The Nakshbandi-Khalidi sheikh and poet Mîr Hamza Nigârî once forgave Sebâtî, who had wounded him, for the sake of a certain İlhâmî; that İlhâmî was the elder brother of the poet Türbeli Hâfız Sebâtî Mehmed Efendi and lived within the Shirvani community of Amasya in the second half of the nineteenth century. Today we know him only from a few lines in a hagiography: Mîrzâde Mustafa Fahreddin Ağabali, one of Nigârî's disciples, mentions İlhâmî in the Hümâ-yı Arş, his account of his master, as a pious man, good company and much sought after in gatherings. His real name, his lifespan and his occupation are unknown. Whether he wrote poetry is also uncertain; although the form of the name "İlhâmî" suggests a pen name, no source has been found that calls him a poet.

The Record in the Hagiography

Ağabali's work was published in Baku in 2015 by Mehmet Rıhtım; what is known of İlhâmî rests on the passage quoted in Metin Hakverdioğlu's article "Mir Hamza Nigârî ve Süfyânîler", which appeared in 2016. As Hakverdioğlu relates, Sebâtî once hurt the feelings of his master Nigârî, whom Ağabali calls "Hazret-i Pîr", and Nigârî answered him with this couplet:

Seni bu bâbda rüsvâ-yı cihân ederdim
Lakin imdi seni İlhamî'ye kurban etdim

Translated: For this I would have disgraced you before the world; but now I have forgiven you for İlhâmî's sake. The couplet is Nigârî's and cannot be counted as İlhâmî's poetry. Ağabali does not tell the cause of the offence; he only explains who İlhâmî was: Sebâtî's elder brother, a pious man, good company, sought after in gatherings. From these words Hakverdioğlu concludes that Nigârî was very fond of İlhâmî and forgave Sebâtî out of regard for him; he adds that Sebâtî apologised for his fault.

Family and Circle

Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar's History of Amasya has an entry on his brother Sebâtî. According to Hüsameddin the family came from the district of Kutkaşın in the kaza of Şeki in the province of Shirvan; the father, Abdülkerîm Efendi, was the son of Hacı Mîkâil; he left Shirvan together with Hacı Hamza Efendi and settled in Erzurum, where Sebâtî was born in 1264 (1847-48). This Hacı Hamza Efendi may well be Mîr Hamza Nigârî, who came to Amasya by the same road, but the entry does not say so explicitly. Ağabali, by contrast, writes that Sebâtî was born in Kurtkaşın and moved to Erzurum with his family. If Hüsameddin's record is right, it is likely that the elder brother İlhâmî was born before the family left Shirvan or during the years of migration; this is a guess drawn from the age difference between the brothers and is not written in any source. Hüsameddin makes no mention of an elder brother in Sebâtî's entry.

Ağabali writes that after a few years in Erzurum Sebâtî came to Amasya, the city where most of the emigrants from Azerbaijan lived; the family's circle in Amasya was that of these emigrants and of the Shirvani sheikhs. Sebâtî served for some thirty years as imam at the tomb of Şirvânî Hacı İsmâil Efendi and became a disciple of Nigârî. İlhâmî's place in these gatherings, as far as can be seen from the single scene Ağabali describes, was that of a respected disciple whose word carried weight with the sheikh. Sebâtî's life and his two chronograms are told on the Sebâtî (Türbeli Hâfız Mehmed Efendi) page, and the master's literary career on the Nigârî Mîr Hamza page.

Poetry

None of İlhâmî's poems could be found. The lines quoted from the hagiography give no couplet in his voice and say nothing of him as a poet. With no entry under his name in Hüsameddin's work, he is also absent from the volume-by-volume list of Hüsameddin's poets that Hakverdioğlu published in 2024.

The State of the Sources

The name İlhâmî turns up with two earlier poets of Amasya. Hüsameddin mentions İlhâmî Hasan Çelebi (Cizyedârzâde), a divan secretary who died in 1078 (1668), on the authority of Abdî Efendi's tezkire; Bâlî İlhâmî Efendi, who lived in the sixteenth century, had used the pen name Cevherî in his youth. Two or three centuries separate Sebâtî's elder brother from both. His one appearance, moreover, is in a hagiography written by a disciple, and it reaches us at second hand. Since Ağabali's work itself could not be consulted, it is not known whether İlhâmî's name occurs elsewhere in it.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

  • Metin Hakverdioğlu, "Mir Hamza Nigârî ve Süfyânîler", Alevilik Araştırmaları Dergisi, year 6, no. 12, 2016, pp. 115-137 (İlhâmî: p. 129; quoting Mehmet Rıhtım's edition of Mîrzâde Mustafa Fahreddin Ağabali, Hümâ-yı Arş: Karabağlı Şeyh Mir Hamza Nigârî'nin Menâkıb-nâmesi, Baku 2015).

Online sources