DEDE ʿOMAR RŪŠANĪ

 

DEDE ʿOMAR RŪŠANĪ (b. Güzel Ḥeṣār, Aydın province, in western Anatolia, at an indeterminate date; d. Tabrīz, 892/1487), Turkish Sufi who wrote poetry in both Persian and Turkish. His mother belonged to the powerful Aydınoğlu family of western Anatolia, and his nesba (attributive name) is a deliberate play on the name of his birthplace, rūšanī (< rowšan “bright”) being a direct Persian translation of Turkish aydınlı (< aydın “bright”).

Dede ʿOmar studied at Bursa with Jandārlı Ebrāhīm Pasha (d. 832/1429) and later in Šamāḵī under Sayyed Yaḥyā Servānī (d. 867/1463), the second saint (pīr) of the Ḵalwatīya Sufi order. He served the latter as deputy (qāʾem-maqām) and after Sayyed Yaḥyā’s death remained in Azerbaijan as leader of the Rūšanīya branch of the Ḵalwatī order. While actively propagating the order in the regions of Qarabāḡ, Bardaʿa, Ganja, and Tabrīz, he met and initiated into the order Edrīs, brother of the Āq Qoyunlu Ozun Ḥasan (857-82/1453-78). The ruler invited Dede ʿOmar to Tabrīz, and his wife Saljūq Ḵātūn built a retreat (zāwīa) for him there near Bāḡ-e Šemāl. Dede ʿOmar spent the final years of his life in Tabrīz and was buried in the zāwīa (Mazārāt-e Tabrīz, fol. 3a). He raised from seven to twelve the number of the names of God recited in the ḏekr, a type of change that was customary for a recently founded order. His successor, Ebrāhīm Golšanī, founded the Golšanīya order.

Dede ʿOmar was the author of a dīvān of poetry containing his three Persian maṯnawīs, Meskīn-nāma, Nāy-nāma, and Selsela-ye mašāyeḵ-e Ḵalwatīān, as well as ḡazals and a number of works in Turkish genres (for manuscripts, see Türkçe yazma, pp. 34 ff.). In the Nāy-nāma the influence of Jalāl-al-Dīn Rūmī’s Maṯnawī is particularly clear. One volume of the dīvān was published under the title Āṯār-e ešq in Istanbul in 1315/1897.

 

Bibliography:

Moḥyī Golšanī, Manāqeb-e Ebrāhīm Golšanī, ed. T. Yazıcı, Ankara, 1982.

Ḥāfeẓ Ḥosayn Karbalāʾī Tabrīzī, Rawżāt al-jenān wa jannāt al-janān, ed. J. Solṭān-al-Qorrāʾī, I, Tehran, 1344 Š./1965, pp. 472-76, comm. pp. 601-02.

Kamāl-al-Dīn Moḥammad Ḥarīrī, Tebyān wasāʾel al-ḥaqāʾeq fī bayān salāsel al-ṭarāʾeq, Süleymaniye Kütüp-hanesi, Istanbul, Ibrahim Efendi kısmı, ms. no. 431, fols. 67b-69a.

Jalāl-al-Dīn Maḥmūd Ḥolwī, Lomẓāt, Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Kütüphanesi, Ankara, İsmail Saib Kitapları ms. no. 1/722, fols. 299b-300a.

Moḥammad-Mortażā Ḥosaynī Wāseṭī Zabīdī, ʿEqd al-jawhar al-ṯamīn fi’l-ḏekr wa ṭoroq al-elbās wa’l-talqīn, Türk Tarih Kurumu Kütüphanesi, Ankara, Muhammed Tancı ms. (uncatalogued), p. 60.

F. de Jong “Khalwatiyya,” in EI2 IV, pp. 991-93.

B. G. Martin, “A Short History of the Khalwati Order of Derwishes,” in N. R. Keddie, Scholars, Saints and Sufis. Muslim Religious Institutions since 1500, Berkeley, Calif., 1972, pp. 275-305.

Mazārāt-i awlīā-ye Tabrīz, Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi, Ankara, İsmail Saib Kitapları ms. no. I/835.

B. M. Tahir, Osmanlı Müellifleri I, Istanbul, 1915, p. 69.

Tarbīat, Danešmandān-e Āḏarbāyjān, pp. 319-20.

Abu’l-Ḵayr Aḥmad b. Moṣleḥ-al-Dīn Moṣṭafā Ṭāš-kūprīzāda, Šaqāyeq al-noʿmānīya fī ʿolamāʾ al-dawlat al-ʿoṯmānīya, ed. A. S. Fırat, Istanbul, 1985, p. 264; tr. M. M. Efendi as Hadaik üş-şakayik, Istanbul, 1989, pp. 281-82.

Ministry of education, Ankara, Türkce yazma divanlar kataloğu, Istanbul, 1947.

(Tahsın Yazici)

Originally Published: December 15, 1994

Last Updated: November 18, 2011

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