İsmail Sıracüddin Şirvânî was a sheikh and scholar who spread the Khalidi branch of the Naqshbandiyya in the Caucasus in the first half of the nineteenth century, emigrated from Shirvan because of Russian pressure and spent the last years of his life in Amasya. History books remember him mostly as a spiritual guide, a teacher and the master who trained the spiritual leaders of the resistance in the Caucasus. His side as an author long remained unknown: not even Hüseyin Hüsameddin's detailed biography attributes a work to him. Yet Şirvânî wrote forty-two treatises in Arabic on the theoretical and practical questions of Sufism, and these treatises were edited and translated into Turkish in 2018. This page deals with these treatises and with Şirvânî's relationship with Amasya.

According to Hüsameddin he was born in 1197 (1782-83) in the village of Kürdemir in the district of Shamakhi in the province of Shirvan. He studied in Shamakhi, Erzincan and elsewhere, received his deputyship from Mevlânâ Hâlid-i Bağdâdî (Khalid al-Baghdadi) in Baghdad in 1228 (1813), and began teaching and guiding in Shamakhi. He joined the movement of the sheikhs who rose against the Russians, was held for a time by the Russians, and in 1242 (1827) came to Amasya with his family. When his views on râbıta caused controversy among the city's scholars he went to Sivas in 1247 (1831-32), returned to Amasya for the second time in 1256 (1840), and died in Amasya on the seventeenth day of Ramadan 1264 (1848). The presentation of the 2018 edition gives the year of his death as 1269/1853. His life, his deputies and his tomb are told in detail in the biography İsmail Sıracüddin Şirvânî.

Works

The Treatises (Risâleler)

Type and language: Short treatises in Arabic on Sufism. According to the presentation by Orkhan Musakhanov, who prepared the edition, Şirvânî wrote forty-two treatises on these subjects; some of them are translations and some original works. The presentation does not give the dates or places of writing of the treatises.

Contents: The treatises deal in summary form with the basic topics of Sufism from the Mujaddidi-Naqshbandi point of view. According to Musakhanov, their content and style amount to a summary of the Maktubat of Imam Rabbani (Ahmad Sirhindi) and bring together the theoretical and practical principles of the Mujaddidi Naqshbandiyya; the editor therefore regards them as a "mi'yâr-ı tarikat", a measure of the order, for the Mujaddidi Naqshbandiyya. In the chain Hüsameddin gives, Şirvânî's spiritual lineage goes back through Mevlânâ Hâlid and Abdullah Dehlevî to Imam Rabbani and Baha al-Din Naqshband. That the treatises rest on the founding text of this chain suggests that their aim was less to build a new teaching than to convey the principles of the order to a sheikh's disciples in a short and instructive form; this is our assessment.

The controversy over râbıta told in the biography gains meaning in this context. Râbıta, the practice of holding the image of the sheikh in one's heart, was important to the Khalidis, and Mevlânâ Hâlid himself wrote a treatise defending it. Hüsameddin writes that the "Khalidi râbıta" Şirvânî taught the people unsettled the minds of the scholars of Amasya, and that, hurt by the objections preachers raised from the pulpit, he went to Sivas in 1247. Since we have not seen their texts, we cannot say whether the treatises bear directly on this controversy in Amasya.

Edition: Orkhan Musakhanov, Risaleler: Müceddidî-Hâlidî Nakşîliğin Esasları, Istanbul: Büyüyen Ay, 2018 (280 pages). The edition contains the critically edited text of the treatises and their Turkish translation, together with a study of the author's life, his licence, his deputies and the sources and content of the treatises.

The Licence of Khalid al-Baghdadi

Though not a work of his own, the most remarkable document in Şirvânî's written legacy is the licence (icazetnâme) granted to him by Mevlânâ Hâlid-i Bağdâdî. According to the presentation of the 2018 edition, the copy of this licence in the author's own hand, its Arabic typeset text and a Turkish translation are appended to the edition. Hüsameddin also writes that Şirvânî stayed some ten months in Mevlânâ Hâlid's house of spiritual discipline in Baghdad, completed the path and received his deputyship.

Amasya in His Works

We have not been able to identify a passage mentioning Amasya in Şirvânî's treatises, nor is it known which of them were written in Amasya. Since he spent two periods of his life, 1827-1831 and 1840-1848, in Amasya, it is possible that some of the treatises were written here, but this is a guess. In Amasya he left lessons rather than written works: according to Hüsameddin, on his second arrival scholars and students attended the lessons on the Tefsîr-i Beyzâvî that he began in the Yakutiye mosque, and for some eight years he taught exegesis, hadith and the theological work Mevâkıf and granted licences to his advanced students.

Şirvânî's known sayings about Amasya do not occur in his own writings; they have come down to us thanks to Hüsameddin's record:

Merhûm Amasya'yı ulemâ ve erkânıyla pek ziyâde sever ve takdîr eder, Amasya'ya "ilim ve ulemâ yatağı" derdi. Sivas'dan ikinci defa Amasya'ya geldiğini soranlara "cehâletden kaçıp ilim yatağına sığındım" demişti.

In English: The late sheikh greatly loved and esteemed Amasya with its scholars and notables, and used to call Amasya "the bed of learning and scholars". To those who asked why he had come to Amasya a second time from Sivas he had said: "I fled from ignorance and took refuge in the bed of learning." The saying also explains his return to the city after the controversy over râbıta with the scholars of Amasya. According to Hüsameddin, on his second arrival he attended the gatherings of Şeyhzâde Ahmed Rüşdü Efendi and won the favour of the scholars.

Influence and Assessment in the Sources

Şirvânî's influence spread through the people he trained rather than through his works. According to Musakhanov's presentation, he spread the Khalidi Naqshbandiyya from Daghestan to Karabakh and, through the deputies he trained, led the way to the beginning of Sheikh Shamil's movement in the Caucasus. In Amasya the Azerbaijani Naqshbandi poet Mîr Hamza Nigârî was his deputy and Îsâ Rûhî Efendi his son-in-law and pupil; Metin Hakverdioğlu writes that Şirvânî was the most fundamental factor in the migrations from Azerbaijan to Amasya, and that hundreds of scholars and thousands of Azerbaijani Turks came here because of him.

His side as an author, however, remained invisible until recently. The presentation of the 2018 edition says plainly that, while his other aspects are known, "his authorship is not known". That Hüsameddin praises him as "most learned, an investigator, deeply versed in the rational and transmitted sciences" yet mentions no work of his confirms this observation. That the treatises are in Arabic suggests that they circulated among the people of the madrasa and the lodge rather than among the Turkish-reading circles of Amasya and Anatolia. The rise of his son Şirvânîzâde Mehmed Rüşdü Pasha to the grand vizierate, and the tomb and mosque he built for his father in Amasya, wrote the sheikh's name into the stone of the city.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Books

Online sources