Yuvacık, about three kilometres from the centre of Amasya, is a small settlement whose population today is around forty-five. Beside the village mosque stands the tomb of a Mevlevi sheikh whom people call Sheikh Cui Baba or Sheikh Mehmed Cui Dede. He gained renown while heading the Amasya Mevlevihane, withdrew from the city to his own village in 1414, and there had a Mevlevi lodge (mevlevihane), a dervish lodge (tekke), a school and a fountain built. This slope west of the citadel, whose old name was Kelkis, came to be called after him, and the vineyards below it were known for centuries as the Vineyards of Sheikh Cui. More than six hundred years later, the village's rain prayer and sacrificial custom still continue as a survival of the order he established.

What we know of Sheikh Cui's life comes chiefly from three kinds of source. The first is Hüseyin Hüsameddin's Amasya Tarihi, whose author states that he saw the sheikh's endowment deed and his certificate of succession. The second consists of the hurufat registers kept by the General Directorate of Foundations and the Ottoman survey records of 1576. The third is made up of local accounts and later compilations. These sources do not agree on every point; they differ in particular on how long the sheikh lived, whom he succeeded at the city mevlevihane, and the order of the sheikhs of the village lodge. For that reason, what is documented and what local people report are kept apart below.

Who Was Sheikh Cui

The sheikh, whose given name was Mehmed, appears in the sources as Mehmed Cui, Sheikh Mehmed Cui Dede, Cui Mehmed Çelebi and Sheikh Cui Baba. Hüseyin Hüsameddin enters him under the heading "Cû'î Mehmed Çelebi, eş-Şeyh Cemâleddîn Mevlevî"; by this account his honorific was Cemaleddin and he was a native of Amasya. His father was Mevlana Fahreddin Osman bin Abdullah et-Türkmani, one of the leading scholars of the day. Cui was a pen name he took later in life rather than a name given at birth. Hüsameddin writes that the sheikh adopted it because of his severe ascetic discipline, the long fasts and abstinence he imposed on himself to train the self, and that he became famous under it. Formed from the Arabic word cû', meaning hunger, the name became part of the respect in which the people held him.

Known as one of the Mevlevi sheikhs who commanded great respect among the people, Cui lived in the turbulent years in which Amasya passed from Eretnid rule and Şadgeldi Pasha's bid for independence to Ottoman control. The sources report that he won great fame in the city in the time of Şadgeldi Pasha and in the early years of Ottoman administration, and that he served as sheikh of the Amasya Mevlevihane during this period. His date of birth is unknown. On the date of his death the sources diverge: local accounts say he lived on in his village for many years after 1414, while Hüsameddin places his death in the month of Dhu al-Hijja of the year 819, that is, at the beginning of 1417. If the latter is correct, the sheikh lived only two or three years after founding the endowment in his village.

According to Hüsameddin, Cui received his early education from Hüsameddin Hasan Hoyi, one of the scholars of the age, from Celaleddin Mehmed Dede, sheikh of the mevlevihane, and from Nusretzade Cemaleddin Habib Çelebi of Zile, another Mevlevi sheikh. For years he served as mesnevihan at the Amasya Mevlevihane, the teacher who read and expounded the Masnavi, and so helped to spread Sufi learning. On the death of his own sheikh, Hüsamzade Celaleddin Mehmed Dede, he became sheikh of the mevlevihane. In the line of succession given by Abdülhalim Durma, however, Sheikh Cui's name follows that of Nusretzade Sheikh Cemaleddin Ahmed Dede of Zile, who held office in the time of Şadgeldi Pasha. As Hüsameddin relates, Cemaleddin Ahmed Dede's father, Sheikh Nusret, is counted in Evliya Çelebi's Seyahatname among the deputies of Ahmed Yesevi who came from Khorasan together with Hacı Bektaş Veli. It is considered likely that Cemaleddin Ahmed Dede was the man whom Emir Ahmed and Taceddin, defeated by Kadı Burhaneddin in 1387, sent to sue for peace.

The difference between the two accounts may be explained by the fact that the Nusretzade family had more than one representative at the mevlevihane in the same years. According to another of Hüsameddin's entries, Edhem Dede (Celaleddin), son of Nusretzade Cemaleddin Habib Çelebi, was sheikh of the Amasya Mevlevihane while Çelebi Mehmed ruled in Amasya, and held "Sufi conversations" with Sheikh Cui Mehmed Çelebi and Müstencid Dede; he died after the year 818, that is, after 1415. This record shows that Cui kept his ties with the Mevlevi circle of the city after leaving the city post, and that sheikhs of the same generation met one another. Exactly which sheikh held the seat in which years cannot be settled on present evidence. What is certain is that Cui, having headed the city lodge, held a place in the Sufi life of Amasya that reached well beyond the scale of a village.

His Learning and His Commentary

To see Sheikh Cui only as a dignitary of a Sufi order would leave the picture drawn by the sources incomplete. Hüsameddin presents him as an accomplished teacher deeply versed in the sciences. He writes that in the reign of Çelebi Mehmed the sheikh won great fame for his lessons in hadith, Quranic exegesis and the Masnavi, and that the sultan now and then attended his lessons and showed him honour and favour. Given that Çelebi Mehmed ruled for a long time from Amasya after the Battle of Ankara, this closeness between the sheikh and the court is not surprising. Its next step would be the grant of the sheikh's village and vineyards.

The most striking record of Cui's scholarly reputation comes from outside Amasya. Hüsameddin quotes a passage from Durr al-Habab fi Tarikh Halab, the work of the Aleppine historian Ibn al-Hanbali (Hanbelizade Mehmed Efendi). According to it, Shams al-Din ibn Bilal, a pupil of the Aleppine scholar Burhan al-Din Ibrahim ibn Ali al-Karsawi, said that one of his teacher's teachers was "Sheikh Cû'î al-Rumi, whose commentary is known as the Sheikh's Commentary," and added that this man had read Taftazani's work on legal theory, the Talwih, through from beginning to end thirty times. Hüsameddin likewise states that the sheikh read and taught the Talwih thirty times and wrote a fine commentary on the Quran. Whether any copy of this commentary survives today is not known; what we have is this indirect report showing that his name reached as far as Aleppo.

The epithets Hüsameddin uses for the sheikh describe his character in the language of the biographical tradition of the age: devout, faithful to the sacred law, cultivated, a poet and a righteous man. No example of his verse is given. The author adds that the sheikh was "by nature graceful, gentle and inclined to building." This last quality serves as a kind of introduction to the lines that describe how he brought his village and its vineyards to life.

His Spiritual Lineage and Certificate of Succession

Hüsameddin records that he saw Sheikh Cui's endowment deed and certificate of succession (hilafetname) with his own eyes. According to the certificate, the sheikh's spiritual lineage reaches Sultan Veled, son of Mevlana, by two branches. The first runs through his sheikh Celaleddin Mehmed Dede and the latter's father Hüsameddin Hüseyin Dede to Sultan Veled. The second leads through Nusretzade Cemaleddin Habib Dede and Ulu Arif Mehmed Dede to Sheikh Bahaeddin Ahmed Çelebi, known as Sultan Veled. This double connection is one of the documents showing that Mevlevi life in Amasya was in direct contact with the centre at Konya from an early date.

The date of the certificate is also known. In his biography of Karahisarizade Hattab Çelebi, Hüsameddin writes that this scholar, one of the leading teachers of Çelebi Mehmed's reign, appears as a witness to Sheikh Cui's certificate of succession in 817 and to the endowment deed of Paşa Hatun drawn up in 826. The year 817 corresponds to 1414-1415, the very year in which the sheikh founded his endowment in the village. That the certificate falls in the year of the endowment shows that, while setting up the order of his village, the sheikh also had his spiritual lineage committed to writing. In which archive the document is held today is unknown.

An Endowment in the Village of Kelkis

According to local tradition, Sheikh Cui left his post in the city and returned to his own village in 1414. Hüsameddin takes the story one step further back: the village of Kelkis, west of Amasya, together with all its vineyards, had been granted to the sheikh as freehold by the sultan. In this village the sheikh built a mosque, a Mevlevi lodge beside it, a public kitchen (imaret) and a tomb for himself. Other sources add a school and a fountain. In 817 the sheikh endowed all his property to meet the expenses of these charitable works and appointed his son-in-law, Sheikh Ahmed Yoğurtçu Dede, as sheikh of the lodge. The villagers thus gained both a centre of worship and spiritual guidance and a place of learning, and the upkeep of the lodge was tied to the village's own land.

Another page of Hüsameddin tells that the sheikh brought water to the village. The surplus of the water he channelled into his village was used to irrigate the vineyards below; the water, the village and the farmland were all endowment property. The author says that Cui "developed the village of Kelkis exceedingly" and gave it the name Sheikh Cui Village, and that he planted the vineyards with flowers and fruit trees until they were "like paradise." The site of the lodge is described as well: the Sheikh Cui Lodge lay west of the city, north-west of the Sheikh Cui Vineyards, below the village near a pond. In listing it among the dervish lodges of Amasya, Hüsameddin notes specifically that it was a mevlevihane and that it was built by the sheikh himself in 817.

The local tradition describing the relationship between the sheikh's village and the city says that after this date the sheikh did not come down to Amasya and drew those around him to the village. Sheikh Mecdüddin Küpeli Dede took over the mevlevihane in the city, and after him, in 1436, Müstencid Dede became sheikh. Cui's departure did not prevent the line of sheikhs from continuing at the Amasya Mevlevihane; the two centres, in the city and in the village, existed side by side. In time the link between them also became a family one: a grandson of Müstencid Dede was also a grandson of Sheikh Cui through his mother. When he died, the sheikh was buried in the village he had founded, in the tomb he had built.

The Name of the Village

The oldest known name of the village is Kelkis. Hüsameddin explains that this name once covered a much wider area than a single village: where the northern and western mountains of Amasya meet, the land curves in an arc, and while the whole of this arc used to be known by the name Kelkis, its middle part came in time to be called Sheikh Cui. According to the author, the sheikh's endowment deed itself records that the vineyards were called Kelkis until his day. In Arabic sources the same place appears as Kalis and its vineyards as Batn Kalis; tradition holds that Muslim troops attacked the city from this side during the raids of the Umayyad caliphs al-Walid and Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik and of the Hamdanid Sayf al-Dawla. Hüsameddin interprets the human remains that occasionally came to light in the vineyards as relics of those wars. He also names the mountain range to the west "Sheikh Cui-Kelkis."

The same author also counts a Kelkis Castle among the seven old fortresses around the city. This castle stood in the southern gorge of Amasya and had two gateways; the heaps of stone and old wall remains behind the spot known today as the Tomb of İltekin were pointed out as belonging to it. In the section where Hüsameddin narrates the Danishmendid conquest, it is written that in 1074-1075 Suli Gazi, one of Emir Ahmed Gazi's commanders, was ordered to descend from behind Mount Kelkis onto the Vineyards of Sheikh Cui. This narrative rests on late sources and its details cannot be verified; it does show, however, that the names Kelkis and Sheikh Cui were used side by side to describe the western approach to the city.

Some accounts of the village's history say that Yörük nomads brought from the regions of Aydın and Karaman in the reign of Çelebi Mehmed were settled in the village then called Kelkis. This information rests on a single compilation; if accurate, it shows that the village had a name and a settled population before Cui. In Ottoman records the village appears under the names Gülkiş and Sheikh Cui. The fact that the survey registers give the village as "Mezraa-i Gülkiş nâm-ı diğer Şeyh Cuhi, mâlikâne ve dîvânî vakf-ı zâviye-i Şeyh Cuğî" shows that it was recorded as the endowment of a dervish lodge (zaviye).

After Sheikh Cui's death the village came to be called by his name. Sheikh Cui Village kept this name for many years and still appears as Şeyhcui in the records of 1928. Today the village officially bears the name Yuvacık. The local people, however, still call it Şeyhcui or, in the colloquial form, Cıcui. Hüsameddin also records that the vineyards were called "Cığcığı" in popular speech; both forms are the same name worn down in speech over generations. About fifty metres below the village lies Şeyhcui, a neighbourhood belonging to central Amasya, and this name keeps the memory of the same sheikh alive within the city limits today.

On a hill of the neighbourhood near the Akbilek Vineyards stands the tomb of Bahşi Halife, remembered as the Saint of Akbilek. Born in Uluköy in Taşova, Bahşi Halife died in Amasya in 1523-24; after completing his education in Amasya he went to Egypt and studied under Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti, Zakariyya al-Ansari and Shams al-Din Muhammad al-Sakhawi. He is described as learned in jurisprudence and Quranic exegesis and as having taken little interest in worldly affairs. It is said that in the past students beginning their madrasa education held their first lessons at his tomb and visited it on Fridays for problems they could not solve. This tomb shows that the quarter bearing the name Şeyhcui also holds another spiritual centre.

One of the earliest population figures for the village comes from the 1840 census. According to the study Amasya Nüfus Defterleri 1840, the village consisted of twenty-four households that year, and since only males were counted in the register, seventy-four people appear. Among the heads of household are family names such as Sakaoğlu, Lablaboğlu, Tekkeşinoğlu, Gökçeoğlu and Dümencioğlu. A lineage that later settled in the village is said to have been known in Ottoman times as Araboğlu and to have traced its descent to Akşemseddin. The village's population was forty-four in 2022 and has varied between fifty-one and thirty-nine in recent years.

The Endowment's Revenues and the Archival Records

The endowment of the Sheikh Cui Lodge left fairly detailed traces in the Ottoman registers. According to Murat Alandağlı's study of the hurufat records, the village is entered in the survey of 1576 as "mezraa-i Gülkış nâm-ı diğer Şeyh Cuî," and both the landlord's share and the state's share of its revenues were assigned to the lodge. At that date these shares were held by Mehmed and Ali, sons of Nebi; the entry for the farmland is followed by a list of the lodge-keepers and their children. The endowment's income was not confined to the village. The whole of the landlord's share of the village of Yakub in the district of Argoma, the revenues of the farm known as Bahtiyar Çiftliği, and the whole of the landlord's share of the village of Aydoğdu in the district of Geldiklanabad also belonged to the endowment of the Sheikh Cui Lodge. Traces of the village of Yakub in Argoma also turn up in other archival documents of later centuries.

As the hurufat records show, the endowment deed divided the lodge's income into three equal shares. One went to the lodge-keepers, one to meeting the needs of travellers passing through, and the last to the recitation of the Quran on Fridays. Taken together with the lodge's position at the western approach to Amasya, the share set aside for travellers suggests that the lodge also served as a wayside hostel. The first lodge-keeper named in the records is Sheikh İbrahim Mevlevi.

The hurufat registers also give the name of the village's place of worship: "the Sheikh Cuî Masjid in the village called Sheikh Cuî in Amasya." According to the same records, the Tomb of Sheikh Cui stood beside the masjid, and the village congregation is at times noted as being very large. On the basis of these data Alandağlı regards the village of Sheikh Cui as one of the villages around Amasya that grew up around a lodge, villages "of founding lodge-keeper origin." In his view, the spreading fame of the sheikh who settled in the area and founded his lodge must have turned the place in time into a populous settlement. If the accounts that say the village already existed under the name Kelkis are taken into account, it can be said that the lodge did not so much found the village from nothing as enlarge an existing settlement and give it a new identity. The phrase "state-owned endowment of the zaviye" in the survey registers likewise shows that this arrangement had its counterpart in the Ottoman registers.

The Sheikhs of the Village Lodge

Sheikh Cui's endowment deed bound the trusteeship of the endowment and the offices of sheikh and mesnevihan of the lodge to his descendants. Hüsameddin lists among the sheikh's deputies his son Abid Ahmed Çelebi, his son-in-law Yoğurtçu Pir Ahmed Dede and Sheikh Burhaneddin İbrahim Dede. On the order of the lodge's first sheikhs, however, two different passages of the work give different lists. According to the section on dervish lodges, the founder Mehmed Cui Dede was followed by his deputy Piri Ahmed Dede, known as "Yoğurtçu Baba," and then by Ömer Ahi Dede. The biographical section, on the other hand, says that his son Abid Çelebi acquired learning and spiritual perfection from his father and became sheikh of the mevlevihane after the deputy Yoğurtçu Ahmed Dede.

This entry on Abid Çelebi gives the liveliest picture of the first half-century of the village lodge. According to Hüsameddin, Abid Çelebi served as sheikh for a long time, devoted himself to guiding the villagers and was known for his good conduct. He was a learned man, faithful to the sacred law, and a Sufi. When Bayezid II was governor of Amasya as a prince, he would visit his lodge from time to time and show him favour. Abid Çelebi died around the year 868, that is, in 1463-1464. His grandson and namesake, Müstencidzade Abid Çelebi, was the son of Müstencid Dedezade Abdülmümin Çelebi, sheikh of the Amasya Mevlevihane, and the grandson of Sheikh Cuizade Abid Çelebi through his mother. After studying under Şemseddin Ahmed of Crimea and receiving spiritual instruction from his father, he became sheikh of the mevlevihane in the city; he was a contemporary of Pir Abdurrahman Çelebi and a close companion of Habib Karamani, and he died while Prince Ahmed was governor of Amasya. In this way the line of Sheikh Cui merged with the Müstencid family that ran the city mevlevihane.

In the following centuries the sheikhs of the village lodge often held office at the city mevlevihane as well. Hüsameddin writes that Ebu Said Ahmed Dede (Hacı Dede), son of Mehmed, a dervish of the Amasya Mevlevihane, became sheikh and mesnevihan of the Sheikh Cui Mevlevihane in 1095, that is, in 1683-1684, and a year later took on the sheikhship of the Amasya Mevlevihane in addition. In 1099 the city post was taken from him and given to Alaeddin Dede, but he remained sheikh of the village lodge and died in that office in 1702. He is remembered as a dignified man who knew Arabic and Persian literature and taught the Masnavi; his sheikh Hasan Kutsi Dede had given him the by-name Ebu Said. His descendants, known as the "Hacıoğulları" or "Hacı Dedezades," long figured among the sheikhs of the city mevlevihane.

The same arrangement continued in the eighteenth century. Hüsameddin records that İsmail Dede of the Hacızade family, who were said to descend from Sheikh Cui, was trustee of the Sheikh Cui Endowment, became mesnevihan and then sheikh of the Amasya Mevlevihane in 1166 (1752-1753), and died in 1177 (1763-1764). The list in the section on dervish lodges gives the later sheikhs of the village lodge in more detail: İsmail Dede in 1154; on his death in 1177, İbrahim Dede; in 1190, İsmail Dedezade Feyzullah Dede; in 1194, Seyyid Hasan Dede, followed by Seyyid Mustafa Dede; in 1204, Ahmed Efendizade Feyzullah Efendi, sheikh of the Amasya Mevlevihane; in 1208, on his removal, his brother Abdullah Dede; in 1209, Hacızade Hüseyin Dede, followed by his brother Hafız Mustafa Dede. After Mustafa Dede's death in 1220 the office passed to his sons Mehmed and İbrahim; when they too died in 1227 (1812), Seyyid Mehmed Sabit Dede, son of Seyyid Mehmed Kami Dede and sheikh of the Amasya Mevlevihane, became both mesnevihan and sheikh of the lodge. After this list Hüsameddin adds a brief note: "But no trace of this lodge now remains."

Men from the Village

Apart from its lodge, the village of Sheikh Cui also produced men for the scholarly life of Amasya. The best known of them is Cui Hacı İbrahim Efendi, whom Hüsameddin calls "chief of the Quran reciters" (şeyhü'l-kurra). The son of Yahya bin İbrahim of the village, İbrahim Efendi memorised the Quran in Amasya, then learned the seven and ten readings from the chief reciter Hafız Hacı Yusuf Efendi, attended the lessons of Hacı Mustafa Efendi of Akdağ, and received licences in both fields. He won renown teaching Quranic recitation and the variant readings at the Sultan Bayezid Mosque. He became sheikh of the Sultan Hatun school of Quran reciters, teacher at the Feyziye Madrasa in 1151 (1738-1739), and head of the guilds (şeyhü'l-esnaf) in 1163 (1749-1750).

İbrahim Efendi's life also became entangled in a turbulent episode of eighteenth-century Amasya. Accused of being an instigator in an incident that grew out of the oppression of the governor of Sivas, Zaralızade Mehmed Pasha, he was exiled to the fortress of Famagusta in Dhu al-Hijja 1171, in the summer of 1758, together with the Mufti Hacı Mehmed Efendi and Mehmed Efendi, head of the public kitchen. He was pardoned and returned in Muharram 1173, and the posts taken from him were restored. He went on teaching until his death in Dhu al-Hijja 1179, in the spring of 1766. Hüsameddin calls him the "unrivalled master" of the science of Quranic readings and recitation. According to the author, an Amasya scholar born in 1134 also learned the variant readings and recitation from "the chief reciter Hafız Hacı İbrahim Cuî Efendi." The village's tradition of learning lasted into the early twentieth century: Osman Fevzi Olcay recalls "Şükrü and Musa Mollas of Sheikh Cui" among the students who had rooms at the Sultan Bayezid Madrasa in his youth.

The Tomb and Its Surroundings

The Tomb of Sheikh Cui Baba stands beside the mosque of Yuvacık village. The mosque is also referred to in the sources as the Sheikh Cui Baba Mosque; it must be the present-day successor of the Sheikh Cui Masjid of the hurufat registers. The fountain the sheikh had built still survives beside the mosque. No detailed published information has been found on the building's dimensions, plan or the repairs it has undergone.

The sources do not fully agree on the location of the tomb. A local presentation of the village states that the sheikh was buried in the village that would bear his name, but that the exact location of his tomb is not known. A compilation on tombs, by contrast, presents the building as the tomb beside the mosque and notes that local people come here to pray for blessings. The older sources support the second view. Hüsameddin writes that the sheikh had a tomb built for himself, and the hurufat records place the tomb beside the village masjid. Osman Fevzi Olcay, too, listing the graves of the great mystics of Amasya, describes the resting place of "Pir Muhammed Cuî" as "at the pool of the Great Water of Sheikh Cuî Village." Read together, these records show that the tomb people visit today beside the mosque has been known in the same place since the period in which the hurufat registers were kept; no document on the building's inscription or its original construction has been reported, however.

In the section where he describes the quarters of Amasya in verse, Hüsameddin opens the stanza devoted to the Sheikh Cui Vineyards with these lines:
"Solunda dahi makbere-i Hazret-i Cû'î
Feyzin buradır mebde'-i pür-zevk-i tulû'ı
Bulmuş buralar nâm-ı kerîmiyle şuyû'ı
Hakkâ buradır mecma'-ı esmâr-ı Amasya"
In these lines Cui's grave is placed to the left of the citadel, that is, to its west; the area is said to be known by the sheikh's name and to be the place where the fruits of Amasya are gathered.

The Vineyards of Sheikh Cui

One reason the name of Sheikh Cui stayed alive on the tongues of the townspeople for centuries is its vineyards. According to Hüsameddin, these vineyards west of the upper citadel ranked first among the pleasure grounds of Amasya. Their charm in the first days of spring was so famous that the notables and wealthy families of the city moved out here from the twentieth of April onward. The air was mild, the cherries renowned and the pavilions elegant; the author calls the place "the source of spiritual delights and the meeting place of pleasant company." In the outing season, which lasted until the end of May, the Sheikh Cui Vineyards were followed by those of Ziyare, Kirazlıdere and Derbend.

The memoirs of Osman Fevzi Olcay describe the same season from his own experience. According to Olcay, Şeyhcui was the pleasure ground famed for the finest grapes and cherries of Amasya. In season people moved to their pavilions here, neighbours invited one another to eat cherries under the trees, and while saz were played and songs sung on one side, the nightingales joined in. The cherry season went on like this for about a month, and once the heat set in the regulars gradually returned to the city. Describing Karaağaç Meydanı west of the city, Olcay also depicts it as a broad tract stretching on one side to Sheikh Cui and on the other to the Akbilek Vineyards.

Hüsameddin has also preserved a scene from the life of these vineyards. Şefik Efendi, who served for some sixty years as muezzin of the Sultan Bayezid Mosque, was regarded for his quick wit and mimicry as "the Nasreddin Hodja of our age," and was reported to have died in 1348 (1929-1930), used to move to his vineyard at Sheikh Cui when the cherries reddened in spring, and his friends came every day to joke with him. One morning Ahmed Hulusi Bey, a reserve battalion commander, called in on his way down from the vineyard to the city, found no one at home and, seeing the tea that had been drunk from the samovar and left to cool, tucked a lump of sugar between the teeth of the dried donkey's skull hung over the door as a charm against the evil eye, and left. When he came back at the same hour the next day and showed the sugar, Şefik Efendi replied that a holy man had come the day before and drunk tea, "and even gave his father a lump of sugar to sip it with."

The Rain Prayer and the Sacrificial Custom

The liveliest practice in Yuvacık connected with Sheikh Mehmed Cui Dede is the rain prayer held every year. In April and May cauldrons are set up in front of the village mosque, bulgur pilaf is cooked and sacrificial animals are slaughtered. The rain prayer is recited before the pilaf is served. It is believed that this prayer brings abundance and protects people from disasters. In 2019, at a ceremony attended by Amasya's mayor Mehmet Sarı and some six hundred villagers, pilaf and sacrificial meat were offered to the guests, while the offal of the slaughtered animals was sold at auction.

The villagers explain the origin of the custom as follows: because the area was rural, rain was scarce; six hundred years ago the saint Şeyhcui Dede settled here and went out with the villagers to pray for rain. Every ceremony held since that day is regarded as a continuation of that first prayer. For the age of the custom the sources give differing figures, such as six hundred and five hundred years. Both numbers are round figures and are consistent with Sheikh Cui's foundation of 1414, but there is no document on the year the ceremony was first held. Bearing in mind that the endowment deed set aside part of the income for hosting travellers and part for reciting the Quran on Fridays, it may be thought that this ceremony, built around a communal meal and prayer, lives on among the people as an extension of the lodge's old charitable order.

The Amasya Mevlevihane

Knowing the mevlevihane where Sheikh Cui served as sheikh helps us understand which tradition underlay the institution he carried to his village. The presence of Mevlevis in Amasya predates the construction of the building. According to Hüseyin Hüsameddin, old documents record that Sheikh Veliyyüddin Ahmed Dede in 1276, Alaeddin Ali Dede in 1284 and Sheikh Celaleddin Mehmed Dede in 1300 were present in Amasya as Mevlevi sheikhs. It is also known that a deputy was sent to Amasya in the time of Sultan Veled, son of Mevlana. The mevlevihane was built in 1314 by Alaeddin Ali Pervane Bey. Because its endowment deed was lost in 1661, its contents were reconstructed from the oral statements of people who had seen it. In old records the building appears under the names "Mevlevihane-i Merhum Alaeddin der Amasya" and "Mevlevihane-i Pervane der Amasya."

The mevlevihane stood near the Hükümet Bridge, on the bank of the Yeşilırmak, close to the Saraçhane Mosque. According to Amasya Tarihi, the Alaca Yahya Bey Madrasa lay to the east of the Saraçhane Mosque, the Hacı Mahmud Efendi Madrasa to its west, and further on the mevlevihane. Inside the building was a special large room in which the sheikhs were buried. According to the Islamic court registers, Mehmed Arif Dede, Alaeddin Ali Dede, Osman Sakıb Dede, Arap Salih Dede, Ahmed Dede and Mehmed Sıdkı Dede lay there. Who else was buried there is not known.

After Sheikh Cui withdrew to the village, the history of the city mevlevihane went on. In 1567 Sheikh Ömer Çelebi held office, followed by Sheikh İbrahim Çelebi, during whose tenure an outbreak of banditry occurred; in 1602 the mevlevihane burned down and its sheikh died. İbrahim Çelebi's son, Sheikh Mehmed Arif Dede, brought the situation to the attention of the former grand vizier Bayram Pasha. In 1637 Bayram Pasha brought water at his own expense to Amasya, which was suffering from a shortage, had a caravanserai and a new mevlevihane built, and enlarged the endowments. In this new building Mehmed Arif Dede, his son-in-law Mahmud Dede, Abdülkadir Dede and Alaeddin Dede served in turn as sheikh. On Alaeddin Dede's death in 1700, Bilal Efendi became sheikh. In a later period Cemaleddin Efendi, son of Sheikh Mehmed Efendi, came to head the mevlevihane. Cemaleddin Efendi also served as mayor of Amasya, was a member of the delegation that invited Mustafa Kemal from Havza to Amasya, was among the founders of the Amasya Society for the Defence of Rights, and supported the Turkish War of Independence to the end. In 1919 the meeting held to announce to the public a circular sent by Mustafa Kemal from Havza also took place in this mevlevihane.

The city building may have stood where Yavuz Selim Square is today, the spot the old people called Selağzı. The cemetery for the destitute in this area was removed in 1865 under the district governor Ziya Pasha, shops were built in its place, and later rearrangements created the square. It is thought that the mevlevihane, left without an owner after the closure of the Sufi orders, most probably in 1925, was demolished when the square was opened. The village lodge, according to Hüsameddin's note, had long since disappeared by the early twentieth century. For this reason the fountain, the tomb beside the mosque, the village name and the rain-prayer custom that remain today from Sheikh Cui's village are among the principal places where the Mevlevi tradition is remembered in Amasya.

Chronology

1276: According to records, Sheikh Veliyyüddin Ahmed Dede is the Mevlevi sheikh in Amasya.

1314: Alaeddin Ali Pervane Bey has the mevlevihane in Amasya built and its endowments drawn up.

1387: The envoy sent for peace by Emir Ahmed and Taceddin, defeated by Kadı Burhaneddin, is thought to be Cemaleddin Ahmed Dede, sheikh of the mevlevihane in Şadgeldi Pasha's time.

1414-1415 (AH 817): Sheikh Mehmed Cui Dede leaves the Amasya Mevlevihane and has a mosque, mevlevihane, public kitchen, school, fountain and tomb built in the village of Kelkis, endowing his property; his certificate of succession, witnessed by Karahisarizade Hattab Çelebi, is drawn up.

1417 (Dhu al-Hijja AH 819): According to Hüsameddin, Sheikh Cui dies.

1436: Müstencid Dede becomes sheikh of the Amasya Mevlevihane.

1463-1464 (AH 868): Abid Çelebi, Sheikh Cui's son and sheikh of the village lodge, dies.

1576: The survey records the village as "mezraa-i Gülkış nâm-ı diğer Şeyh Cuî," its revenues belonging to the lodge endowment.

1602: The Amasya Mevlevihane burns down.

1637: Bayram Pasha has the new mevlevihane built.

1683-1684 (AH 1095): Ebu Said Ahmed Dede becomes sheikh of the Sheikh Cui Mevlevihane; he dies in that office in 1702.

1758: Cui İbrahim Efendi, chief Quran reciter from the village of Sheikh Cui, is exiled to Famagusta; he is pardoned the following year.

1812 (AH 1227): Mehmed Sabit Dede becomes sheikh and mesnevihan of the village lodge.

1840: The village is recorded in the census register as twenty-four households.

1928: The village appears in the records as Şeyhcui.

2019: A rain prayer and sacrificial ceremony attended by some six hundred people is held in the village.

Sources

Primary sources

Academic studies

Other sources

Online sources