Abstract
Verse Silsile-names of the Sheikhs in Turkish Literature (Sufi Silsile-names - Silsile-names of Cults)
Silsile-names, which have found the opportunity to be
used in a wide range of fields from religious sciences to
calligraphy, from cult sheikhs to dynasties, are important
documents in terms of showing the uninterrupted and
undistorted continuation of the generation or the
transmitted information. Silsile-names of the sheikhs
(cult), which are estimated to be influenced by the tradition
of isnad/sened in the science of hadith, also show the
quality of documents showing that the cult was
uninterruptedly connected to the Prophet. Silsile-names of
the sheikhs were written in three ways as verse, prose and
verse-prose within the Sufi culture. The verse examples of
these have been chosen as the subject of our article. It has
been identified that the two oldest examples of silsile-names
of the sheikhs, 60 of them in Turkish and 3 in Persian
belongs to 51 different poets in Turkish literature were
written in Persian in the 15th century and it has been
determined that Turkish poems gained popularity in the
17th, 18th and 19th centuries. It has been stated that ode and
masnavi verse forms are more preferred in verse silsilenames
of the sheikhs where the number of couplets varies
between 7 and 2871 as 33+1 silsile-names are related to
Halvetiyye and 12+1 silsile-names are related to
Naqshbandiyya cult and its branches. In fact, each poet
praises and propagates his own cult through silsile-names,
which are in didactic forms. For this reason, these poets, all
of whom were members of the cult, carefully used aruz
prosody in their poems, and used hezec and remel bahirs more intensely in their poems. It has been observed that
some silsile-names have features that will set an example
for other genres. In our study, the common features of verse
silsile-names of the sheikhs were tried to be determined,
brief information about each poet's silsile-names of the
sheikhs was given and information about the library
records with manuscript copies is given.
Keywords
Fihrist-i Şahan, silsile-name, silsile-names of the sheikhs, cult, sufi literature.