Among Amasya's old neighborhoods, Şamlar and Sofular are two districts whose names are often spoken together. They are the places where the city's Sufi life and its history of migration are most closely intertwined. Local tradition ties the name Şamlar to a community that came from the lands of Damascus (Şam), and the name Sofular to a district where dervishes and men of the spirit were the majority. Not every part of that tradition can be documented to the same degree; there are even three conflicting explanations of the age in which the Damascus migration took place. This distinction is kept throughout the text. Separate articles exist on all the buildings and the population history of the two neighborhoods, so what is followed here are the names, the buildings connected with them and the migration story.

The Two Neighborhoods in the Old Records

The neighborhood that people today call Şamlar appears in the old records as the "Şamlılar Mahallesi," the quarter of the people of Damascus. Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar states the difference plainly in the neighborhoods section of his Amasya Tarihi (History of Amasya): Şamlılar in the old records, Şamlar in the speech of the people. According to Hüsameddin the neighborhood lay north of the Kuş Köprü (Bird Bridge); to its east ran the Yeşilırmak, to its west a cemetery, to its south the foot of the upper citadel (Kale-i Bâlâ), and to its north the vineyards called Bahçeler İçi. The same author records that before it took the name Şamlılar the place was known as "Dânişmendli Mülkü," the Danishmendid estate, because the Danishmendid ruler Melik İsmail had lived there. The ridge on which the tomb of the Shirvani sheikh İsmail Siraceddin now stands was likewise called "Şamlılar Üstü," Above the Şamlılar, before the tomb was built. The neighborhood name was thus used as the name of a wide district reaching as far as this ridge, the cemetery and the neighborhood fountain.

The old spelling of Sofular is "Sofîler Mahallesi." Hüsameddin places this neighborhood at the northeastern foot of the Gedikli Kaya rock; to its east lay the Pir İlyas Cemetery, to its west Gümüşlüzade, to its north the Yakutiye and Mehmed Paşa neighborhoods, and to its south the foot of the Balus rock. The stream that comes down between the Bâlus rock and Mount Lokman divides above the Beyler Sarayı (Palace of the Beys), one branch descending westward to Sofular and the other northward to the Bayezid Paşa neighborhood. The older name of the neighborhood is "Behram Şah Mülkü," the estate of Behram Şah. The small mosque and fountain that Emir Mübarizeddin Behram Şah had built here represent the layer that precedes the Sufi circle which gave the neighborhood its name; the mosque was long known as the "Behram Şah Mescidi." In the old names of both neighborhoods it is the name of a landholder that stands out, while in the newer names it is the identity of a community living there.

The Tradition of a Community from Damascus

According to popular tradition, in very ancient times a community from the lands of Damascus, unable to bear the hardships it faced, left its homeland, came to Amasya as refugees and settled on the northern slope of the city. The new district was named after the place its inhabitants came from; first it was called "Şamlılar" (the people of Damascus), and over time, softened in speech, the name became "Şamlar." In Anatolia, a settlement being called by the name of the place its later arrivals came from is a well-known way of naming, and there are examples of it in the Amasya region as well. Hüsameddin explains with the same logic that the Erzincânî quarter in Merzifon bears the name of the hometown of a scholar from Erzincan who settled there.

Local writers, however, differ on when the migration took place. Osman Fevzi Olcay, in his Amasya Hâtıraları (Memories of Amasya), presents the Şamlar neighborhood as the district of those who, unable to endure the oppression of the Umayyads, emigrated from Damascus and settled here. According to Hüsameddin, the Amasya mufti Mustafa Vâzıh Efendi had likewise linked the name to people of Damascus who came to Amasya in the Umayyad period. Hüsameddin rejects this view as "garâib-i vâzıha," an evident oddity, and offers his own explanation. In his account, during an internal conflict that broke out in 791 (1389) in the Egyptian sultanate between "Melik Eşref" and the Circassian "Melik Zâhir Berkuk," the people of Damascus who had supported Melik Eşref were forced to scatter, and a part of them took refuge in Amasya and were settled in this neighborhood. This explanation too is the author's own interpretation and does not show which record it rests on.

What complicates the matter further is that Hüsameddin, in the second volume of his work, opens the door to yet another possibility. In the section on the Umayyad-Byzantine wars, which he tells on the basis of Arabic sources, he writes that after the Abbasids overthrew the Umayyad dynasty in 132 (750), Ebân, son of the emir Muâviye bin Hişâm who had conquered Amasya, fled with his son Abdullah by way of Khorasan to Amasya and took refuge with the city's Byzantine governor, and that the governor killed them some time later, in 138 (755-56). After saying that it is not known where in the city these refugees lived, he adds that it is likely they lived in the Şâmlar neighborhood. The evidence he points to is a pair of old graves standing side by side on the road near the Alagöz Baba Tomb in the neighborhood. Built of old bricks, with tops shaped like a camel's hump, these graves were shown among the people as the graves of two camels that had brought the soil of Damascus to Amasya. Hüsameddin notes that they closely resembled old graves he had visited in Damascus and argues that, considering how widespread the legend was and that the graves lie side by side, they may belong to Ebân and his son Abdullah.

None of these three explanations has been proved with documents. Some local writers tie the name to the Umayyad age, while Hüsameddin, in his section on the neighborhoods, ties it to the end of the fourteenth century; that the same author mentions the Umayyad refugees as a possibility elsewhere shows that the question was not closed even for him. The people's story of the camel graves, for its part, is a sign of how alive the link with Damascus remained in the memory of the neighborhood. Today the most cautious course is to read the Damascus migration story less as a historical event than as an old memory handed down from generation to generation to explain the neighborhood's name.

Sheikhs and Scholars from Damascus

Although the date of the migration is uncertain, individuals who came from Damascus and settled in the Şamlılar neighborhood are documented, and they help explain why the neighborhood's name was adopted so readily. The best known of them is Sheikh Nureddin Hamza Şâmî, father of Akşemseddin. According to the biographical tradition Hüsameddin cites, Akşemseddin was born in Damascus and came to Anatolia with his father as a small child. Hamza Şâmî arrived in Amasya in 799 (1396-97), and the records state that he lived in the Şamlılar neighborhood.

The Alagöz Baba Tomb, one of the oldest places of visitation in the neighborhood, is also tied to a sheikh from Damascus. According to the biographical section of Hüsameddin's work, Sheikh Şemseddin Ahmed Şâmî, known by the nickname "Alagöz," was educated in Damascus, migrated to Amasya "together with the Şamlılar," settled in the Şamlılar neighborhood and for some thirty years served as sheikh in the lodge (zaviye) he had built there. He is remembered as a scholar trusted by the people and credited with miracles; his sons were İbrahim, Halil and Ali Çelebi. Elsewhere in the work he is described as a revered elder who led the Şâmîs, and his descendants are said to have been known as the "Şâmîzâde." His date of death, however, differs in two places in the book. The biographical section says he died in 829 (1425-26), whereas the section on tombs says that he was buried in 807 (1404-05) in an older tomb, which took its name from him for that reason.

The first madrasa founded in the Şamlılar neighborhood also became the subject of a confusion connected with the name of Damascus. According to Hüsameddin, the first madrasa in the neighborhood was built by Balaban Pasha, who came to Amasya after Timur's invasion of Bursa in 804 (1402) and later rose to the rank of beylerbey (governor-general). The author points out that the record of the pasha's "madrasa in Damascus" in fact refers to nothing other than this "medrese-i Şâmiyye," the madrasa in the Şamlılar neighborhood. The name of the neighborhood had become so established that it could lead a building to be placed in Damascus. Nor were the newcomers to the Şamlılar neighborhood only from Damascus. The headship of the Naqshbandi lodge founded here by Sheikh Mustafa Efendi bin Mirza Yusuf of Bukhara, known as the "Mirza Tekkesi," passed to his sons Turâbî Ali Efendi and İsmail Efendi. Turâbî Ali Efendi died on 7 Ramadan 1245 (1830) and was known for his hymns and poems.

Memories of the Danishmendids

The layer of Şamlar that precedes Damascus reaches back to the Danishmendid period, and this layer too rests largely on local tradition. Hüsameddin writes that the Danishmendid ruler Melik İsmail had a tomb in Amasya, a mosque known as the Loğ Minare in the inner city (İçeri Şehir), and a lodge in the Şamlar neighborhood. He describes the Alagöz Baba Tomb as a very old building standing at the mouth of the road on the edge of the Şamlar Cemetery; in his view its form and manner of construction recall works of the twelfth century, and the tomb is attributed to the Danishmendid İsmail Gazi Bey. Yet the author states openly that apart from popular tradition he found no evidence or inscription that İsmail Gazi lies here. Of the three places in Amasya shown as the "Tomb of Melik Gazi," one is this tomb on the road in the west of the Şamlılar neighborhood.

Another grave in the neighborhood attributed to the Danishmendids is the Ayşe Gazi Tomb. It lies north of the road climbing to the Tomb of Sheikh İsmail Şirvânî, a square structure of dark stone large enough to hold two graves. According to local tradition, Gülnuş Banu, wife of Melik Danişmend Ahmed Gazi, founder of the Danishmendid state, and his daughter Ayşe Gazi lie here. Hüsameddin adds that several other people were later buried over these graves. The records also state that the Şamlar Mosque in the neighborhood was one of the pious works of the Danishmendid Melik Gazi Bey and that it fell into ruin over time. The mosque of Ayas Ağa rose on the site of this older mosque.

The Ayas Ağa Complex and the Büyük Ağa Madrasa

The firmest evidence for the antiquity of the name Şamlar comes from the neighborhood's fifteenth-century buildings. Ayas Ağa, also called Küçük Ağa (the Lesser Ağa), was a slave of Bayezid II recruited through the devşirme from the region of Bosnia and raised in the Amasya Palace. When the Greater Gate Ağa Hüseyin Ağa left for Istanbul, he became gate ağa of the Amasya Palace in 890 (1485) and joined the closest circle of Prince Ahmed. According to Hüsameddin's account, when Selim I came to the throne in 918 (1512) and Ayas Ağa heard that Prince Ahmed had been captured and strangled, he died of grief. He built a mosque in the Şamlılar neighborhood, with a madrasa and a primary school beside it, and in 900 (1494-95) endowed all his property to them. Hüsameddin says that he read this deed of endowment himself. Ayas Ağa lies in the cemetery in front of his madrasa; his grave has no inscription. Since the annals section of the same work states that the mosque and madrasa were completed in 890, two different years emerge for the construction, and as the complex has no inscription of its own, the exact date cannot be determined.

The complex, which is also called Şamlar after the neighborhood in which it stands, continues the mosque-madrasa tradition of pre-Ottoman Anatolia. Its buildings are arranged around a shared courtyard. The mosque on the south consists of a square, single-domed prayer hall with walls of rubble stone and brick, a three-bay porch for latecomers and a minaret rising at the northeast corner. The wall above the arches of the porch is faced with a decorative masonry of cut stones framed by brick hexagons. In the arch of the window to the left of the minaret there is an inscription that cannot be fully read, and it is thought likely to date from the Danishmendid period. The madrasa, known as the "Küçük Ağa Medresesi" or "Medrese-i Ayasiyye," consists of nine cells enclosing the courtyard on the west and north. The two-room primary school at the eastern end of the northern row of cells was turned into an elementary school in 1327 (1909).

In the same years a second large madrasa had risen in the Şamlılar neighborhood. Hüsameddin writes that the Büyük Ağa Madrasa stood on the road at the head of the vineyards called Bahçeler İçi in the Şamlılar neighborhood, and that it was built in 894 (1488-89) by Hüseyin Ağa, gate ağa of Bayezid II in Amasya. Described as a building of stone on every side, with spacious cells and a fine lecture hall, the madrasa is notable for its octagonal courtyard, known as the first building in which this plan was used, and it is still used today as a school for training hafızes, those who memorize the Qur'an. According to Hüsameddin's records, 890 was a year of building in Amasya: in that year Abdullah Pasha's mosque and hadith college in Sofular, the madrasas of the two gate ağas in the Şamlılar neighborhood and the mosque of Ayas Ağa were completed, and in the author's words "Amasya flourished." Şamlar and Sofular thus took part in the same building movement under Bayezid II, in the years when Prince Ahmed was in Amasya.

The Sufi life of the Şamlar neighborhood also expanded in the sixteenth century. A study of Halveti lodges records that the Şamlar Lodge was built near the mosque of the same neighborhood in 1544 by Hoca Hacı Salih Çelebi, one of the notables of the city, and that its endowments were arranged in that year. This study calls the mosque the "İlyas Ağa Mosque"; the difference in spelling between Ayas Ağa and İlyas Ağa continues in the sources. In addition, Osman Fevzi Olcay's 1932 Amasya Tarihi Zeyli mentions sarcophagus stones that came to light in the Şamlar neighborhood. All of this shows that the name was in use long before the migrations of the nineteenth century.

The Name Sofular and Its Sufi Setting

A sofu is a person who lives in worship and austerity, without clinging to worldly affairs. The clearest explanation of the name of the Sofular neighborhood is once again given by Hüsameddin: the neighborhood came to be called "Sofîler Mahallesi" because in the time of Pir İlyas and Abdurrahman Çelebi it was the home of some nine well-known sofis. One of these sofis can in fact be found in the biographical section. Hasan Çelebi, son of Hafız Mahmud of Sivas, who worked as a baker in Amasya, was trained in the lessons of the Şeyhülislam Gümüşlüzade Abdurrahman Çelebi, advanced in the Halveti order and became a well-known preacher, and died around 831 (1427-28) as one of "the sofus residing in the Sofular neighborhood," in Hüsameddin's phrase. No document is known, however, that shows when the name entered the official records.

Another name that carries the neighborhood's tie to Sufism is "Kasr-ı Sofiyân." According to the neighborhoods section of Hüsameddin's work, Gümüşlüzade Hoca Celal Çelebi built a lodge for Pir İlyas on a high spot at the head of the neighborhood, and in the time of Pir Abdurrahman Çelebi the building was given the name "Kasr-ı Sofiyân," the pavilion of the sofis. The biographical section of the work, by contrast, writes that the defterdar Şemseddin Ahmed Bey built the same lodge at the head of the Sofular neighborhood for his brother Pir Abdurrahman Çelebi. The two passages of the book do not agree on the founder, but both records concur that the lodge was established at the entrance of the neighborhood as a pious work of the Gümüşlüzade family. At the western end of the Pir İlyas Cemetery, west of Sofular, stood the Şeyh Abdul Lodge founded in 961 (1553-54) by the Naqshbandi sheikh Abdullah Efendi. Ruined and repaired many times, the lodge survived until 1271 (1854-55), then disappeared, and in 1315 (1897-98) its endowments were transferred to the education administration.

Osman Fevzi Olcay's memoirs speak of a district that continues Şamlar and extends as far as the fork of Kulis Hill and the road to Ziyaret; from the page layout of the book it is not entirely clear whether this sentence belongs to Sofular or to neighboring İhsaniye. Sofular itself has been regarded as an area where dervishes and spiritual life were concentrated. The epithet "city of saints" attached to Amasya has perhaps taken concrete form most of all in the streets of these districts. The tomb of Pir İlyas and the Çilehane and Kemal Paşa tombs still fall administratively within the boundaries of the Sofular neighborhood today.

Pir İlyas and the Çilehane

At the center of Sofular's Sufi past stands Pir İlyas. Pir İlyas, the founding sheikh of the Halveti order in Amasya, was a scholar of Amasya, also known as Gümüşlüzade. According to Hakverdioğlu's study based on Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar's Amasya Tarihi, in 805 (1402-03) Kara Mehmed Sultan, a grandson of Timur, came to Amasya and examined the city's scholars; Pir İlyas shone in this examination with his learning and was sent to Shirvan. In Shamakhi he learned the subtleties of the order together with Seyyid Yahya Şirvânî, the great Halveti leader of the time, and became one of the first sheikhs to bring Halvetism from Shirvan to Amasya and, in a sense, to Anatolia. That an Amasya sheikh sent to Shirvan should bring Halvetism back shows that the tie between the city and Shirvan was not one-directional. The same study names the famous poet Mihri Hatun as a granddaughter of Pir İlyas.

Pir İlyas lies in the tomb that bears his name. The building is known as the Tomb of the Pirs because it holds the graves of three Pirs, and also as the Upper Pirs. Together with the sheikh lie his son-in-law Pir Abdurrahman Çelebi, his grandson Pir Hayreddin Hızır Çelebi, the sheikh's wife and four daughters. According to Hüsameddin, in 890 (1485) Bayezid II arranged the endowments of the tomb and gave its trusteeship to Pir Hayreddin Hızır Çelebi and his descendants; when Hayreddin Hızır Çelebi died the following year he was buried in his grandfather's tomb. Around the tomb there was once a cemetery containing the graves of many important people; the graves were removed in 1938 by the then governor Talat Öncel and the area was turned into a park. Today this area, known as Pirler Park, is a well-known spot of the Sofular area.

The Çilehane Lodge, north of the tomb, was built and endowed in 815 (1412) by Pazarlıoğlu Yakub Pasha, beylerbey of Ankara, for the mufti Gümüşlüzade Abdurrahman Çelebi, and its deed of endowment was registered in February 1413 before Rükneddin Mahmud, the judge of Amasya. Because many Halveti sheikhs were trained there, the lodge was called the "Dervish Factory." In the Çilehane tomb lies the second Pir Celaleddin Abdurrahman, son of Pir İlyas's daughter, and for this reason the building is also called the "Lower Pirs." Which neighborhood Çilehane belongs to varies in the sources, so it is more accurate to describe it as a shared spiritual core of Sofular and the surrounding neighborhoods.

The Abdullah Pasha Hadith College and the Sofular Madrasa

The neighborhood mosque of Sofular, together with the madrasa that bears the neighborhood's name, was also an important station in the learned life of Amasya. The building known as the Abdullah Paşa Mosque or the Sofular Mosque was built by Hacı Sinan Beyzade Abdullah Pasha, one of the beylerbeys of the reign of Bayezid II, to serve both as a mosque and as a hadith college (dârülhadis). According to the gate inscription that Hüsameddin read, the hadith college was built in the reign of Sultan Bayezid in 890 (1485). Abdullah Pasha's death is dated to 896 (1490-91); the deed of endowment of the building was drawn up by his son, the defterdar Abdülkerim Bey, in 907 (1501-02). In 1505 Abdülkerim Bey added a school for Qur'an recitation (dârülkurrâ) on the east side of the building; this part has not survived.

Because the ground is steep, the building stands above the street to its north, on two separate terraces. As Hüsameddin describes it, the mosque on Sofular Street is reached by a stone stairway and its facade is of dark stone. On either side of the enclosed courtyard, which is entered through the gate and covered by a vault with a lantern, there are two small rooms; the hadith college consists of these rooms, and teaching took place in the domed prayer hall. Abdullah Pasha's grave lies between the eastern cell and the prayer hall. The carved wooden leaves of the main gate and of the prayer hall door survive in their original state. This plan, which links madrasas with enclosed courtyards to mosques with lodging rooms, is regarded as a design without parallel in Ottoman architecture. Hüsameddin records that the hadith college was ranked at the "hamsin," that is the fifty, level among the madrasas, and that scholars such as Şermîzade Takiyyüddin Osman Efendi and the müderris Abdî Efendi taught hadith here.

The Sofular Madrasa, adjoining the west of the mosque and lying behind the hadith college, was a more modest wooden building. The lecture room opposite it was built in 1310 (1892-93) by Cünunzade Hacı Mustafa Ağa, one of the notables of the city, as a place of study for the students of Köprülü Hacı Hafız Mustafa Tevfik Efendi. Hüsameddin writes that having the hadith college in front of the mosque, the madrasa on its right, the Qur'an school once on its left and the scholars' lecture room opposite made this "a place full of grace." Osman Fevzi Olcay, who was born and grew up in Sofular, also describes the madrasa in his memoirs: there were five or six rooms in the narrow space inside the mosque grounds, and across the street a separate building and a lecture room. Tevfik Efendi taught in this lecture room and received guests in his free time; in the rooms lived Şeyh Ağazade Hafız Ahmed and his brothers Hafız Emin and Hafız Muhyiddin.

Around these buildings Sofular also became a neighborhood of notable families. Hüsameddin's annals tell how, at the beginning of 1035 (1625), Ayşe Hanım, sister of the murdered Abdülkerim Pasha, and Ümmühani Hanım, his wife, came from Istanbul and settled in their family house in Sofular, inherited from their father. When the defterdar of Sivas counted the house among the pasha's property and put it up for sale, Ayşe Hanım went to court, proved that the house had come to her from her father and that the pasha had given his own share to her during his lifetime, and with difficulty saved it from confiscation. This small case shows that in the seventeenth century, too, the neighborhood was a district where Amasya's long-established families lived.

The Shirvani Sheikh İsmail Siraceddin

The most concrete migration story connected with the Şamlar neighborhood reaches toward Shirvan and begins with the journey of a sheikh. İsmail Siraceddin Şirvânî was a sheikh of the Naqshbandi-Khalidi branch and was born in the village of Kürdemir in the district of Shamakhi in the Shirvan region. The inscription of his tomb gives his birth year as 1200 (1786). In Hüsameddin's work and in publications that follow it, however, the year 1197 (1782-83) appears, and some publications also mention 1785. Because the reading on the inscription is clear, 1786 is regarded as the most reliable date. According to Hüsameddin his father was Mehmed bin Abdülhamid. As a boy İsmail came to Shamakhi to study, in 1215 (1800-01) went to Erzincan and studied for some five years with Evliyazade Abdurrahman Efendi, after receiving his license to teach passed to Tokat and Burdur, and in 1221 (1806) returned to Shirvan and taught for six years in Shamakhi.

In 1227 (1812) he went on the pilgrimage and stopped in Istanbul on his way back. From there he went to Basra to reach Sheikh Abdullah Dehlevî, but at his direction turned instead to his deputy Khalid al-Baghdadi and reached Baghdad in 1228 (1813). According to Hüsameddin he stayed about ten months with Khalid al-Baghdadi, received his deputyship (khalifa) and returned to Shirvan in 1229 (1814). In Shamakhi he married and began to teach and guide; the number of his students and disciples grew large enough to alarm the Russians. Hüsameddin writes that in 1240 (1824-25) he joined, together with Sheikh Ahmed Efendi, the ranks of Gazi Mehmed Efendi, who had risen against the Russians occupying Shirvan, and that by one account he had twenty thousand disciples. The Russians arrested him and made his release conditional on the surrender of Sheikh Ahmed Efendi; when Sheikh Ahmed gave himself up, İsmail Siraceddin moved with his family to Akhaltsikhe (Ahıska). When Ahıska too came under Russian threat, he came to Amasya in the month of Dhu al-Hijja 1242 (1827).

In Amasya he was first lodged temporarily in the Saraçhane Madrasa. In 1243 (1827-28), with the help of the deputy governor (mütesellim) Fazlızade Seyyid Hacı Mustafa Efendi, he settled in a house bought for him in the Yakutiye neighborhood, began to teach and soon won esteem among the scholars. The Khalidi practice of "râbıta," however, which he taught the people, disturbed some of the city's scholars; hurt by the objections of preachers in the mosques and scholars in their gatherings, the sheikh left for Sivas with his family in 1247 (1831-32). After staying about nine years in Sivas, weary of the harsh attitude of its notables and of the governor's conduct, he returned to Amasya at the beginning of 1256 (1840). He is reported to have told those who asked why he had come back, "I fled from ignorance and took refuge in the bed of learning"; he used to call Amasya "the bed of learning and scholars." In this second period scholars and students attended the lessons on Beyzâvî's Qur'an commentary that he began in the Yakutiye Mosque, and for about eight years he taught commentary and hadith.

Hakverdioğlu distinguishes Sheikh İsmail's arrival in Amasya from the journeys of earlier Shirvani scholars who came to Anatolia in search of learning. İsmail Şirvânî set out on a forced migration at a time when Russian advance had begun, under conditions in which the chances of survival for those who resisted were shrinking. Many who saw him as a qutb (spiritual pole) settled after him in Amasya and its surroundings under the epithet Şirvanlı. The poet Mir Hamza Nigârî is among them. Nigârî came from Karabakh to Sivas, crossed to Amasya in 1839 together with his sheikh İsmail Şirvânî and went on the pilgrimage in the same year. That Nigârî, who gathered a wide circle around himself with the authority received from his sheikh, was regarded in Amasya as a Shirvani although he was born in Karabakh shows that the word had become a general name for everyone coming from Azerbaijan.

Sheikh İsmail Siraceddin died in Amasya on 17 Ramadan 1264 (August 1848). The sources do not agree on the cause of his death. Hakverdioğlu's study describes him as a "martyr of the plague," who died of typhoid, also called karahumma, in the epidemic that spread together with cholera and reached Amasya in 1848; Turan Böcekçi, on the other hand, attributes his death to the cholera epidemic of that year. At his own wish he was buried on the ridge of the hill above the Şamlılar Cemetery. According to Hüsameddin, when he was asked on his deathbed why this place had been chosen, he pointed to his son Mehmed Rüşdü standing beside him and said, "He will be a vizier and will bring that place to life." Of the sheikh's four sons, Abdülhamid died childless in 1262, Mehmed Rüşdü Pasha rose to the grand vizierate, Seyyid Ahmed Hulusi Efendi served as chief military judge, and Mustafa Bey held high-ranking state posts. Mehmed Rüşdü Pasha had been born in 1245 (1829-30) in Amasya, in the Yakutiye neighborhood where the family lived; the family's tie with Şamlar was formed through the sheikh's grave.

The Upper Tomb

On the ridge where the sheikh was buried stands the building known among the people as the Upper Tomb (Yukarı Türbe). The four-line Arabic text of its inscription states that the tomb belongs to "the sheikh, the scholar, author of books on the religious and worldly sciences, from the village of Kürdemir in Shirvan, of the Naqshbandi-Khalidi order, İsmail Siraceddin," and says that his son, the grand vizier Mehmed Rüşdü Pasha, had the building made in 1283 (1867). In Hüsameddin's own text the year of construction appears as 1284 (1867-68); a study quoting him reads 1286 (1869), and some official publications give 1287 (1870). Since the inscription is regarded as the most reliable document, 1867 is preferred. Once the tomb was built, the old name of the ridge, "Şamlılar Üstü," was forgotten, and the place came to be known as the "Şirvanlı Türbesi," the Tomb of the Shirvani, or simply as "Şirvanlı."

The Upper Tomb consists of two square chambers. These two sections, built of brick and stone, are covered with domes, and a small mosque is joined to the tomb; the tomb is entered through this mosque. In the tomb, beside the sheikh, lie his son Seyyid Ahmed Hulusi Efendi, judge of Istanbul, and his son-in-law and student Hacı İsa Ruhi Efendi. In the cemetery around it are the graves of his granddaughter Hatice Hanım (1892), of another grandchild, the physician Captain İbrahim Bey (1913), and of Mihri Hanım (1935), a descendant of Sheikh İsmail. The dates on the gravestones show that the family was buried in the same cemetery from 1892 to 1935. In later years two dervish houses were also built next to the tomb.

As Hüsameddin saw it, the courtyard of the tomb was spacious and well ordered. In the courtyard stood a mansion, in front of it an ablution fountain, and a garden with a fine view. Part of the water that flowed to the fountain of the Şamlılar neighborhood had first been allotted to the tomb, and later the whole of it was given to the tomb and cut off from the fountain. As the sheikh had foreseen in his last wish, these arrangements did bring the hill to life, and the Şirvanlı ridge became one of Amasya's places of outing. Among the excursion spots set aside for Fridays and for women, Hüsameddin lists "Şirvanlı" first, before Saraydüzü, Çanaklar and Kaşık Pınarı. From the garden of the tomb the city looks different at every hour.

The tomb is still among the most visited places today. According to the imam of the mosque interviewed for a master's thesis of 2019, most visitors are of Azerbaijani origin and come in groups, especially in the summer months. Some pray and leave, while others enter the tomb crawling, kiss the threshold, leave their prayer beads on the cenotaphs and then rub them on their faces; women who wish for a child leave their garments on a cenotaph for a while. The imam said that he tries to prevent these practices, which he does not consider religiously appropriate. The thesis also lists the Tomb of Sheikh İsmail Siraceddin among the tombs where the custom of leaving clothing for a wish is most practiced, and notes that Azerbaijani visitors attach particular value to the tomb because they regard the man who lies there as one of their own nation.

The Shirvani Migration and the Memory of the Neighborhood

The arrival of the Shirvanis in Amasya does not begin with İsmail Siraceddin. The first notable person called Shirvani in Amasya Tarihi is Esen Şeyh Takiyeddin Cemal, who came to Anatolia with the Mongol commander Samuk Noyin; he served him on Samuk Noyin's farm at Köprü and died there in 1269. Among his descendants are Tâcî Bey and his sons Câfer Çelebi and Sa'dî Çelebi. Câfer Çelebi served as chancellor (nişancı) and chief military judge (kazasker) under Bayezid II and Selim I and was executed in 1515; Sa'dî Çelebi ran the treasury of Prince Bayezid in Amasya. The tie between Shirvan and Amasya had therefore been established centuries before the forced migration of the nineteenth century.

With the arrival of İsmail Siraceddin in Amasya a wave of migration began, and it was not limited to one man's journey. According to research, the first migrations from Azerbaijan to Amasya came from the Kürdemir, Shamakhi, Quba and Sheki regions of Shirvan, and in later years people came from Dagestan, Karabakh, Ganja, Ahıstafa, Kazakh, Borchali, Ahıska, Karayazı, Ahılkelek, Ağbaba and Gökçe. Mir Hamza Nigârî's final settlement in Amasya also belongs to this later wave: Hüsameddin writes that his son Mir Siracî was born in 1271 (1854-55) in the town of Berküşad in Karabakh and migrated to Amasya with his father in 1281 (1864-65). When this young poet, author of a small divan and a sâkînâme, died in 1291 (1874), it was, in Hüsameddin's words, "a day of mourning for the Shirvanis"; he was buried in the Şamlılar Cemetery, and in 1314 (1896-97) his bones were moved to his father's tomb.

After the Ottoman-Russian War of 1877-78 some of those living in the region considered Anatolia safe and took refuge in Amasya. The Amasya Sanjak section of the 1883 Salname of the Sivas Province records, besides the Muslim and Christian population of the city, a community of "new immigrants" of 1239 people in 308 households. In the 1887 salname this figure is shown as 65 households and 200 people. The salnames do not state where the immigrants came from, but it is highly probable that this community came from the Caucasus.

One of the buildings the Shirvanis left in the city is the Azeris Mosque, also known as the Shirvanlılar Mosque. Its inscription is dated 1325 (1907) and states that it was built together with the tomb under the leadership of Mahmud el-Karanî, one of Mir Hamza Nigârî's deputies in Kazakh; the last-congregation porch was completed through the efforts of Karanî's sons Veys, Muhammed and Ahmed Efendi. In the decoration of the doorway and mihrab one sees motifs of Azerbaijani art and baroque influences typical of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Nigârî also lies in the tomb adjoining this mosque. In Olcay's memoirs the inhabitants of the Nigârî neighborhood are described as his disciples, his relatives and his fellow countrymen from Shirvan. The word Şirvanlı has taken root so firmly in this area that in Anatolia Azerbaijani immigrants are given this name.

Unlike the Damascus story, this picture can be traced in written records. The Upper Tomb in Şamlar added a new spiritual meaning beside the neighborhood's name, and İsmail Siraceddin's grave made the neighborhood a place of visitation and remembrance for those who came from Shirvan. The saints' tombs in other districts of Amasya are part of the same memory. A local writer records that Kurtboğan lies at İstasyon, Hicabi Baba at Ziyaret, Pir İlyas at Sofular and İsmail Siraceddin at Şamlar, and names Selamet Hatun as the second known woman saint in Anatolia. The interest people show in these graves is linked with the respect felt for miracles and legends. The legends of Kurtboğan and İğneci Baba have been told in this context. Sebâtî, a poet trained by Nigârî, wrote poems to İsmail Şirvânî although he never saw him, and became the keeper of his tomb.

Şamlar and Sofular in the Early Twentieth Century

Osman Fevzi Olcay, born in the Sofular neighborhood in 1887, describes the two neighborhoods in the early twentieth century from the inside. In his account, almost all the inhabitants of Şamlar at that time were immigrants who had come and settled from various places; while the name of the old community said to have come from Damascus stayed in place, the population of the neighborhood had been renewed several times. In the İhsaniye neighborhood, at the foot of the broad, commanding hill on which Şamlar lies, Crimean Tatars who came from Crimea in 1292 (1876-77) had been settled, and the district was given this name because they had been housed through the bounty (ihsan) of Abdülhamid II. Olcay recalls that Sheikh İsmail Siraceddin lies "at the very commanding point of the hill." Of this district around the tomb he complains that, although it was the entry point of the city, it had not developed at all, and among its respected people he names Ali Bey, a samovar repairer from among the immigrants from Oltu, and Lütfü Bey, who had served as finance accountant during the Armistice years. The poet Sebâtî and his son Ali Hâver Bey also lived near the tomb.

As Olcay describes it, Sofular was the area lying behind Saraydüzü and the Pir İlyas Tomb, beginning from the hill on which the city's hospital stood and stretching as far as the Sofular Mosque. Its slope was steep and tiring and its air was good; most of its inhabitants were Turks and Muslims. Directly opposite the Pir İlyas Tomb there was another small neighborhood of five or ten houses, surrounded by houses and shaded in its middle by mulberry trees; in the courtyard of its ruined mosque lay Gümüşlüoğlu Pir Abdurrahman Çelebi, of the line of Pir İlyas. The names and descriptions Olcay gives show that the two neighborhoods were continually remade over the centuries by successive migrations and by houses changing hands; yet the same descriptions also reveal that the spiritual landmarks stretching from Pir İlyas to the Shirvani sheikh continued to stand at the center of neighborhood life.

The Layers Told by the Names

Looking at the names Şamlar and Sofular together, several separate layers of time appear. At the bottom lie the memories of the Danishmendids: the name Dânişmendli Mülkü, the lodge of Melik İsmail, the traditions tied to the Alagöz Baba and Ayşe Gazi tombs, and the ruined mosque of Melik Gazi. Although it is disputed whether it belongs to the Umayyad age or to the end of the fourteenth century, the name Şamlar carries the memory of a community from Damascus; the settlement of Hamza Şâmî and Alagöz Baba in the neighborhood and the complexes that rose in the years 1485-95 show that the name is at least five hundred years old. The name Sofular, for its part, reflects a spiritual geography formed on the estate of Behram Şah around Pir İlyas and the Gümüşlüzade family. On top of these were added, in the nineteenth century, the tomb of the sheikh who came from Shirvan and the community that came with him. No source ties those who came from Damascus directly to those who came from Shirvan; the two are different migration memories settled one over the other in the same neighborhood.

Chronology

750: According to the tradition reported by Hüsameddin, the Umayyad Ebân bin Muâviye takes refuge in Amasya with his son (the Abbasid revolution, 132).

1389: According to Hüsameddin, some of the people of Damascus fleeing an internal conflict in Egypt settle in Amasya (791).

1396-97: Hamza Şâmî, father of Akşemseddin, comes to Amasya and settles in the Şamlılar neighborhood.

1402-03: Pir İlyas is sent to Shirvan after the examination held by Kara Mehmed Sultan, a grandson of Timur.

1412-13: The deed of endowment of the Çilehane Lodge is registered by Rükneddin Mahmud, judge of Amasya.

1425-26: Alagöz Baba Şemseddin Ahmed Şâmî dies (1404-05 in another record).

1485: Abdullah Pasha's hadith college in Sofular is completed according to its inscription; Bayezid II arranges the endowments of the Pir İlyas Tomb.

1488-89: Hüseyin Ağa has the Büyük Ağa Madrasa built in the Şamlılar neighborhood.

1494-95: Ayas Ağa endows his mosque, madrasa and school in Şamlar.

1501-02: Abdülkerim Bey draws up the deed of endowment of his father's hadith college.

1544: Hoca Hacı Salih Çelebi has the Şamlar Lodge built and arranges its endowments.

1553-54: The Naqshbandi Sheikh Abdullah Efendi founds the Şeyh Abdul Lodge in Sofular.

1786: İsmail Siraceddin is born in the village of Kürdemir in Shirvan (according to the inscription; 1782-83 according to Hüsameddin).

1827: İsmail Siraceddin comes to Amasya by way of Ahıska.

1831-32: Following the dispute over râbıta, he leaves for Sivas.

1839: Mir Hamza Nigârî comes to Amasya with his sheikh İsmail Şirvânî.

1840: İsmail Siraceddin returns to Amasya for the second time.

1848: İsmail Siraceddin dies in Amasya and is buried on the ridge above the Şamlılar Cemetery.

1864-65: Mir Hamza Nigârî migrates from Karabakh to Amasya with his son Mir Siracî.

1867: His son Mehmed Rüşdü Pasha has the Upper Tomb built (according to the inscription; other records give 1867-68, 1869 and 1870).

1876-77: Crimean Tatars are settled in the İhsaniye neighborhood near Şamlar.

1883: The Salname of the Sivas Province records 308 households with 1239 new immigrants in the Amasya Sanjak.

1892-93: Cünunzade Hacı Mustafa Ağa has the lecture room of the Sofular Madrasa built.

1907: The inscription of the Azeris Mosque is dated.

1938: The cemetery around the Tomb of the Pirs is removed and the area made into a park.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

  • Şen, Ayşegül. Amasya Şehir Merkezindeki Dini Ziyaret Yerleri. Master's thesis, Hitit University, 2019. amasya.bel.tr
  • Hakverdioğlu, Metin. "Anadolu'yu Aydınlatan Şirvânîler ve Amasya'daki Şirvânî Şairler." Amasya Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, Amasya Özel Sayısı, 2022, pp. 129-155. amasya.bel.tr
  • Azimova, Parvana; Doğanbaş, Muzaffer. "Amasya Tarihinde Azeriler ve Mimari Eserleri." Eurasian Art and Humanities Journal, 11, 2019, pp. 15-30.
  • "Amasya'da Bulunan Halvetiyye Tekkeleri." DergiPark, 2018, no. 5.

Other sources

  • Tanman, M. Baha. "Ayas Ağa Külliyesi." TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 4, 1991, pp. 201-202. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Tanman, M. Baha. "Dârülhadis Camii." TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 8, 1993, p. 534. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • "Büyük Ağa Medrese." Wikipedia (English).
  • Hakverdioğlu, Metin. "Bir Taun Şehidi Şeyh İsmail Sirâceddîn Şirvânî ve Hakkında Yazılan Şiirler." 2020.
  • Çolaker, Isa. "Amasya'nın Manevi Sahipleri." 2014.
  • Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, information record on the Tomb of İsmail of Shirvan.

Online sources