Yücel, for his part, writes that some formal faults in the poems arise from the difficulty of reading the manuscript texts. Özdemir nevertheless stresses that this collection holds an important place in Turkish literature, because it brought together the great majority of the poet's poems and saved them from oblivion. The texts of the sixteen poems in this section are based on a selection taken from the divan and published online; this selection gives the poems with the spelling of the divan and with some typesetting errors. The texts have been left untouched, except that a few obvious typesetting errors have been corrected, and this is noted in the relevant article.

The similarity of pen names has caused some confusion. Mehmet Yardımcı records that the poems of Fedâî of Zile and of Fedâî Baba of Amasya, who used the same pen name, have been mixed up. Fedai Koç, a contemporary saz poet from the village of Sarımeşe in Amasya who lived in Germany, also bears the same pen name; he is a different person and has his own entry in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü (Dictionary of Names in Turkish Literature).

His Initiation as a Minstrel and His Pen Name

In minstrel literature, the transformation of an ordinary person into an artist is usually tied to a dream: a dream is seen, the bade, a drink of initiation, is taken from the hands of the saints, and a pen name is bestowed. The dream told in the introduction to the divan fits this tradition exactly. One day Fedâî Baba goes to a place opposite the village called "the Great Saint" and falls asleep while reciting prayers. In his dream a white bird larger than a goose or a stork takes him on its back and carries him to a place called "Bingaziler", where a ghazi lies beneath every dome. Under the last dome sit three radiant figures, one dressed in black, one in green and one in red. The one in green places Fedâî's hand on his own knee and recites verses from the Qur'an; then he is given a milk-like drink, called "the cup of the pir". Two attendants at the door tell him that these three are the Prophet Muhammad, Ali and Hacı Bektaş Velî. His family finds him but cannot wake him; he wakes of his own accord, and in the dream he has been given the pen name Fedâî.

Özdemir points out that this story carries all the elements of the dream motif of the minstrel tradition: the dream is seen at a tomb, religious figures appear in it, the bade is drunk and the minstrel wakes of his own accord. The poet carried the dream into his poetry as well. In one quatrain he tells how his pen name was given to him by the saints:

Cümle erenler bir araya geldiler
Aslımı zatımı sorup bildiler
Hulusî kalbime nazar kıldılar
Koydular ismimi oldum Fedâî

His Literary Persona

Fedâî Baba used the forms of both folk poetry and divan poetry. Under the influence of his madrasa education he tried the couplet and the aruz metre alongside the quatrain and the syllabic metre, but the great majority of the poems in his divan are koşma, deyiş and nefes in keeping with the minstrel tradition. Özdemir notes that the language of his poems in the divan style is heavier and that the poet appears more successful in the poems he composed in the folk tradition. According to Sabri Yücel he touched on almost every subject, but showed his true gift in the poems in which he expressed Alevi-Bektashi thought, philosophy and culture; his language is plain and easy to understand.

The main subjects of the divan are verses of the Qur'an, man, the events of Karbala, the virtues of Ali, counsels and poems of praise, Atatürk, Amasya and the places he visited as an itinerant minstrel. The poet often turns to poems in the manner of the nutuk, in which the didactic side predominates. In his poems of counsel he explains, with concrete examples, what a person must do to win both this world and the next; the quatrain that begins "Malım mülküm deyip dünyaya tapma" (Do not worship the world, saying "my wealth, my property") is a typical example. In Özdemir's view these poems go beyond a dry transmission of knowledge; the fervour in them adds to the success of the poet's style.

Fedâî drew on the great Sufi poets who came before him. In his lines "Bin hacc'iyle beraberdir sevabı / Âşığın gönlünü görmeli dilber" (its merit equals a thousand pilgrimages; the beloved should look into the lover's heart), Özdemir sees an echo of Yunus Emre's "Gerekse var bin hacca / Hepisinden iyice / Bir gönüle girmektir" (go on a thousand pilgrimages if you will; better than all of them is to enter a heart), but adds that whereas Yunus ranks entering a heart above a thousand pilgrimages, Fedâî counts the two as equal. He also finds the line "Gerçek ölmez don değişti hay oldu" (the true one does not die; he changed his garment and became the Living) close to Yunus's "Ölen hayvan imiş, âşıklar ölmez" (it is the beast that dies; lovers do not die). The feeling of Fuzûlî's couplet "Aşk derdiyle hoşem el çek ilâcumdan tabîb" (I am content with the pain of love; physician, keep your cure from me) is voiced again in Fedâî's couplet "Her ne denlü cevrederse yâr bana safâ gelür" (however much the beloved torments me, it comes to me as delight). At times the poet reproaches those around him and complains that speaking the truth, and even working miracles, is not enough to make people believe:

Ey Fedâî keşf-i keramet açsan
Dehanından dür ü gevherler saçsan
Pervaz kılıp arş-ı semada uçsan
Gene inanmazlar sihirbaz derler

Sufism and Alevi-Bektashi Belief in His Poetry

According to Özdemir's study, the subject Fedâî Baba dwells on most in his poetry is the mürşit, the spiritual guide. For the poet a guide can only be found by seeking him, and a person without a guide cannot know himself even if he is a scholar; the world is a sea, the heart a ship, and the guide the captain of that ship. The disciple must possess trust in God and contentment, and must carry no love in his heart other than the love of God. Remembrance of God, the zikir, is the food of the soul and the polish of the heart. Embracing the doctrine of the unity of being, the poet says that he sees God wherever he looks, and he makes Hallaj's saying "ana'l-Haqq" (I am the Truth) his own to the point of being ready to go to the gallows for it. The four gates and forty stations, dying before death, the four elements, the pole, the Forty and the Three Hundred, being an ârif, a knower of God, and the "nâciye fırkası", the sect destined for salvation, are other themes that recur often in his poems.

Fedâî openly declares his attachment to the Bektashi path: "Biz güruh-ı nâciyânı tarîk-i Bektaşîyiz" (we are of the saved company, of the Bektashi path). The figure he dwells on most in his poems is Ali, whom he describes as the sultan of sainthood, the treasury of the hidden knowledge (ledün), the master of the four gates and the gate of salvation. In his düvaznâmes he counts the twelve imams; Hüseyin, Hasan, Fatima, the Prophet Muhammad and Hacı Bektaş Velî also appear frequently in his poems. Concepts such as tevellâ and teberrâ (loving the friends of the Ahl al-Bayt and shunning their enemies), musahip, muhip, ikrar, lokma and the belief in the Mahdi have their place in the divan. The basic acts of worship of Islam, such as prayer, alms and pilgrimage, are also mentioned, but mostly in an esoteric reading. His koşma that seeks the Kaaba in the human face is the clearest example of this.

Another distinctive feature of the poet's work is the symbolism of letters. Özdemir recalls that the Bektashi belief in the hidden meanings of letters comes from Hurufism; Fedâî describes the word "aşk" (love) as "three letters, five dots", and points with the letter "mim" to the Prophet Muhammad and with the letter "cim" to Gabriel. The eulogy of Ali that runs from Elif to Ye and the nefes that reads the human face through the twelve imams, both in this section, are the densest examples of this language.

His Circle and Influence

The Keçeci Baba Ocağı is a living centre of faith across a wide region that takes in Tokat, Amasya, Sivas, Çorum, Samsun and Ordu, and many Sufis and minstrels have come out of it; Fedâî Baba is one of them. In one poem the poet says that he visited Sheikh Mahmud Velî, known as Keçeci Baba; he tells of his lineage, his coming to Anatolia, the functions of the ocak and the legends about it. According to Sabri Yücel, Fedâî passed the Sufi culture he received from the ocak on to younger minstrels around him, such as Engünî, Mevâlî, Ruhânî and Ligarî, and trained other minstrels as well. In a poem he composed for the village of Ohtab in Tokat, one of the places he visited, he states that the villagers belong to the "nâciye fırkası". Özdemir stresses that in his lifetime the poet tried to educate the people and to build bonds of brotherhood within Anatolian society, and that, although he had a strong influence in the region, he has not been sufficiently studied.

The Poems in This Section

The sixteen poems whose full texts are found in the sources, together with the four quatrains quoted in Cafer Özdemir's article and cited above, appear in this section as separate articles. The quatrains are fragments of longer poems; those poems in full and the remaining poems of the divan are today found only in the 1991 edition.

  • Deyiş 1: "Hak seni kullara yardımcı kıldı" (a supplication to Hızır)
  • Deyiş 2: "Yeri göğü her eşyayı aradım" (I found it within myself)
  • Deyiş 3: "Gel ey kardeş hacı olmak dilersen" (the Kaaba is the human face)
  • Deyiş 4: "İlmi câvidandan haber almayan"
  • Deyiş 5: "Bu Ledün İlmini ârifler bilir"
  • Deyiş 6: "Vücudun evini seyran eyledim"
  • Eulogy 1: "Söylenir dillerde bir A'licenab"
  • Eulogy 2: "Eliftir evvela a'lemi yoktan vâr eden" (eulogy of Ali)
  • Elegy 1: "Tabib el çek yarelerim saraman"
  • Elegy 2: "Bir derdimi bin dermana değişmem"
  • Elegy 3: "Mahi Muharremde Mü'min olanlar"
  • Ghazal 1: "Biz Muhibbi Hanedanı Haydar-ı Kerrar'danız"
  • Ghazal 2: "Kâinata nizam veren kutup sultanı sen oldun" (for Atatürk)
  • Ghazal 3: "Biz İslâm-ız dini ba'tıl olanlardan değiliz"
  • Nefes 1: "Veçh-in harfi ümmül-kitap"
  • Lament 1: "Yerden göğe hayıf oldu" (on the death of Atatürk)
  • Quatrain 1: "Amasya vatan ilimiz"
  • Quatrain 2: "Fedayi'nin her yeri methetmektir huyu" (the village of Ebemü)
  • Quatrain 3: "Cümle erenler bir araya geldiler" (the bestowal of the pen name)
  • Quatrain 4: "Ey Fedâî keşf-i keramet açsan"

Chronology

1855: Konaşoğlu Hüseyin was born in the village of Yassıçal (Ebemü) near Amasya.

Date uncertain: He studied for two years at the Kapıağa Madrasa in Amasya.

Date uncertain: He served for seven years as imam in the village of Keçeci in Erbaa, beside his spiritual guide Derûnî Baba.

1934: He took the surname Gümüş.

1938-1940: On the death of Atatürk he composed his lament with the refrain "Eyvah göçtü Türk atası" (alas, the father of the Turks has passed away).

26 October 1940: He died in Yassıçal.

1991: His poems were published by Abdullah Çelebi under the title Amasya'lı Fedayi Baba Divanı.

2017: Cafer Özdemir's article "Hak Âşığı Amasyalı Fedâî Baba ve Tasavvuf Kültürü" was published as an expanded version of a paper presented at the International Symposium on the Scholars of Amasya.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Abdullah Çelebi, Amasya'lı Fedayi Baba Divanı, Istanbul: Can Yayınları, 1991.

Academic studies

Books

Other sources

Online sources