Habib-i Karamânî was a Khalwati sheikh who lived in Amasya in the second half of the fifteenth century and died there. As one of the deputies of Sayyid Yahya Shirvani who returned to Anatolia, he played a part in the spread of the Khalwatiyya in Anatolia, and the lodge (zâviye) he founded in Amasya was kept alive by his descendants for four hundred years. The trace he left as an author, however, is very slight: a book of counsel named in the sources whose copy has not been found, a Sufi work in verse that the Amasya historian Hüseyin Hüsameddin attributes to him and from which he quotes a few couplets, and sayings of his translated and commented on in a mathnawi by his disciple Dâvûd-ı Halvetî. This page brings these fragments together and gives the source of each separately.

He was born in Ortaköy near Niğde; since Niğde then belonged to the province of Karaman, he was known by the name Karamânî. He went to Shirvan, spent twelve years in the service of Sayyid Yahya Shirvani and received his deputyship from him. He returned to Anatolia in the 1450s, travelled between Ankara, Aydın, Kayseri, Konya and Karaman, and made the pilgrimage three times. In İskilip he married the daughter of Sheikh Yavsî and founded endowments there; when he fell out with his father-in-law he came to Amasya. According to Hüsameddin he settled in the lodge built for him beside the Mehmed Pasha Mosque, preached in the Yakub Pasha Mosque, became the sheikh of Prince Ahmed and died on the night of the Miraj in 902 (1497). His tomb is within the Mehmed Pasha soup kitchen (imaret). His life, his deputies and his lodge are told in detail in the biography Habib-i Karamânî.

Works

Kitâbü'n-Nesâyih

The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi writes that the sources record a work by Habib Karamânî called Kitâbü'n-Nesâyih ("Book of Counsels"), but that no copy of it has been found. Its title suggests a book of Sufi and moral counsel; its language, length and place of writing are unknown. The bibliography of the encyclopaedia article suggests that this record comes from the Hediyyetü'l-ârifîn and from Bursalı Mehmed Tâhir's Osmanlı Müellifleri; we have not been able to check ourselves exactly which source contains it.

Etvâr-ı Seb'a

Closing his biography of Habib in Amasya Tarihi, Hüsameddin says: "Tasavvufdan 'Etvâr-ı Seb'a' adlı manzûm bir eseri vardır. Sülûkdan bâhisdir." That is, he has a work in verse on Sufism called "The Seven Stages", which deals with the spiritual path (sülûk), the dervish's inner journey. Etvâr-ı seb'a is the name given to the seven stages of the self, beginning with the commanding self (emmâre) and passing through the stages of the reproaching (levvâme), the inspired (mülhime) and the tranquil (mutmainne) self to end with the perfect self (kâmile). According to Suat Donuk, each of these stages is passed by reciting one of seven names of God; most Khalwati dervishes wrote works on the subject, and those who carried on the tradition include Habib's own master Sayyid Yahya Shirvani and his contemporary Cemâl-i Halvetî. Hüsameddin quotes two passages from this work. The first is a single couplet on the essence of God and the proof of His existence, the second a six-couplet passage in praise of the Prophet (na't).

These two passages are the only verses attributed to Habib whose text has come down to us. Each is given on a separate page with its original text, a modern rendering and commentary: Habib-i Karamânî, Couplet 1 and Habib-i Karamânî, Naat 1. Hüsameddin does not say from which copy he took these couplets, and there is no edition of the work. However, the list of etvâr-ı seb'a works that Donuk takes from the findings of Ramazan Muslu includes a work entitled Manzûme fi'l-etvâri's-seb'a registered under the name "Habîb Ömer Halvânî" (Süleymaniye Library, Esad Efendi no. 1321, fols. 1-51). Habib Karamânî is said to have descended on his father's side from the caliph Umar, and the heading of the copy of his Amasya endowment deed published in the journal Çorumlu calls him "Şeyh Habîb-i Ömerî". It is therefore possible that this manuscript is the Etvâr-ı Seb'a Hüsameddin mentions. As we have not seen the copy, this identification remains a possibility.

His Sayings in the Gülşen-i Tevhîd

Another written record of Habib's sayings is in the work of his disciple. Dâvûd-ı Halvetî of Mudurnu, after studying in Baghdad, went to Amasya and joined Habib Karamânî, who sent him to Mudurnu to spread the Khalwatiyya. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, a quarter of the Gülşen-i Tevhîd, which Dâvûd wrote at the request of Kızıl Ahmed of the Isfendiyarids, is devoted to the subject of etvâr-ı seb'a; in the other sections, together with certain verses and hadiths, sayings of Ali, Abu Said Abu'l-Khayr, Suhrawardi, Ibn Arabi, Rumi, Sayyid Yahya Shirvani and Habib Karamânî are taken as headings and translated and commented on in verse. The work is a mixture of Turkish and Arabic and is mostly in mathnawi form. Copies are in the Library of the Mevlânâ Museum in Konya (no. 5694, dated 1633) and in the Süleymaniye Library (Hacı Mahmud Efendi no. 3329; Reşid Efendi no. 427). As we have not seen the text of the work, we cannot say which of the sayings are Habib's.

A saying recorded in Lâmiî Çelebi's translation of the Nafahat is also a small example of Habib's language. On the day he arrived in Shirvan, Sayyid Yahya had him sit before a window; to express that at that moment he had passed away in his master, Habib said: "He came, we went."

The State of the Sources

The attribution of the Etvâr-ı Seb'a to Habib rests on Hüsameddin's record alone; the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi article on Habib does not mention this work and names only the Kitâbü'n-Nesâyih. The "Habîb Ömer Halvânî" record in the Süleymaniye may support Hüsameddin, but until it is verified the attribution of the quoted couplets should be read with care. On the other hand, the fact that a quarter of the verse Gülşen-i Tevhîd by Habib's disciple in Amasya, Dâvûd-ı Halvetî, is devoted to etvâr-ı seb'a, and that Habib's sayings appear in the same work with verse commentaries, suggests that the couplets in Hüsameddin's hands came from an etvâr poem produced in this circle, but that whether they belong to the master or the disciple may have become confused. This is a possibility; since we have been unable to compare the two texts, it remains our inference.

The word "habîb" in the last couplet of the na't passage can also be read in two ways. "Habîb" (beloved) is one of the epithets of the Prophet, and the couplet is complete with this meaning. That the same word is also the sheikh's name might suggest a pen-name subtlety. As no pen name of Habib's is recorded in the sources, this second reading too remains no more than an interpretation.

Amasya in His Works

There is no word mentioning Amasya in the couplets attributed to Habib. His link with the city is made through the circle in which his sayings were handed down. The couplets have been preserved in the book of Amasya's own historian Hüsameddin, within the long entry describing Habib's lodge in Amasya and the chain of sheikhs that continued after him for four hundred years. Dâvûd-ı Halvetî, who commented on his sayings in verse, also met him and joined him in Amasya. In Hüsameddin's record, the Sufi work Risâle-i Tâciyye by Tâceddin Mahmud Çelebi, counted among Habib's deputies, the ethical treatise Akabât by Hayreddin Hızır Efendi, and the three works his grandson Seydîzâde Habib Efendi presented to Süleyman the Magnificent when he came to Amasya in 1554 show that the circle Habib founded went on writing in Amasya.

Influence and Assessment in the Sources

Habib's influence is seen less in what he wrote than in those he trained. The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi counts him as one of the five famous deputies of Sayyid Yahya Shirvani and among the Sufis who played an important role in the spread of the Khalwatiyya in Anatolia; it notes that the order continued mostly through Pîr Muhammed Erzincânî and his deputies. Hüsameddin presents him as the sheikh of Prince Ahmed, "a great master of the Khalwati order", and lists his deputies one by one. Most of what is known about him comes from Lâmiî Çelebi's translation of the Nafahat, Taşköprizâde's al-Shaqaiq, biographical sources such as Mecdî and Atâî, and Hüsameddin's account based on endowment deeds and court registers. As an author, with a book of counsel whose copy has not been found and a few couplets whose attribution rests on a single source, he remains a sheikh who lives on in other people's books rather than from his own pen.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Online sources