The spiritual life of Amasya is one of the things that set the city apart from other centers of learning in Anatolia. Its madrasas, its princely court and its judges shaped the daily order of the city, and so did its dervish lodges, of which the Halvetî lodges were the most numerous and the most enduring. Halvetism is a path built on cehrî dhikr, that is, remembrance performed aloud and in company, with hymns, qasidas and a range of instruments woven into the ritual. In Amasya the presence of this path over four centuries left the city more than a network of religious institutions: it also produced a distinctive lodge culture in poetry, calligraphy and music. This article looks at the musical and ritual side of that culture; the general history of the orders belongs to a separate article, and the tradition of music therapy at the Bimarhane to another subject altogether.

The Arrival of Halvetism in Amasya

Sources trace the Halvetiyya to Ömer el-Halvetî, who came from the Geylân region southwest of the Caspian Sea, and to his chain of transmission. The order's second pir, regarded in a sense as its real founder, was Seyyid Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî, who was born in Shamakhi and died in Baku in 1463-64. The order took shape and grew in Azerbaijan, and from there spread to Anatolia and on to the Balkans, Syria, Egypt and North Africa. According to the entry on the Halvetiyya in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the man who brought the order to Anatolia was Pîr İlyas of Amasya, one of the successors (khalifa) of Sadreddîn-i Hiyâvî.

Kadir Özköse, who has written on Halvetism in Amasya, stresses this point. Some researchers have written that the order entered the city during the governorship of Bayezid II in Amasya, but this is incorrect; Halvetism spread in Amasya through Pîr İlyas. Pîr İlyas returned to Amasya in 1406, after the death of Timur, and a year later his relative Hâce Celal Çelebi built the Gümüşlüoğlu Lodge and placed it at the order's disposal. According to Özköse this was the first lodge in Amasya assigned exclusively to the Halvetîs, and it helped the city restore the social order that had been shaken during the interregnum. Pîr İlyas's death is given as 833 (1429). His son-in-law Abdurrahman Çelebi, who succeeded him, also served as mufti of Amasya, wrote fervent poems under the pen name Hüsamî, and is remembered as a man fond of the whirling samâ.

The real expansion of Halvetism across Ottoman lands came through Şirvânî's other successors. Habîb-i Karamânî traveled through the regions of Karaman, Ankara, Amasya and Sivas, and when he settled in Amasya he carried on his teaching in the complex that Hızır Paşazâde Mehmed Paşa built for him in 1485. A chain of transmission begun by Karamânî's successor in Amasya, el-Hâc Hızır-ı Amâsî, later gave rise to the Şemsiyye branch. As Halvetism divided in later centuries into branches such as the Cemâliyye, the Sünbüliyye and the Şabâniyye, many of their sheikhs were trained in the lodges of Amasya.

The Halvetî Lodges of Amasya

The sixteen Halvetî lodges named in Özköse's article are the following: Çilehâne, Şamlar, Şehre Küstü, Kuşbaz, Hızır Paşa, Çevikçe, Meydan, Sâdeddin, Hoca Sultan, Gümüşlüoğlu, Ehlullah, Kutub, Mehmed Paşa, Müftüoğlu, Mahmud Çelebi and Ak Hasanoğlu. The author also mentions the Nuhoğlu Lodge in addition to these. Their founding dates range from 1404 to 1829; some were built for the Halvetîs from the start, others belonged to another order and passed to the Halvetîs later. The Mahmud Çelebi Lodge is an example. Described as the first Naqshbandi lodge in Anatolia, it was built in 1404 for Rükneddin Mahmud Buhârî, a successor of Shah-i Naqshband. In the time of Bayezid II, Halvetî sheikhs took charge there, and the Halvetî custom was carried on together with the hatm-i hâcegân prayer.

One of the best-known of these lodges is the Çilehâne (Yâkub Paşa) Lodge, near the Tomb of the Pirs. Pazarlıoğlu Yâkub Paşa, beylerbey of Ankara, had it built in 1412 for the mufti Gümüşlüzâde Abdurrahman Çelebi, and its endowment deed was registered in February 1413 by the judge of Amasya, Mevlânâ Rükneddin Mahmud. Bayezid II had the building rebuilt in masonry in 1485, and in 1894 it was rebuilt again with the effort of the townspeople and income set aside from the endowments of Abdülhamid II. Because so many sheikhs were trained there, the building was nicknamed the "dervish factory." The plan described by M. Baha Tanman in his entry on the halvethâne is a good example for understanding how a Halvetî lodge organized dhikr and seclusion. The mosque on the qibla side is flanked by three seclusion cells on either side. These square cells measure about 1.90 by 1.90 meters; each has two doors, each is fitted with a hearth and a cupboard niche, those adjoining the mihrab wall have a window, and the remaining four were left without windows. In Halvetism the periods of withdrawal known as çile are spent in cells of this kind, and for dhikr and prayer the dervish would come out to the mosque connected to the tevhidhâne. Tanman finds it surprising that this lodge plan, which survives in its original form from the early Ottoman period, was not continued in later Halvetî buildings.

Some of the other lodges have lost their traces. The Hızır Paşa Lodge was founded in 1564, burned in 1730, and its site can no longer be located. The Müftüoğlu Lodge was built in 1603, burned in 1688, and its site could not be determined. After the fire of 1808 the Nuhoğlu Lodge also lost its endowments, and the site became a cemetery, first for sheikhs and then for everyone. The Hoca Sultan Lodge was divided among the sheikh's heirs in 1759, and when Caucasian refugees were settled in the Mehmed Paşa Lodge in 1879 the building became a private house. The Çevikçe Lodge was converted into a madrasa in 1843. Sheikhdoms changed hands as much as buildings did; the passing of the Şamlar Lodge to the Naqshbandis is one example.

What Tekke Music Is

According to Nuri Özcan's entry in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, Turkish religious music is studied in two branches, mosque music and lodge music. Lodge music, which has recently also been called Sufi music, is defined as "the music that arises during the dhikr of orders that perform cehrî dhikr, based mostly on rhythm and sometimes accompanied by one or several instruments." Its forms are usually listed as the Mevlevî ayin, the ilahi, the mersiye, the durak, the şuğul and the nefes. The boundaries are not sharp, however. The ilahi, mevlid, miraciyye, naat, qasida, tevşih and mersiye were used in both mosque and lodge. The dhikr ilahi sung by the zâkirs during dhikr and the cumhur ilahi sung collectively outside dhikr belong to the lodge, the Ramadan ilahis sung during tarawih belong to the mosque, and the mersiyes of the month of Muharram belong to both.

To understand the place of this music in the lodge, one distinction in the entry has to be kept in mind. In the ceremonies held in lodges the real purpose is dhikr. Although the works sung in dhikr gatherings form a musical gathering, music is not the purpose but a tool used to carry the dhikr forward. For this reason it would be misleading to think of lodge music as a concert repertoire. The ilahi is chosen according to the course of the dhikr, the rhythm changes with the pace of the dhikr, and word and melody serve the one who performs dhikr, not the listener.

Kuûdî, Kıyâmî and Devrânî Dhikr

Özcan writes that in orders other than the Mevlevî and the Bektashi, dhikr is generally performed seated on the knees, standing, and in a circular walking form. Dhikr performed kneeling and turning the head from side to side, or rising up on the knees and sitting back down, is called kuûdî; dhikr performed standing, bending from the waist and rising, turning right and left on the spot and swaying, is called kıyâmî. Dhikr performed standing arm in arm or hand in hand, with the right foot slightly forward and the left slightly behind, advancing and turning continuously from right to left at a steady tempo, is devrânî. Within a single ceremony the rhythm of the kuûd, kıyam and devran dhikrs differs. The dhikr begins with a slow rhythm, gradually grows livelier, and ends in ecstasy.

The Sufi outlook of an order is reflected in the music of its ceremony as well. Özcan notes that the Celvetî ceremony has an attitude that invites reverence rather than ecstasy, which is not found in a Halvetî or Kâdirî ceremony. The liveliness and exuberance of the Rifâî ceremony are likewise absent from the Naqshbandi ceremony. The dhikr of a Halvetî lodge is thus distinguished from the measured whirling of a Mevlevî semâhâne and also from the calm atmosphere of a Celvetî gathering; it follows a livelier and louder course.

The Structure of Halvetî Dhikr

In the Halvetiyya the spiritual journey is made with seven names: lâ ilâhe illallah, Allah, hû, hak, hay, kayyûm and kahhâr. To these names correspond the seven stages of the self: emmâre, levvâme, mülhime, mutmainne, râzıye, marziyye and kâmile. The disciple's progress through each stage depends on reciting the name that belongs to it and purifying the self. The number varies among the branches; Dede Ömer Rûşenî and Şemseddin Sivâsî raised the number of names to twelve with additions, and Nûreddin Cerrâhî took it up to twenty-eight. The dhikrs, prayers and wirds that the disciple recites alone each day change with the days of the week; Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî's Virdü's-settâr is given particular weight.

On certain days of the week the dhikr performed collectively and aloud in the lodges is called darb-ı esmâ, devran or hadra. In the devran, ilahis are sung. The dervishes form a circle seated, continue the dhikr standing, and then begin the devran. According to the TDV, music is given importance in Halvetî dhikr, and various instruments are used, above all the ney, the kudüm and the def. The Halvetîs call the circuit that runs from the inner to the outer, from enfüs to âfâk, the devr-i suğrâ, and the circuit from âfâk to enfüs the devr-i kübrâ. These details are not written out one by one in the documents of the lodges of Amasya themselves; but it is reasonable to suppose that the practice kept by the same order in the same centuries was also followed in the Halvetî lodges of Amasya.

The Zâkirbaşı and the Conduct of the Gathering

The ceremonies of an order are conducted by the sheikh, the zâkirbaşı, the meydancı and the officers. The ceremony begins with the evrâd, which has a set composition and in which the participants join with their voices, and then moves on to the later stages of the dhikr. While the dervishes perform dhikr, the zâkirs sing ilahis suited to the course and rhythm of the dhikr. At intervals a naat, durak, qasida or mersiye is intoned so that the participants can catch their breath. The zâkirbaşı directs the musical works. This is a very important duty, because to be a zâkirbaşı one must know many ilahi compositions by heart and have a broad musical culture, a flawless voice and a good ability to lead.

The zâkirbaşı's work is not limited to memory. He has to choose the ilahis by considering which kind of dhikr they suit, the character of the day and the nature of the month. In Muharram and Safar, poems about the martyrdom of Hz. Hüseyin at Karbala are preferred; in Rebîülevvel and Rebîülâhir, ilahis praising the Prophet are mostly chosen. The old ilahi repertoires contain ilahis composed for each month of the Hijri calendar. The order of the makams matters too, because as the ceremony proceeds the rhythm quickens and the voices rise; makams suited to this course have to be arranged one after another. Ilahis, moreover, do not stay tied to a single order. A work known as a Halvetî ilahi can also be sung in a Kâdirî ceremony. Records also note that sheikhs visiting the lodges of other orders sometimes conducted one another's ceremonies.

The Instruments That Accompany Dhikr

According to the TDV entry on lodge music, in the dhikrs performed in lodges the ney accompanies percussion instruments that help the rhythm, such as the mazhar, halîle, kudüm, bendir and nevbe. In dhikrs held in the month of Muharram, however, no instruments are used. In Mevlevî ceremonies the ney, kudüm and rebab are important, and in recent times almost all the instruments of Turkish music have been used. In Bektashi ceremonies, mostly the bağlama family is played. Istanbul became the center of religious music as well, and the finest examples of lodge music were produced by composers and performers trained in the lodges of Istanbul or inspired by them. That Cemal Halife, one of the greatest representatives of Halvetism in Istanbul, came from Amasya shows that the link between the two cities also ran in the direction from Amasya.

The Debate over Devran

The legitimacy of devran was long a matter of dispute between the Ottoman ulema and the Sufis. According to the TDV entry on devran, most orders other than the Melâmiyya and the Naqshbandiyya accepted it, and in almost all orders, above all the Kâdiriyya, Rifâiyya, Mevleviyya, Suhrawardiyya, Chishtiyya and Halvetiyya, devrânî dhikr became a foundation of the order. The Kâdiriyya and especially the Halvetiyya and its branches attach great importance to the devran they call darb-ı esmâ. Against this, scholars such as Ibn al-Jawzi, Ibn Taymiyya, Birgivî, Kemalpaşazâde and Ebüssuûd Efendi voiced their reactions sharply, and some claimed that those who held dance and devran lawful would become unbelievers. Saçaklızâde Mehmed and İbrâhim Halebî held that whirling dhikr was nothing but turning religion into a game and a toy.

The Halvetîs answered these objections with treatises. Zenbilli Ali Efendi defended devran in a treatise, and Kemalpaşazâde and Ebüssuûd Efendi opposed him. Sünbül Sinan wrote two treatises against Kemalpaşazâde in defense of devran, one in Arabic and one in Turkish. Kemalpaşazâde is also reported to have issued a fatwa that devran is permissible, and it is recorded that a decree was issued forbidding anyone to molest members of orders who performed dhikr in devran. The name of Zembilli Ali Efendi is also linked to Amasya. Özköse writes that the first müderris of the Sultaniye Madrasa in the Bayezid II Complex was Zembilli Ali Efendi. The complex itself was built in 1485 at the request of the Halvetî sheikh Cemal Halife. For this reason the dhikr life of Amasya does not stay inside the lodge; it is part of a climate of debate that worked together with the city's madrasa, its mufti and its lodge sheikhs.

Sheikh-Poets and Lodge Literature

As Özköse emphasizes, most Halvetî sheikhs were important representatives of lodge literature, and in Amasya Sufi culture was enriched in poetry, literature and music through them. In this milieu poetry was a tool of service: the sheikhs carried their fervent feelings to their followers' hearts in rhymed speech, and poems in the form of ilahis were sung in dhikr gatherings. The word ilahi was at first used for every kind of religious poetry, and later became the name of poems that treat Sufi themes and are composed in the makams and usuls of Turkish religious music and sung at religious gatherings. According to the entry on the ilahi, ilahis written in aruz became widespread from the fifteenth century on, and composers chose their texts mostly from divan poetry.

Among the sheikh-poets of Amasya, Abdurrahman Çelebi is the first to be mentioned. The poet who used the pen name Hüsamî was, according to Özköse, a man of ecstatic temperament, with Turkish poems to his name, and a lover by disposition. Cemâl-i Halvetî (Çelebi Halife) received his first schooling in Amasya, studied in Istanbul, and had his first Sufi experience in the Zeyniyya; on returning to Amasya he attached himself to Tahirzâde, a successor of Pîr İlyas. After his sheikh's death he set out for Shirvan, completed his ascetic training in Erzincan with Muhammed Bahâeddin Erzincânî, and returned to Amasya as a Halvetî successor with the license he received from him. He won the close interest of Prince Bayezid and is even said to have been initiated by him. The sheikhdom of the Hoca Sultan Lodge was given to him, and when Bayezid II took the throne he was invited to Istanbul. Cemal Halvetî's Dîvançe contains twenty-three ilahis written in aruz and in syllabic meter. He also left versified works such as the Çengnâme, the Risâle-i Teşrîhiyye and the Risâle-i Etvâr-ı Seb'a.

Habîb-i Karamânî was also a mystic known for ecstatic poems. His work recorded in biographical sources as the versified Etvâr-ı Seb'a is in fact titled Risâle-i Makâmât-ı Sülûk. Mihrî Hatun, meanwhile, is the woman's voice of Amasya Halvetism. Her grandfather was Pîr İlyas, one of the Halvetî sheikhs, and her father was Kadı Hasan Amasyevî, who wrote poems under the pen name Belâyî. According to the encyclopedia entry, Mihrî Hatun entered the literary circle that formed around the princely court during the governorships of Bayezid II and then of his son Prince Ahmed in Amasya, and was buried in the cemetery of her grandfather Pîr İlyas's lodge in Amasya. Özköse writes that the Tazarrunâme section at the head of her divan shows that she was a poet belonging to the Halvetiyya. No date of death is recorded in the biographical dictionaries; present-day research gives 1506, but the encyclopedia entry notes that since there is a record that she sent a qasida to Bayezid II in 1512, a later date has to be accepted.

In calligraphy too, Halvetism is bound up with Amasya. Ahmed Şemseddin Karahisârî was a Halvetî sheikh who attached himself to Cemâleddin İshak Karamânî and received the succession. Yusuf b. Hüsâm b. İlyas, the Amasya calligrapher known as Muhaşşî Sinan, also belonged to the Halvetiyya. These show that the lodge was not only a place for dhikr and music, but also functioned as a school where poetry, writing and learning were trained together.

The Place of the Lodges in Society

During the interregnum the Halvetî lodges of Amasya looked after the people of the region, and according to Özköse served those who came and went without expecting any benefit from their teaching. The soup kitchen of the Gümüşlüoğlu Lodge housed many refugees in those years. The Pîr İlyas Imaret, the Mehmed Paşa Imaret and the Yörgüç Paşa Imaret were important imarets operating under the coordination of the lodges. Evliya Çelebi speaks of many guesthouses in Amasya that fed the poor and needy. Dhikr and the ilahi formed the spiritual side of this network of service.

The relations between the lodges and the government were also close. Pîr İlyas gave Çelebi Mehmed material and spiritual support in his struggle for the throne. On the Ramadan festival of 1438, Murad II sent his princes Ahmed, Alaeddin and Mehmed to the lodge of the Halvetî sheikh of Amasya, Abdurrahman Çelebi, to kiss his hand. In the struggle for the throne between Prince Bayezid and Cem Sultan, Cemal Halvetî supported Bayezid; in return the complex in Amasya was built and Cemal Halife was summoned to Istanbul. During the governorship of Prince Mustafa in Amasya, a rift arose between the lodge and the court. The preacher Pîr Sinan criticized in his sermons the extravagance at the circumcision feast of Mustafa's son Süleyman Çelebi, was removed from his preaching post, withdrew in resentment to a remote corner of the city and founded a lodge there, and the quarter came to be called Şehre Küstü, "the City Slighted," for this reason.

The End of the Lodges

The Halvetî lodges of Amasya directly affected the social, political, cultural and religious life of the city until the late nineteenth century. Most of the buildings had lost their function before then through fire, ruin or conversion to other purposes. The Ak Hasanoğlu Lodge was built in 1829, and after the death of its last sheikh Mansur Efendi in 1866 it was turned into a lecture hall, and in 1886 into a fervahâne and madrasa. When the lodges in Turkey were closed in 1925, the Halvetî lodges officially ended their activity, though in the TDV's words they continued at times secretly and at times openly to perform their dhikr and ceremonies. In his Amasya Tarihi, Abdizâde Hüseyin Hüsameddin names seventy-one tombs; Özköse notes that eighteen of them belong to Halvetî sheikhs. Pîr İlyas's Tomb of the Pirs is today the most visited place in the city. The sources contain no detailed record of an ilahi repertoire or of zâkirbaşıs peculiar to Amasya; in this respect Amasya's lodge music can be understood as the local practice of the common Halvetî usul.

Chronology

1404: The Mahmud Çelebi Lodge is built as the first Naqshbandi lodge in Anatolia.

1406-1407: Pîr İlyas returns to Amasya; a year later the Gümüşlüoğlu Lodge is built.

1412-1413: The Çilehâne (Yâkub Paşa) Lodge is built and its endowment deed registered.

1429: Pîr İlyas's death is given as 833 (1429).

1438: Murad II sends his princes to the Halvetî sheikh Abdurrahman Çelebi in Amasya.

1485: The Mehmed Paşa Lodge and the Bayezid II Complex are built.

1544-1564: The Şamlar (1544), Kuşbaz (1554) and Hızır Paşa (1564) lodges are founded.

1829: The Ak Hasanoğlu Lodge is built.

1925: The lodges in Turkey are closed.

Bibliography

Academic studies

  • Kadir Özköse, "Amasya'da Bulunan Halvetiyye Tekkeleri", AKADEMİAR Akademik İslam Araştırmaları Dergisi, issue 5, December 2018, pp. 91-118.

Other sources

Online sources