Seyyid Mîr Hamza Nigârî was a Naqshbandi-Khalidi sheikh and poet who migrated from Karabakh to Anatolia in the nineteenth century, spent most of the last thirty years of his life in Amasya and Merzifon, and at his own request was buried in Amasya. He left two divans, one in Turkish and one in Persian, and the mesnevis Nigârnâme and Çaynâme. In his poems he uses Azerbaijani and Anatolian Turkish together, and writes in syllabic metre (hece) as well as in aruz (quantitative metre). His followers chanted his poems at their dhikr gatherings and carried his divan on their heads like a sacred book.

Nigârî's life is told in detail in a separate article in the Historical Figures section of our site. This page is devoted to his poetry, his works and the place of his poems in Amasya. Those of his poems whose texts survive in the sources are given in this category, each on a separate page with the original text, an English rendering and commentary.

His Life

Nigârî was born in the village of Cicimli, attached to the town of Bergüşad in the Zengezur district of Karabakh; his year of birth is given variously in the sources as 1797, 1805, 1809-10 and 1815. After studying with scholars of Shirvan such as Şikest Abdullah Efendi, he became a disciple of İsmâil Sirâceddin Şirvânî, a successor of Mawlana Khalid al-Baghdadi, and came to Amasya several times with his master. After guiding disciples in Karabakh, he crossed into Anatolia in the mid-1850s because of Russian pressure; after years spent between Erzurum, Istanbul and Bayburt he settled in Amasya with his family in the mid-1860s, and also lived for a time in Merzifon. His harsh expression of love for the Prophet's household (Ehl-i Beyt) led to a great dispute with the scholars of Amasya, and in 1884-1885 he was exiled to Harput. He died in Harput in 1886; his body was brought to Amasya and buried in his tomb, which today adjoins the Şirvanlı Mosque. For the details of his life see Mîr Hamza Nigârî: A Naqshbandi Poet from Karabakh to Amasya.

Hüsameddin's Assessment

The Amasya historian Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar saw Nigârî at close quarters; his family was for a time Nigârî's neighbour. In his long entry in the ninth volume of Amasya Tarihi he writes the following about the sheikh's poetry:

Şiir ve edebiyyâtda kendisine hâss bir mesleki, bir tavr-ı âşıkânesi vardı. Parmak hesâbıyla da metîn şiirler söylerdi. Dîvânında güzel na'tlar, âlî gazaller, yanık ve derûnî elemleri terennüm eden kıt'alar vardır. Fakat bunların içinde sakatât-ı şi'riyyesi, kavâid-i lisanımıza uymayan edebi gariplikler de vardır. Bunlar da kendisine hâs olan sözlerdir. Hazretin dîvân-ı eşârı müritleri tarafından Kur'ân-ı Kerîm kadar kudsî bir kitâb sayılır. Başlarda gezdirilirdi. Parmak hesâbıyla yazılmış eşârı terennümât ve teganniyât-ı mahsûse ile okunur. Vecd ü şevk içinde cûş u hurûş edilirdi.

In modern English: In poetry and literature he had a way of his own and a lover's manner. He also composed sound poems in syllabic metre. His divan contains fine naats (poems in praise of the Prophet), lofty ghazals and kıt'as voicing burning, inward griefs. But among them there are also poetic flaws and literary oddities that do not conform to the rules of our language; these too are expressions peculiar to him. His divan was regarded by his followers as a book as sacred as the Qur'an and was carried about on their heads. His poems written in syllabic metre were recited to special melodies and chanted in ecstasy and fervour.

In the same entry Hüsameddin calls Nigârî "a poet in three languages" and the unique one of his age in the science of Sufism; but he also writes openly of his ecstatic utterances, the "şatahât-ı sûfiyye", of the harsh satires he aimed at the scholars of Amasya, and of his excess on the question of the Prophet's household. His assessment carries both admiration and criticism, and the entry ends with this sentence: Nigârî is a venerable and blessed figure, one of the learned sheikhs with a Sufi way of his own, and the followers of this way came to be called Hamzavî. The full text of Hüsameddin's entry appears in the encyclopedia section of our site under the title Hamza Nigârî Efendi-eş-Şeyh el-Hâc Mîr (in Turkish).

His Works

The Turkish Divan. This is Nigârî's most important work. According to Hüsameddin it was printed in 1884, the year the sheikh was sent to Istanbul, through the good offices of Mehmed Emin Bey of Shirvan, a member of the palace circle, and his relative Ahmed Hamdi Efendi; the date of printing is known as 1301 AH (1884). The divan was reprinted in Tiflis in 1326 (1908), and the 210-couplet Menâkıb-ı Seyyid Nigârî, found after the poet's death, was added to the Tiflis edition. In our day it has been published by Muzaffer Akkuş, A. Azmi Bilgin (2003), Kurtuluş Altunbaş (2004) and Nezaket Memmedli (2010). Bilgin's edition contains 644 ghazals, 119 rubais, forty-eight kıt'as, fourteen terci-bends, two terkib-bends, three müstezads, a Sâkînâme of twenty-eight stanzas, five tahmis on ghazals by Fuzûlî, a letter and the 521-couplet Çaynâme. The count in TEİS differs slightly: 644-650 ghazals, 129 rubais, 49 kıt'as, five kasides and 49 poems in syllabic metre. There are also two manuscript copies of the divan, one in Konya and one in the National Library.

The Persian Divan. This is an ordered divan printed in Istanbul in 1329 (1911); the Encyclopaedia Iranica also mentions an earlier printing of 1301 (1884). Part of it was translated into Turkish with a commentary by Mustafa Fahreddin Akabâlî, the son of the poet's nephew. According to TEİS, a treatise entitled Heştbehiştnâme is found at the end of the divan.

Nigârnâme. This is a Sufi mesnevi of 4545 couplets printed in Istanbul in 1305 (1887-88). The poet makes his own heart fall in love with the "nigâr" (beloved) of the spiritual world seen in a dream, and has it converse with lovers and gnostics in spiritual gatherings. The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi likens the work in its treatment of Sufi ideas to Fuzûlî's Leylâ vü Mecnûn, and in its mysterious descriptions to Şeyh Galib's Hüsn ü Aşk. Nigârî's name does not appear on the cover of the book; only the words "Bir pîr-i kâmilin eser-i âlîleridir" (the exalted work of a perfect master) are found there.

Çaynâme. This is an allegorical mesnevi of 521 couplets. It opens with a tevhid, a münacat and a naat, then speaks of the poet's spiritual guide İsmâil Şirvânî; while describing the samovar and tea with Sufi interpretations, it also portrays the beauties of Karabakh and its notables. TEİS regards the work in this respect as an example of both the biladiye and the şehrengiz genres (poems praising a homeland and a city); the Encyclopaedia Iranica notes that it takes Fuzûlî's Beng ü Bâde as its model.

The commentary on al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya and the poem Hâtime-i Seyyid Nigârî mentioned in the sources are not extant today.

His Literary Personality

Nigârî's poetry cannot be defined by a single aspect. In the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, A. Azmi Bilgin writes that the poems of his Turkish divan differ markedly in content and style from those of Sufi poets, that Nigârî appears as a classical divan poet singing of divine love and resembles Fuzûlî most of all; the terms of the spiritual path of his order are never found in his poetry. Divine love, love for the Prophet's household and the spirit of Melâmet are the basic elements of his poetry. He wrote tahmis on Fuzûlî's ghazals, admired Rûhî of Baghdad, praised his contemporary Nebâtî, who was, like him, an Azerbaijani, and regarded Hâfız, Hâcû of Kirman and Sa'dî as masters.

In language, Nigârî uses Azerbaijani and Anatolian Turkish together and, where it suits him, draws on words peculiar to the Karabakh dialect. Forms such as "men" (I), "odlar" (fires), "ılan" (snake), "barmak" (finger), "görgeç" (on seeing) and "teki" (like) are frequent in his poems. It may be thought that some of the expressions Hüsameddin called "literary oddities that do not conform to the rules of our language" arose from this double language; but Hüsameddin does not distinguish which couplets he found flawed and on what grounds. The Encyclopaedia Iranica, for its part, finds his Persian poetry mediocre and influenced by Rumi, Jami and Hafiz, and assesses his Turkish poetry in terms of the influence of Fuzûlî.

Syllabic metre has a special place in Nigârî's poetry. According to TEİS, his importance in folk literature is seen mainly in the language and style of his syllabic poems, türküs and koşmas; the poet also arranged his syllabic poems alphabetically by their rhymes. These poems seem to have been written to be chanted at dhikr gatherings; Hüsameddin's testimony and the TDV's record that Nigârî's ghazals, koşmas and kasides are still sung collectively at gatherings today, keeping time, show this.

Nigârî also held up a mirror to his age in his poetry. TEİS writes that he brought into his poems Russian pressure, the oppression of the Muslim peoples of the Caucasus by Tsarist Russia and the resistance against it. Love for the Prophet's household, however, is the most contentious side of his poetry. The poem with the refrain "siz bir taraf biz bir taraf" quoted by Fatih Çınar names those who wronged the Prophet's household in the harshest terms; the satires recorded by Hüsameddin target the scholars of Amasya. His ecstatic utterances, in which he counts himself peerless in love and finds even the saying "Ene'l-Hak" too narrow for unity, are the reflection of his identity as a sheikh in his poetry. In the words of TEİS, Nigârî, a successful divan poet in the classical style, leaves through his harmonious dhikrs and his references to his age the impression of being at once a sheikh, a warrior for the faith and a tekke poet.

His Circle in Amasya

Nigârî's years in Amasya gave rise to a literary and Sufi circle in the town. His son Sirâceddîn İsmâil Efendi, whose pen name was Mîr Sirâcî, was a poet like his father. According to Hüsameddin he was born in Bergüşad in 1271 (1854-55), studied at the rüştiye in Amasya and knew Fuzûlî's divan by heart; he had a small divan and a well-known Sâkînâme. He died young in 1291 (1874), and his bones were later moved to his father's tomb. His cousin Mîr Hasan Efendi took over the leadership of the Hamzavî community after the sheikh's death, directed the building of the tomb and mosque, and wrote treatises on the Prophet's household. Resul Sâmi Efendi of Şeki studied Arabic and Persian literature with Nigârî. The fact that Hüsameddin's family were the sheikh's neighbours in the Çeribaşı quarter has left us a closely observed description of Nigârî's dhikr gatherings and of his poems.

Nigârî's poems did not remain confined to Amasya. TEİS writes that his influence in Erzurum continued through Hâce Hüseyin Efendi and Alvarlı Efe, and in Istanbul through poets such as Molla Mehemmed Hüznî, Sebatî and Giryan Kazakî, and that in Azerbaijan he trained poet disciples such as Ağa Rahim Ağa Dilbazi, Şahnigar Hanım Rencûr and Sadî Sânî Karabâğî. His tomb today adjoins the Şirvanlı (Azeris) Mosque in Amasya; for the building see Şirvanlı (Azeris) Mosque and the Tomb of Mîr Hamza Nigârî in Amasya.

The Poems in This Section

Nigârî's Turkish divan contains more than eight hundred poems, and the full text of the divan is not accessible online. This category contains only those of his poems whose texts are published in the sources examined. The fifteen pieces Hüsameddin quotes in Amasya Tarihi are: the ghazal "Çıkmadı sâhib-i da‘vâ ne ‘aceb", written in the carriage on his way into exile from Merzifon; the satire "Dime şâir sözüdür sanma yalan" aimed at the scholars of Amasya; the ecstatic utterance "‘Aşkda bî-meselem"; the quatrain "Ne müdeddir Nigâr Nigâr dimekden", naming Nigâr; the nine couplets and pieces Hüsameddin lists with "for example"; the kıt'a "Vahy-i İlâhîdir ehl-i Hak bilür", in which the poet calls his poetry revelation and inspiration; and the couplet "Saldı hayrânlıga". Four poems have been taken from the samples in TEİS: the ghazal "Cânıma çekmiş felek", recalling Bergüşad and Karabakh; the ghazal with the refrain "olmayan bilmez"; the terci-bend stanza known for the line "Sana Kur'an dimese ben sana insân dimezem"; and an eight-syllable semai. From Fatih Çınar's article three couplets and two poem fragments on love for the Prophet's household have been added. Each is on a separate page.

Chronology

1805: Born in the village of Cicimli in Karabakh (1797, 1809-10 and 1815 also appear in the sources).

1854-55: Birth of his son Sirâcî; migration to Anatolia under Russian pressure.

1864-67: Settles with his family in Amasya and Merzifon (dates differ in the sources).

1871-74: Beginning of the Ali-Muâviye dispute in Amasya; death of Sirâcî in 1874.

1301 (1884): The Turkish divan is printed in Istanbul.

1884-85: Exile from Merzifon by way of Samsun and Istanbul to Harput.

1886: Death in Harput; his body is brought to Amasya and buried.

1305 (1887-88): The Nigârnâme is printed in Istanbul.

1326 (1908): Tiflis edition of the Turkish divan.

1329 (1911): The Persian divan is printed in Istanbul.

2003: A. Azmi Bilgin's edition of the Turkish divan.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Books

Online sources