The Pirler quarter of Amasya takes its name from the Halvetî sheikhs who lived and were buried here, the order's elders who bore the title of "pir". The best-known building in the quarter is the Tomb of Pir Sücaeddin İlyas, which stands inside Pirler Park, just south of the Çilehane Mosque. Known locally as the Upper Pirler Tomb, or simply the Pirler Tomb, it holds the grave of the sheikh who brought the Halvetî path to Anatolia, and it remains one of the tombs most visited by the people of Amasya. Its history begins with a grave dug in a family garden, over which first a modest cell and then, at a sultan's hand, a masonry building were raised. Over the following four centuries the building was repaired several times, demolished and rebuilt at the end of the nineteenth century, while the cemetery around it was turned into a park in 1938. Pir İlyas's life is the subject of a separate article; only those parts of it that bear on the tomb appear here.

Name and Location

The tomb is called "Pirler", "the Pirs", because more than one pir lies inside it. According to Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin's record, the tomb holds Gümüşlüzâde Pir Şücâeddin İlyas el-Halvetî together with his son-in-law Pir Celâleddin Abdurrahman Çelebi and his grandson Pir Hayreddin Hızır Çelebi. At their feet lie four more women from among the wives and daughters of these men. Studies of Amasya Halvetism repeat the same information and note that the building came to be called the Pirler Tomb because the graves of three pirs are found there. The name Upper Pirler is used to distinguish it from the other tomb in the lower part of the town, inside the dervish lodge. That one is known as Lower Pirler or the Lower Pir Tomb. The sources differ on who is buried there. Some studies give the name of Gümüşlüzâde Abdurrahman Çelebi, whereas Hüsâmeddin writes that it holds Pir Celâleddin Abdurrahman the Second, son of Pir Hüsâmeddin Halvetî, the saint of Kuba, and son of Pir İlyas's granddaughter. Osman Fevzi Olcay, in his memoirs, names the man buried at Lower Pirler as Pir Abdurrahman Çelebi, Pir İlyas's son-in-law and the son of his paternal uncle.

The building stands within the bounds of the Mehmed Paşa neighborhood, at a point reached from Şeyh Abdurrahman Street. The Çilehane Mosque, that is, the Yâkub Paşa Lodge, lies immediately to the north of the tomb. This proximity makes the tomb part of a single spiritual precinct together with the lodge. Older records describe the spot as "a small hill at the head of the cemetery on the western side of the Beyler Palace." In common speech the whole level ground was known as "Beyler Sarayı", "Saray Düzü" and "Pir İlyas". The surroundings of the tomb were the cemetery of the Sevâdiye neighborhood, or, as the records call it, the Pir İlyas Cemetery, and held the graves of many notable people. These graves were removed in 1938 by the governor of the day, Talat Öncel, and the area was turned into a park. After this arrangement the tomb lost the cemetery that had surrounded it and became a solitary building in the park, standing higher than its surroundings. In Olcay's youth, directly opposite the tomb, lay the quiet Çilehane neighborhood of five or ten houses, its center shaded by mulberry trees, with its ruined mosque.

The Gümüşlüzâde Garden and the Site of the Grave

To understand why the tomb stands on this hill, one must look at the Gümüşlüzâde family's property here. According to Hüsâmeddin, the palace ground passed into the possession of Emir Gümüşlü, that is, Emînüddin Yûnus el-Müstevfî, brother-in-law of the Seljuk vizier Muînüddin Pervâne, and long remained in the hands of his descendants. Gümüşlüzâde Tâceddin Mahmud Çelebi, one of the family's elders in the fourteenth century, built a pavilion here during the years he governed Amasya as emir, and the eastern side of the ground came to be called the "Gümüşlüzâde Pavilion" and the western side the "Gümüşlüzâde Garden". When Mehmed I (Çelebi Mehmed) came to Amasya as governor around 1398, he bought the site of the pavilion from Gümüşlüzâde Hoca Celâl Çelebi and had the Ottoman palace built there. The garden, however, remained entirely in the family's hands. As Pir İlyas, his son-in-law Abdurrahman Çelebi and his grandson Hayreddin Hızır Çelebi were buried in this garden, the Gümüşlüzâde Garden gradually turned into a graveyard. Thus the tomb rose on the family's own land, just west of the Beyler Palace where two sultans had been born.

Pir İlyas's death and burial are also bound up with this garden. Hüsâmeddin relates that the sheikh died while staying at his garden at the head of Kuşköprü, on the third day of Shawwal in the year 813, that is, toward the end of January 1411. According to a legend told in Yâkub Paşa's endowment deed and in the translation of the Nefehâtü'l-üns, while his body was being washed on the riverbank one leg of the washing board broke, and as the corpse began to slide down, the sheikh took hold of the edge of the board with his hand and kept himself from falling, while those present watched in astonishment. Local collections tell the same legend in a version set on a platform at a vineyard house. The body was carried with great reverence and buried in the "upper garden" above the Gümüşlüzâde neighborhood. The name Upper Pirler appears to derive from this location.

The sources differ on the year of Pir İlyas's death. Most recent accounts give 1433. Some biographical writings give the hijri year 833 (1429-30). Hüsâmeddin, however, gives 813 (1410-11) and grounds it in a document: the Yâkub Paşa endowment deed drawn up in 815 (1412-13) mentions Pir İlyas's death together with the name of his successor Pir Celâleddin Abdurrahman. If this record is correct, the sheikh certainly died before 1413, and the date 1433 must be the product of a later confusion. The contradiction cannot be resolved conclusively with the publications at hand. The early date based on the endowment deed, however, also fits better with the building phases of the tomb.

The First Building: A Cell and a Wooden Tomb

Before the present masonry building, a more modest structure stood over the grave. Hüsâmeddin gives two separate pieces of information about this first building. In his list of tombs he writes that a cell was first built over the grave by Gümüşlüzâde Ahmed Paşa. In the biographical section he devotes to the family's elders, however, he speaks of Gümüşlüzâde Hâce Celâleddin Mehmed Çelebi. This man, who had served as treasurer (defterdar) of Amasya and managed the financial affairs of Mehmed I, built for Pir İlyas during his lifetime, as trustee of the Gümüşlüzâde endowments, a lofty zaviye with a pavilion beside it, and at the sheikh's death had a wooden tomb raised over his grave. The zaviye and pavilion were named "Kasr-ı Ârifân", the Pavilion of the Gnostics. Since Celâleddin Mehmed Çelebi died in 815 (1412-13), this wooden tomb must have been built within a year or two of Pir İlyas's death. Hüsâmeddin's biography of Pir İlyas also states that on his return from Shirvan the sheikh lived in the lodge that Gümüşlüzâde Hâce Celâl Çelebi had built for him. The two records do not exclude each other. Ahmed Paşa's cell and Celâleddin Mehmed Çelebi's wooden tomb may be the same first phase remembered under different names. There is, however, no conclusive document on this point.

The Reign of Bayezid II and the Dating Dispute

In the last quarter of the fifteenth century a masonry building took the place of the wooden tomb. There is no single view on its construction date. Culture and tourism records state that the tomb was built in 1486 for Sheikh Sücaeddin Pir İlyas by Ahmed Bey of the Gümüşlüzâde family. The original building inscription above the entrance, by contrast, gives the hijri year 887. This corresponds to 1482-83. The text of the inscription is rendered as follows: "This tomb was built for Sheikh Şücaeddin Pir İlyas, known as Gümüşlüoğlu, leader of those who have attained the stations of certainty and annihilation, pole of the great sheikhs. May God let us benefit from his noble spirit. This building was erected in the year 887." The patron's name does not appear in the quoted text. The attribution to Gümüşlüzâde Ahmed Bey rests on information in written records.

Hüsâmeddin gives a third date. According to him, the first building, a cell, was rebuilt in masonry by Sultan Bayezid II in 890 (1485). Some accounts likewise attribute the tomb to Bayezid II and give 1482 as its construction date. An article on the lodge, meanwhile, records that Bayezid II had the Yâkub Paşa Lodge rebuilt in masonry in 1485. All these records fall within the same decade and show that intensive building activity was under way around Pirler in the mid-1480s. The year 887 on the inscription may belong to the start of construction, and 890 to its completion with the sultan's contribution. With the publications at hand, it is not possible to determine with certainty which date belongs to the tomb and which to the lodge or to endowment transactions. What can be said with confidence is that the masonry tomb was built in the early years of Bayezid II's reign. Considering that Bayezid II had spent many years in Amasya as a prince, the attention he paid to the grave of the town's most revered sheikh is hardly surprising.

As Hüsâmeddin describes it, the tomb built by Bayezid II was a three-part building with a large dome in the middle and two small domes at its sides. The central section served as the tomb, while the western side functioned as a prayer room for men and the eastern side as one for women. Visitors could thus pray on either side of the grave, in sections set aside for them. This arrangement was preserved in the later rebuilding and has survived to the present day.

Endowment and Tomb Keepers

The tomb's operation lay within a network of endowments. According to Hüsâmeddin's list of tombs, two villages in Merzifon were endowed to the tomb, and its trusteeship was left to the descendants of Pir Hayreddin Hızır el-Halvetî. The same author, in his biography of Pir İlyas, gives the number of endowed villages as three. Some studies state that the revenue of the village of Kara Mağara in Merzifon was assigned to the tomb. There was also a public kitchen beside the tomb. Known as the Pîr İlyas İmaret, this soup kitchen is counted, along with the Mehmed Paşa and Yörgüç Paşa imarets, among the important food distribution centers in Amasya coordinated by the dervish lodges. When Evliya Çelebi came to Amasya, he visited Pir İlyas's grave and wrote that the sheikh had hundreds of bareheaded and barefoot devotees, and that, since his endowments were plentiful, hospitality to passers-by was never lacking. In the same passage he says he recited a complete reading of the Qur'an for the sheikh's soul and saw couplets written on a piece of paper on the wall of the grave: "Ali kulunu eyleme bigâne(ye) kıyas / Hızır ol ona her vartada yâ Hızır İlyas" (Do not liken your servant Ali to a stranger; be his Hızır in every peril, O Hızır İlyas).

For a long time the office of tomb keeper went together with the sheikhship of the Gümüşlüoğlu Lodge, regarded as the first Halvetî lodge in Amasya. This lodge, beside the eastern and southern sides of the Gümüşlü Mosque, also recorded under the name Tâciye, was according to Hüsâmeddin the place where Pir İlyas first entered retreat and began to spread his order, and it remained the family's sanctuary for more than two hundred years. After Pir İlyas, his son-in-law Pir Abdurrahman Çelebi, then his son Celâl Çelebi and his grandson Pir Hayreddin Hızır Çelebi headed the lodge. In 890 (1485) Gümüşlüzâde Sûfî Üveys Çelebi, one of the Pir's descendants, and after him Gümüşlüzâde Sheikh Muhyiddin Mehmed el-Halvetî and Pir Üveysoğlu Abdurrahman Çelebi became both sheikh of the lodge and keeper of the tomb. The chain continued through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with sheikhs descended from the family's sons and daughters. In 1585 Pir Üveysoğlu el-Hâc Ahmed Çelebi, in 1099 (1687-88) Sheikh Mustafa Efendi of the Pir's female line, then Sheikh Mahmud Efendi and his son Hâfız Hasan Efendi took on these duties. Abdürrahim Efendi, who became tomb keeper in 1135 (1722-23), was judged unfit for the post and was placed under the guardianship of the tomb keeper Sheikh İsmâil Efendi.

In the middle of the eighteenth century this arrangement changed. When Sheikh İsmâil Efendi became trustee and sheikh of the lodge in 1150 (1737-38), Fâtıma Hanım, a lady of the palace who held him in great esteem, at his urging built a well-ordered madrasa in place of the Gümüşlüoğlu Lodge in 1153 (1740-41) and established its endowment. After İsmâil Efendi's death in 1179 (1765-66), the teaching post of the Fâtımiye Madrasa and the keepership of Pir İlyas's tomb were separated. From then on the keepership passed to the descendants of Mehmed Efendi, known as Yeğen Halife, and to other family members such as Abdullah Efendi and Seyyid Ahmed Efendi. The tomb was also a place of learning. Hüsâmeddin records that in 1125 (1713) a separate teacher was appointed to the tomb.

In the nineteenth century scholars from outside the family also appear among the tomb keepers. Çerkes Ebûbekir Efendi, who emigrated from the Caucasus and came to Amasya in 1242 (1826-27), became first the lectern sheikh of Yâkub Paşa and then keeper of Pir İlyas's tomb, and died in 1279 (1862-63) at the age of seventy-four. Another Çerkes Ebûbekir Efendi, who came to Amasya with a license from Naqshbandi sheikhs, spent the last years of his life as tomb keeper and recluse. Hüsâmeddin relates that every day after the dawn prayer he recited the Kaside-i Bürde in the tomb's prayer room, at times weeping as he read. He died in 1306 (1888-89). At the end of the century Hâfız İbrahim Efendi, known by the nickname "Şeyh Ağa", was both keeper and cüzhan of the tomb, that is, the person who recited sections of the Qur'an in the tomb on behalf of the endowment. He too died in 1316 (1898-99).

The Repair by Gümüşlüzâde İbrahim Paşa

The tomb's most important patron in the seventeenth century was Gümüşlüzâde İbrahim Paşa, of the branch of the family that reached Istanbul. Described in Hüsâmeddin's list of tombs as a descendant of Pir İlyas's brother, İbrahim Paşa appears in the biographical section as a vizier who traced his lineage directly to Pir İlyas. He rose through his attachment to Köprülüzâde Fâzıl Ahmed Paşa, served as governor in Eğri, Erzurum, Baghdad and Damascus and as commander of the fortresses of Timişoara and Belgrade, and in 1097 (1686) was granted the sanjak of Amasya as an arpalık, a revenue grant. He had the tomb repaired anew in 1100 (1688-89). The 1688 renovation in the culture and tourism records corresponds to this repair. As recorded in the endowment registers, İbrahim Paşa assigned a dersiye to the tomb of his ancestor Pir İlyas, that is, endowment revenue for lessons to be taught, built a fountain within the tomb's precinct, and arranged the endowment for both. The paşa died in 1113 (1701-02) while serving as governor of Van.

The Rebuilding of 1894-95

The present tomb is not the first building preserved as it was. Most short descriptions state that the tomb was destroyed in the 1895 earthquake and then rebuilt. Hüsâmeddin's account is more detailed. According to him, the tomb had been weakened by repeated earthquakes and cracks had appeared around it. In view of this, the building was demolished entirely in 1312 (1894-95). The rebuilding brought together the efforts of Adjutant-Major Hurşid Bey, cash contributions from the people of the neighborhood, and an adequate sum that Sultan Abdülhamid II set aside from his own endowments. The surface of the surrounding cemetery was leveled, a wide area was opened, and the building was reconstructed in its old arrangement, with the tomb in the middle and a prayer room for women and one for men on either side. The cells and prayer rooms were enlarged, and the domes were raised in the same shape and size. The transformation of the Bayezid II building's large central dome and two small side domes into today's three equal domes is the result of this rebuilding. It is recorded that in the same years the neighboring Yâkub Paşa Lodge and its tomb were also rebuilt through the efforts of the people and with funds set aside from Abdülhamid II's endowment revenues.

During the rebuilding the old graves around the tomb also suffered. Hüsâmeddin writes that north of the old tomb, in front of its western window, lay the graves of several eminent figures of the community, and that when the new building was erected these were leveled and a room for the tomb keeper was built over them. The gravestone of Şâh Melik bin Şâdî, which stood in the tomb garden and bore the date of his death, was also lost together with the grave during the repair. The qibla side of the tomb, meanwhile, became a garden. Hüsâmeddin approves of keeping this garden well tended but objects to notables being buried there. He notes reproachfully that earlier generations had carefully kept the qibla side clear and avoided praying toward a cemetery even with a wall between, and that later generations paid no heed to this subtlety.

Above the entrance are two inscriptions. One is the tomb's original building inscription in Arabic, the other a ten-line repair inscription written in Ottoman Turkish. The repair inscription opens with a prayer for Abdülhamid II, states that the sultan restored this "exalted lodge of Pir İlyas" from top to bottom, and ends with a chronogram verse. Some of its lines have been read as follows: "Hüda tahtında şah-ı Abdülhamid'i payidar etsün / ... / hususiyle bu dergâh-ı muallâ-yı Pir İlyas'ı / edüp ihya serapa böylece ol bani-i sani / ... / tamam oldu bu câ-yı dilküşâ ba avn-i Rabbani." The phrase "bir adet tarh et" (subtract one) in the ninth line indicates that the date is found by subtracting one from the abjad value of the last verse. The inscription confirms on the façade of the building the date 1312 given by Hüsâmeddin and Abdülhamid's contribution.

Architecture

For this reason the visible fabric of the building belongs to the end of the nineteenth century far more than to the fifteenth. Some brief descriptions speak of the restrained spirit of late fifteenth-century tomb architecture, but for a building that was demolished and rebuilt, the phrase holds true at most in the sense that its plan and function were preserved. The tomb has a transverse rectangular plan. The interior is divided into three sections by two pointed arches resting on buttresses on the north and south walls, and each section is covered by a dome. In the western section there is a mihrab set into the qibla wall, and this part is used as a prayer room. The graves lie in the central section. Today, too, one side of the grave is used as a prayer area for women and the other for men. The building thus offers a dual-purpose space in which both the graves are kept and worship continues.

The building is constructed of dressed cut stone. The façades have round-arched windows, through which the interior receives its light. The two inscriptions above the entrance make the building's founding and repair phases legible on its façade. The round-arched windows and the domes of equal size bear the marks of late nineteenth-century provincial building craft. The three-part arrangement of the plan and the prayer rooms on either side of the grave, by contrast, were inherited from the building of Bayezid II's time.

Surrounding Tombs and Graves

The Tomb of Pir İlyas was the center of an area surrounded by many funerary buildings both older and younger than itself. The oldest of these is the Tâceddin Tomb, northwest of the tomb. As Hüsâmeddin describes it, it was a small but imposing hexagonal building made entirely of stone tending toward black, its dome band decorated all around with floral motifs and carved with Qur'anic verses. Inside lie the emir of Amasya Gümüşlüzâde Tâceddin Mahmud Çelebi, his wife Döndü Hatun and his daughter Ayşe Hatun. Tâceddin Mahmud, who came from a family that had served as accountants (müstevfi) in the Seljuk treasury, became governor of Amasya in 1320, went to Egypt in the retinue of the Ilkhanid emir Timurtaş, returned to Amasya after being imprisoned in Alexandria, and died in 735 (1335). According to Hüsâmeddin, the Tâciye Mosque, later known as the Gümüşlüzâde Mosque, is the mosque he built beside his mansion. Hüsâmeddin attributes the fact that certain persons pursuing a claim to the trusteeship pointed to this tomb as the "Kadem Paşa Tomb" to the location of the real Kadem Paşa Tomb having been forgotten. This building also explains why Pir İlyas was buried in this garden: Pir İlyas was laid to rest beside one of the leading members of the family, of the same lineage, who had lived in the previous century.

In the following centuries the surroundings of the tomb remained a favored burial ground. Sinaneddin, steward of Devlet Hatun, mother of Mehmed I, was buried on his death in 910 (1504-05) in his own tomb near the Tomb of Pir İlyas. Hüsâmeddin states that Bekî Hatun, daughter of Mustafa Bey, very probably lies in the tomb adjoining the Tomb of Pir İlyas. The body of one of the great teachers who died in the eighteenth century was carried, in Hüsâmeddin's words, "on fingertips" and buried beside the road north of the tomb. Some of the gravestones in the tomb garden, like that of Şâh Melik bin Şâdî, bore the death dates of the town's notables. With the park arrangement of 1938 most of these graves disappeared.

The Lodge and the Halvetî Circle

To understand the tomb, one must also look at the lodge beside it. The Yâkub Paşa Lodge, known as the Çilehane Mosque, was built in 1412 in the Pirler quarter of Amasya by Pazarlıoğlu Yâkub Paşa, beylerbey (governor-general) of Ankara, and its endowment deed was registered in Dhu al-Qadah 815 (February 1413) by the judge of Amasya, Mevlânâ Rükneddin Mahmud, nicknamed Sarı Kadı. Yâkub Paşa built and endowed the lodge, which belonged to the Halvetiyye, for the mufti Sheikh Gümüşlüzâde Abdurrahman Çelebi. According to Hüsâmeddin, the lodge stood within the Yâkub Paşa Mansion, and its trusteeship was left to Abdurrahman Çelebi's successor Şemseddin Mehmed Buhârî and his descendants, and, should that line die out, to the descendants of Müeyyed Çelebi. Whether Pir İlyas was the founding sheikh of this lodge is not told in a single way in the sources. One account links the endowment document to Pir İlyas, while the encyclopedia entry gives the name of Abdurrahman Çelebi in the endowment deed. Family relationships are also constructed differently. Celâleddin Abdurrahman Çelebi appears in one source as Pir İlyas's son, in another as his nephew, and in a third as the son of Abdurrahman Çelebi. The records of the son-in-law and grandson in the tomb must therefore be read with caution. The fact that photographs of the lodge are kept in Aptullah Kuran's architectural archive under the name "Pir İlyas Tekkesi" shows how closely the two buildings were intertwined in popular perception.

Over time the lodge became an important dervish center of Amasya. Because so many Halvetî sheikhs were trained here, one researcher describes it as a "dervish factory." The office of sheikh followed a chain that the people of Amasya called "silsiletü'z-zeheb", the golden chain. This chain includes names such as Pir Abdurrahman Çelebi, son-in-law of Abdurrahman Çelebi, Pir Şemseddin Mehmed Buhârî, Pir Celâleddin Abdurrahman Çelebi, Sun'ullah Halvetî, the Pir of the Saddlers, Pir Zekeriyyâ Halvetî, İğnecizâde Pir Safiyyüddin Mahmûd and Kubâlı Çelebizâde Pir Muhyiddin Mehmed Çelebi. Muhyiddin Mehmed Çelebi served until 1515. After him Buhârîzâde Pir Mehmed, Sheikh Yâkub, Sheikh Abdurrahman, Sheikh İzzeddin Hasan and Sheikh Hüsâmeddin Hüseyin carried on the chain. In 1622, when a dispute over the sheikhship arose between the preacher Sheikh Hüsâmeddin Efendi and Sheikh Abdi Efendi, a madrasa was established in the prayer hall and its attached retreat cells, and its teaching post was given to Abdi Efendi. In the room at the northeast corner and in the tevhidhâne the lodge's function continued, and the sheikhship remained with Hüsâmeddin Efendi. In Olcay's youth the dim space of three or four cells at the entrance and exit of the Lower Pirler tomb was known as the "Çilehane Madrasa", and a Sufi named Hasan Efendi lived in one of the cells.

The plan of the neighboring lodge shows more clearly the setting in which the tomb stands. The two entrances of the Yâkub Paşa Lodge lie at the ends of a barrel-vaulted corridor running east to west. South of the corridor, in the middle, is the prayer hall, flanked by twelve vaulted units with hearths, six on each side. The six windowless units opening onto the prayer hall were designed as retreat cells (halvethâne), and the six units adjoining the outer wall and each lit by a window as dervish cells. The retreat cells are square units measuring about 1.90 x 1.90 meters. North of the corridor is the tevhidhâne, with the sheikh's room to its east and the Lower Pirler Tomb to its west. Because the ground slopes in two directions, the building was set on four different levels. Above the tomb's prayer window opening onto the corridor is a Persian inscription concerning those buried there. The tomb's latticed wrought-iron door, signed "amel-i Ramazan el-Kastamonî", is counted among the rare masterpieces of early Ottoman metalwork. The building's façades have no ornament. This approach is the result of an architecture that put function first in keeping with the order's understanding of retreat. The lodge was damaged in the 1939 Erzincan earthquake and repaired in 1967. The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi gives the Yâkub Paşa Lodge an important place in the history of Turkish architecture as one of the rare dervish buildings of the early Ottoman period to have survived in its original form.

Its Place Among the Halvetî Tombs

The influence of Halvetism in Amasya is seen most clearly in the number of tombs. Abdizâde's Amasya Tarihi names seventy-one tombs, eighteen of which belong to Halvetiyye sheikhs. Among them are the tombs of Akbilek, İğnecizâde, Pir İlyas, Pir Sinan, Pir Abdurrahman Çelebi, Habib-i Karamânî, Hüseyin Dede, Sheikh Zekeriyya, Abdurrahman Baba and the saint of Kuba. The Tomb of Pir İlyas, in the words of the same study, is the town's most important place of visitation. This primacy comes from the place of the sheikh buried there within the order. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the Halvetiyye was brought to Anatolia by Pîr İlyas of Amasya, one of the successors of Sadreddîn-i Hiyâvî.

Pir İlyas is the mufti who is said to have saved the town from plunder by answering the questions of the delegation Timur sent to Amasya after the Battle of Ankara. Timur sent him, together with his nephew Şemseddin Ahmed, to Shirvan, where the sheikh stayed about four years with Sadreddin Mûsâ Şirvânî, received the Halvetî succession, and after Timur's death returned to Amasya in 807 (1404-05). According to Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin, Halvetism began to spread in Amasya with his return and won the people's favor to such a degree that it overshadowed the leading figures of the Babaî and Mevlevî paths. Those who followed his path were encouraged toward learning, directed toward asceticism and piety, and kept from meddling in the affairs of emirs and statesmen. Pir İlyas's family was also part of this circle. It is said that he himself educated his wife Raziye Hanım and that she taught the women of Amasya. It is recorded that his daughter Râbia Hatun likewise received learning and the order from her father. Mihrî Hatun, whose father is named as Kadı Hasan and whose grandfather as Pir İlyas, is one of the best-known women poets of Turkish literature. Traces of Halvetism can be seen in her divan and in her work Tazarru-nâme. From Pir İlyas's path came figures such as Zekeriyya Halvetî, Sheikh Şerafeddin and Hamza Akşemseddin, and through Çelebi Halife (Mehmed Celâleddin Aksarayî), who came from this line, Halvetism became an important order in Istanbul as well. This spread also coincides with the years when Amasya was a princes' sanjak. One researcher suggests that the order's spirit of tolerance influenced the princes raised in Amasya. This interpretation is open to debate and does not count as a fact proven by documents.

Traditions of Visitation

For centuries the Tomb of Pir İlyas has been known as a place of wishes and healing. Hüsâmeddin writes that the tomb was regarded as a source of healing and was a place of pilgrimage for the afflicted, and relates an event from his own time. In 1294 (1877) Ahmed Efendi, a pupil at the rüşdiye school, was called Topal Ahmed, "Lame Ahmed", by his friends because of a crookedness in his leg, and was deeply hurt by the nickname. On his mother's advice he went to the tomb for forty mornings, recited the Qur'an and prayed for his leg to be straightened. On the fortieth day he fell asleep before dawn in front of the tomb door. In his dream he saw the Pir come out of the tomb, take hold of the crooked part of his leg and bend it straight with his hand; waking with the pain, he found his leg straightened. Hüsâmeddin records that he spoke with many people who knew of and had witnessed the event, and that all of them told it the same way.

This belief is still alive today. A master's thesis prepared in 2019 on the religious visitation sites of central Amasya reports in detail the observations and interviews made at the tomb. According to a tradesman who has sold socks, headscarves and prayer beads beside the tomb for years, women show great interest in the tomb especially on Fridays, before the Friday prayer. At the time of the Friday prayer the left side of the tomb fills entirely with women and the right side with men, and unlike at other mosques, the women do not leave the prayer room at prayer time. Some visitors come to pray three Fridays in a row for their wishes to be granted and hand out sugar cubes after the prayer on the third Friday. Boxes of sugar are left on the tomb's window ledges and at its exit. Prayers are said for young men about to do military service, for those hoping for a match, and for the sick. Some people also set up wishing candles at the foot of the outer wall. One of the people interviewed voiced his discomfort, saying that this practice resembled a church custom.

The same study records other beliefs connected with the tomb. It is believed that childless women who eat the fruit of the old tree in front of the tomb three times will have a child. According to the mosque's imam, women still come to eat this fruit today. Branches of the tree are cut, their ends burned and decorated, and kept at home or carried as charms against the evil eye. It is believed that if one calls into a round stone structure near the tomb and hears the echo from the other side, one's wish will come true. The study also includes a visitor who came to the tomb for a relative in a difficult childbirth, opening a lock that she meant afterward to throw into the river. According to a legend that visitors heard from their elders, the Pir taught both humans and jinn. When one of his students, while praying, killed a jinn's child that had taken the form of a snake, the jinn set up a court and summoned the Pir. The Pir, saying that no one should trouble a person at prayer, had his student acquitted. These stories show the place of the tomb in the everyday piety of the town's people.

The tomb lies in the town center, south of Pirler Park, and is easily reached on foot or by car. Since the Çilehane Mosque and the Yâkub Paşa Lodge are only a few steps away, visitors who come to see the tomb can also see the lodge's vaulted corridors, its retreat cells and the wrought-iron door along the same route.

Chronology

1335: Gümüşlüzâde Tâceddin Mahmud Çelebi dies and is buried in his hexagonal tomb at the head of the family garden.

1404-1405: Pir İlyas returns to Amasya from Shirvan.

1411: According to Hüsâmeddin, Pir İlyas dies on 3 Shawwal 813 and is buried in the Gümüşlüzâde Garden; Gümüşlüzâde Hâce Celâleddin Mehmed Çelebi has a wooden tomb built over the grave.

1412-1413: Pazarlıoğlu Yâkub Paşa, beylerbey of Ankara, builds the lodge affiliated with the Halvetiyye at Pirler; the endowment deed is registered in February 1413.

1433: The death date of Pir İlyas most often cited in recent accounts; in the sources it ranges between 1410 and 1433.

1482-1486: The masonry tomb is built, according to the inscription in hijri 887 (1482-83), according to Hüsâmeddin in 890 (1485) by Bayezid II, and according to culture records in 1486. The Yâkub Paşa Lodge is rebuilt in masonry in 1485.

1504-1505: Sinaneddin, steward of Devlet Hatun, dies and is buried in his own tomb near the tomb.

1622: A madrasa is established in the prayer hall and retreat-cell sections of the lodge.

1688-1689: Gümüşlüzâde İbrahim Paşa has the tomb renovated, endows lessons at the tomb and builds a fountain in its precinct.

1713: A separate teacher is appointed to the tomb.

1740-1741: Fâtıma Hanım builds a madrasa in place of the Gümüşlüoğlu Lodge.

1765-1766: The madrasa's teaching post and the keepership of Pir İlyas's tomb are separated.

1877: The "Topal Ahmed" episode related by Hüsâmeddin.

1894-1895: The tomb, weakened by earthquakes, is demolished entirely; it is rebuilt through the efforts of Adjutant-Major Hurşid Bey, the people's contributions and the support of Abdülhamid II, and the repair inscription is set in place.

1938: The surrounding cemetery is removed and the area is laid out as a park.

1939-1967: The lodge, damaged in the Erzincan earthquake, is repaired in 1967.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

  • Ayşegül Şen, Amasya Şehir Merkezindeki Dini Ziyaret Yerleri, master's thesis, Hitit University Institute of Social Sciences, 2019, pp. 39-43. earsiv.hitit.edu.tr
  • Kadir Özköse, "Amasya'da Bulunan Halvetiyye Tekkeleri", Akademiar Dergisi, no. 5, Ankara 2018, pp. 91-118.

Official sources

  • Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Türkiye, Kültür Portalı: Pir Sücaeddin İlyas Türbesi (record of the Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism). kulturportali.gov.tr
  • Abdülhamit Budak, Bir Şehir Bir Tarikat: Amasya ve Halvetilik, Amasya Municipality Cultural Publications, 2015.
  • Governorship of Amasya, list of tombs.

Other sources

  • M. Baha Tanman, "Yâkub Paşa Tekkesi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 43, Istanbul 2013, pp. 285-286. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Reşat Öngören, "Halvetiyye", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 15. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • İsmail E. Erünsal, "Mihrî Hatun", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi.

Online sources