REVERBERATIONS OF THE LIFE AND WORK OF THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY BOSNIAN SHAYKH AND POET ḤASAN QĀʾIMĪ[1]

هو

Dr Sara Susanne Kuehn

London Academy of Iranian Studies (LAIS)

Ḥasan Baba, with the makhlaṣ (“[poetic] pseudonym”, Bosn. postojani) of Qāʾimī (“steady, constant, persistent”),[2] also known as Hasan Kaimija, was one of most celebrated Bosnian Ṣūfī shaykhs (spiritual master) and poets of the eleventh/seventeenth century. What is known of his life and work affords a rare glimpse into contemporary Ṣūfīsm (taṣawwuf), the mystical dimension of Islam, in Bosnia. The shaykh’s resting place remains an important “place of pilgrimage” of Bosnian Muslims to this very day being endowed with a symbolic efficaciousness that perhaps also reflects the expectations and the hopes of the members of his community. Ḥasan Baba thus represents an example of a saintly man whose spiritual charisma was not only revered during his lifetime but who continues to be a subject of ritual veneration which endures and radiates across the western Balkans.

The tekke of Šejh Ḥasan Qāʾimī

Information about the shaykh’s life is quite scarce[3] and is based more on circumstantial evidence and oral traditions[4] than on written sources. Born in 1039/1630 in Sarajevo, where he acquired his primary education, he went to Sofia to join the well-known Šejh Muslihudin Užičanin (d. 1052/1643) of the Khalwatiyyah (Turk. Halvetiyye) ṭarīqa (lit. “path”).[5] There he remained until he obtained the idžazet (Ar. ijāza, lit. “permission, license, authorization”, the certificate from a higher authority authorising the murīd (“aspiring novice, seeker”) to transmit a certain subject or body of Islamic knowledge that was studied “at the feet” of the shaykh) and iršad (Ar. irshād, “spiritual guidance”).[6] Ḥasan Qāʾimī is said to have then travelled to Istanbul and Konya.[7] Later he also became attached to the Qādiriyya ṭarīqa and after his return to Sarajevo he became šejh-mejdan[8] of the renowned tekije (Turk. tekke, “Ṣūfī lodge”) of Ḥājjī Sinān Āghā in Sarajevo (fig. 1). The latter was constructed in 1047–9/1638–40 and subsequently restored on several occasions.[9]

Ḥasan Qāʾimī was reputedly also the shaykh of another tekke located in the Ajaz Paša mahala (Ar. maḥalla, residential quarter) on the right bank of the Miljacka River near the lower Ćumurija Bridge in Sarajevo, which was named after him.[10] Originally his private house (and birthplace), it was transformed into a tekke in 1075/1664.[11] Ḥasan Qāʾimī seems to have been in easy circumstances[12] and the tekke is said to have been quite beautiful; on the ground floor a storeroom was located while on the first floor there was a samāʾkhāna (central ritual hall) as well as two chambers.[13] The land that was endowed to the tekke stretched to the Miljacka River.[14] In his twelfth/eighteenth-century chronicle the prominent local author Muṣṭafa ibn Aḥmad Bašeski (Bašeskija) Ševki (d. 1223/1809) states that this tekke belonged to the Khalwatiyya fraternity.[15]

It is of significance that Ḥasan Qāʾimī’s wife was among the so-called “Sisters of Rum” (Bacıyân i Rûm, locally known as Badžijanije[16]), a mystical organization of women with roots in Asia Minor that is mentioned in fragmentary references across Bosnia. Bajram Salih Kalaba (Bayrām Ṣāliḥ Qalāba) mentions in his pilgrimage guide of Sarajevo, published in 1276/1859–60, that the grave of Qāʾimī’s wife was located in the backyard of the Qāʾimī Baba Tekke.[17] There it served as zijaretgah (Turk. ziyāretgāh),[18] a holy place which marked the continuing presence of a saint or “friend of God” (evliya, Ar. awliyāʾ),[19] where ziyāret is performed – denoting the practice of pilgrimage to her resting place with concomitant acts of veneration. Hence, even though Kalaba does not mention her name, she was clearly recognised as a spiritual master (with a deredža (degree) in spiritual advancement).[20] Muhamed Hadžijahić has conclusively shown that, since Ḥasan Qāʾimī acted as šejh-mejdan of the Ḥājjī Sinān Tekke, his purpose for transforming his private house into a tekke was for his wife to act there as vekil (Ar. wakīl, “deputy, representative”). The wakīlkhāna was later instituted as a specifically women’s tekke.[21] It consequently predates the tradition of the Qādiriyya in Sarajevo to establish dhikr assemblies (majlis dhikr, Ar. majāles al-dhikr) for women,[22] a practice which continues to this very day in the Qādirī-Badawī tekke located in the Čeljigovići mahala in Sarajevo.[23]

Hadžijahić convincingly argues that Qāʾimī’s wife must have passed away before her husband left Sarajevo towards the end of his life, allegedly after having become involved in the Sarajevo rebellion of 1093/1682–3.[24] It seems that after her death the tekke ceased to serve as a wakīlkhāna for women dervishes.[25] Less than three decades after its construction, the tekke was burnt to the ground – like most buildings of Sarajevo – during the 1109/1697 raid of Sarajevo by Austrian troops commanded by Prince Eugene of Savoy. It took over half a century before the tekke was rebuilt by the Sarajevo qāḍī Ḥājjī Muhamed Zihnija in 1176/1762,[26] but just over a century later in the great fire of 1296/1879 it was once again destroyed.[27] However the cult of Qāʾimī’s wife had not disappeared and pilgrims continued to seek blessings (baraka) at her tomb since Kalaba included her grave in his 1276/1859–60 compilation of places of worship in Sarajevo.

 

The poetic legacy of Šejh Ḥasan Qāʾimī

Ḥasan Qāʾimī’s poetic work comprises two Dīwāns in Ottoman Turkish as well as poems (qaṣīdas) written in alhamijado (Bosnian Slavic written in Arabic script).[28] The first Dīwān contains a rich collection of mystical verse. These poems of religious and mystic inspiration were mainly intended for preparation at sessions of the dhikr,[29] “recollection” of God, as a principal prayer practice within the tekkes of the mystic orders. Many of these are sung as ilāhīs, “divine [hymns]”[30] (Bosn. ilahijes), during the gatherings of the dervishes encouraging the participants by their rhythm as by their words to reach a state of exaltation.

In a ghazel the poet and shaykh calls upon the Ṣūfīs to come to the mejdan (Ar. maydān, here “arena”), the place in the tekke where the dhikr is held:

You have come into the arena, O heart!
Try to attain Unity with audacity, today![31]

Qāʾimī uses the well know poetic metaphor of the flame and the moth (Ar. farāsha, Pers. parwāna) relating to the pinnacle of mystical experience. He alludes to the moth’s fatal attraction to the candle’s flame as a symbol of annihilation. The dervish is likened to the moth that circles around the flame of the candle and that eventually immolates itself in the fire of divine love:

Burning and blazing in the fire of love,
You must become the moth [pervāne], today!

Having come into the arena of the gathering of dervishes,
Abandon your life in sacrifice, today![32]

He thereby alludes to the topos of baqāʾ (“subsistence, survival”) through fanāʾ (“passing away, effacement”) referring to the stages of the development of the seeker in the mystical path of self-recognition (gnosis), in other words, the return of the self to the Self. This is described by the famous analogy of al-Biṣṭāmī of the sloughing of the outward skin of the serpent.[33] By virtue of this unsheathing, the serpent gains new skin and thereby new life which is likened to the mystic’s final shedding of his “I” in fanāʾ. Hence in the same manner as the serpent sloughs its old skin and appears newly robed, the mystic annihilates his nafs (lower soul) and lives eternally by undergoing a metamorphosis.

The doctrine of the oneness of being or “the unity of existence” (waḥdat al-wujūd), one of the stages of the path to God, is revealed in ecstatic and poetical exclamations:

You will eternally burn in the fire of the plurality;
Do you know why you became like the light of the flame of uniqueness?[34]

The one who knows God with certitude cannot fall, the Divine Essence [lübb, “heart, spirit”] is not a fabrication;
The shawl and mantle (of the dervish) do not make the real man, attain the Essence and accept it![35]

One can neither increase Him nor decrease Him, if He becomes very large He will decrease,
If one presses it has already been pressed; God [Bârî] is One [eḥad], Unique [vâḥid]![36]

In other verses Qāʾimī speaks of the absolute surrender of the self to God through tajrīd (“outer renunciation”) and tafrīd (“inner renunciation”):

He lived the ascetic isolation [tecrîdlük] and is following the mystique path,
He has a penchant for Jesus [meylî oluben ʿIsâda], today.

The maqām al-tajrīd refers to the wayfarer’s outward abandoning of the desires of this world that it is precursory to the maqām al-tafrīd in which the wayfarer inwardly rejects the compensation of this and the next world and thereby experiences an even purer oneness. The mystic wants to follow the example of Jesus (ʿĪsā), who for the Ṣūfīs represents a symbol of abandon from this world, and to leave this world and all profane attachments.[37]

Most of his poems he dedicated to the progenitor of the historically oldest ṭarīqa, the Qādiriyya. ʿAbd al-Qādir ibn Abī Ṣāliḥ Jangīdūst from Jīlān, who was born south of the Caspian Sea (470/1077–8 – 561/1166), is described as the “saint of saints”, the “spirit of the terrain,” and the “king of saints in East and West”:[38]

He will cautiously show the way to those who seek and are sincere;

In twelve names, one after another, he will designate the solace.

Without guidance nor sign, he will manifest his splendid illumination,

The white falcon is our guide, the shaykh ʿAbd al-Qādir![39]

Known by the makhlaṣ Basil al-Ešheb (Turk. Bāz-ül-Eşhen, Ar. al-Bāzi ‘l Ashhab, “white falcon”), ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī will guide the mystics with the twelve names which affect the dervish in his approach of God. These represent the twelve maqāms (“stages of the soul”) which are postulated in the Qādiriyya. To each maqām dhikr one of the twelve names (al-asmāʾ al-ithnā ʿashar) is appropriate: Lā ilāha illā ’llāh, Allāh, Hū, Ḥayy, Ḥaqq, Qayyūm, Qahhār, Fattāḥ, Wahhāb, Salām, Quddūs, Wadūd. The first seven names (al-asmāʾ al-sabʿa) represent the maqāmāt of the Khalwatis.[40]

Not only here, but the East and the West are filled with him,

At the beginning and at the end, his power comes from God;

Ḥasan, Ḥusayn, Muḥammad and ʿAlī are the ancestors

of the white falcon, our guide, the shaykh ʿAbd al-Qādir![41]

ʿAbd al-Qādir’s family lineage (silsila) has been traced by hagiographers to Ḥasan, the eldest son of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (c. 600 – 40/661), cousin and son-in-law of Muḥammad; hence the poet’s reference to the Prophet’s ehli bejt (Ar. āl al-bayt; sūras 11:73 and 33:33) as ancestors of the eponymous founder of the Qādiriyya.

The āl al-bayt plays an important role in Qāʾimī poetry and is alluded to in several qaṣidas:

Greet and pray to those to whom God has said: “If you did not exist”!

He must be humble (Qāʾimī) to the family of Muḥammad day and night![42]

Be humble to all the children and all the friends (of Muḥammad), his four friends [Çehâr-ı yâr] and the deserving!

For those of the invisible world [ricâl-ül-ġayb] and the friends who are numerous like leaves and flowers![43]

The poet refers not only to the holy family (āl) that consists primarily of five members, the Prophet himself, ʿAlī, Fāṭima, Muḥammad’s daughter, the wife of ʿAlī and her sons, al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn, but also to the four companions of Muḥammad (chahār yār), the “four rightly guided caliphs”, Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, and ʿAlī. To these Qāʾimī adds the “hidden wayfarers”, the people of the unseen spiritual world (rijāl al-ghāʾib), those who can communicate with God and with the angels, who know the hidden secrets and who can make them visible if they want.[44]

It will be through the “kindness and generosity of God”[45] that the unbelievers, the Europeans, the Banū ‘l-Aṣfar (originally a designation for the Greeks, the term was later used for all Europeans), will be ultimately routed; these often graphically portrayed predictions (“The mountains, the rocks and the plains are stained with blood, look at these groans in agony”[46]) are repeatedly found throughout Qāʾimī’s work.[47] His work was much copied after 1878 when the Austrians extended their protectorate over Bosnia and Herzegovina, since Qāʾimī repeatedly alludes to the overall conquests by the Ottomans and the universal triumph of Islam.[48]

The second smaller Dīwān, entitled Wāridāt (“incomings, gains”), which he wrote in 1097/1685–86,[49] contains qaṣīdas which are foretelling events based on onomancy (Bosn. ʿilm-i džifr, Ar. ʿilm al-jafr)[50]. In these he alluded to political events, such as the long campaign by the Ottomans for the conquest of Crete (Candia, Ottoman Kandiye) from the Venetians which was written in alhamijado.[51] In the first qaṣīda of this Dīwān, he correctly predicted the date of the end of the war (1079/1669), which earned him great celebrity.

Another poem composed in alhamijado is the “Ode against Tobacco”,[52] written when Murād IV banned the use of tobacco in the Ottoman empire. He ends it with the warning:

Those who die of [smoking] tobacco
Will burn in hell
He will transform into pitch
Abandon the tobacco![53]

Qāʾimī Baba is said to have been exiled from Sarajevo, reportedly after having become involved in the Sarajevo riot of 1093/1682,[54] and to have settled in Zvornik, now located in the Republika Srpska, in northeastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he died in 1103/1691–92.

According to one narration Qāʾimī Baba’s supposed banishment from Sarajevo is associated with one of the miracles (karāmāt) he is said to have performed.[55] On the twenty-seventh night of the month of Ramaḍan, the holiest moment in the Islamic calendar, Laylat al-Qadr (the “Night of Power”, when the Qurʾān was first revealed), when he was a hodža (imām) in Sarajevo, he went to the mosque. Suddenly the wind blew and extinguished his lantern. Qāʾimī took a candle and held it towards the lamps that were burning high up on the minaret thereby lighting his candle. The people who watched this immediately recognised that Qāʾimī is a righteous man and a man of God. Realizing what he had done, he repented and said: “O what I have done! I discovered that I am a holy man.” Troubled by his own deed, Qāʾimī went into a tavern where he drank until the early morning. The people of Sarajevo were bewildered to learn that such a saintly man comported himself in such a manner and expelled him from Sarajevo to Zvornik.[56] According to another legend Qāʾimī Baba was much loved by the people of Sarajevo and was accompanied by many people, in particular his disciples who did not want to leave him.[57]

As Hadžijahić has pointed out, when Qāʾimī arrived in Zvornik he stayed in a musāfirhana owned by certain begovica; since his wife had passed away before he left Sarajevo, he is presumed to have married the begovica at an advanced age.[58] Qāʾimī is also known to have had a son (of the first or the second wife is not known), who should be noted as one of the Bosnian poets writing in Arabic.[59]

Numerous naẓīre (an Ottoman literary genre in which the textual practice of another poet is deliberately reproduced) pay homage to Qāʾimī’s poetic work and reflect the poet’s celebrity. The naẓīre of the late seventeenth-century Bosnian poets Gāʾibī Šejh Muṣṭafa and Muṣṭafa Mukhtārī, an imām of a mosque located in the Ajaz Paša mahala in Sarajevo, are particularly noteworthy.[60]

 

The türbe of Šejh Ḥasan Qāʾimī

The shaykh was buried in a türbe (“mausoleum”) in Kula Grad to the west of the old town of Zvornik. The türbe was an unassuming small building, built of sundried brick and timber with a four-sloped roof, covered with tiles which previously used to be wooden (fig. 2).[61]

According to an extract of archival records displayed in the türbe, the silāḥdār Muṣṭafa Paša, son of the great merchant Ḥājji Sinān Āghā (either the father or the son was the builder of the renown tekke of Ḥājjī Sinān Āghā in Sarajevo), recommended the mutesarif (district master) of Zvornik, Meḥmed Paša, to build a Qādirī tekke next to the türbe (as stated in a firmān dated 1219/1805); yet no trace of the tekke has survived.[62] The expenses of upkeep of both tekke and türbe were defrayed by the income of the waqf (religious and charitable endowment) generated by the rafts crossing the river Drina in Zvornik, a saltern in Gornja and Donja Tuzla as well as rafters in Brod and the small town of Derventa qadiluq. During the 1992–95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina[63] Ḥasan Qāʾimī’s türbe was completely destroyed by Serbian soldiers and has since then been rebuilt (fig. 3).

A large, old linden tree situated next to the tomb miraculously survived the devastation (fig. 4). One of the most sacred trees in Bosnia,[64] Linden trees are often the subject of local veneration[65] and when ziyāret is performed at the türbe devotions may also be done to these sacred trees. The saint’s popular devotion and respect during his lifetime and the veneration thereafter continued to attract many graves that came to form a large cemetery surrounding the türbe.

The visitors always respectfully approach the vicinity of the tomb and the blessed presence of the saint on foot. When arriving at the threshold of the tomb, they would adopt an attitude of humility. Before entering the tomb they would pay their respects to the threshold, often prostrating themselves and kissing the doorstep or the door frame to the right of the entrance. The threshold is regarded with great reverence as the liminal place par excellence leading from the profane to the sacred, opening into the funeral chamber and the sacred presence of the awliyāʾ. They would respectfully greet the saint before stepping over the threshold with the right foot first. They would then reverently approach the saint’s tomb in an attitude of supplication (niyāz), commonly devoutly make an effort to kiss the tombstones (or the ground before them) or at least touch them. Finally they would sit in humility at the foot of the grave. One can witness the pilgrims perform circumambulation (ṭawaf) three times around the tomb. On leaving, the pilgrims would perform the same reverential rituals in reverse without turning their back to the saint’s cenotaph. When visiting the türbe dervishes would accord the same respect to the tomb of the sanctified shaykh as when approaching a living shaykh or other leading member of their order.

It is very fortunate that Ḥasan Qāʾimī’s türbe and its interior were carefully documented by Mehmed Mujezinović before it was raised to the ground two decades ago.[66] His unique account of the türbe’s wooden partition is particularly noteworthy[67] (fig. 5). It provides an insight into the importance attached to the ziyāra “tradition” of Bosnian Muslims and, in particular, to Ḥasan Qāʾimī’s türbe as place of pilgrimage. The latter was made of fitted beech shingles and divided the empty first room to the entrance of the türbe from the second part which houses the draped gabled cenotaph that marks the grave of the shaykh. The latter is framed by two simply cut tombstones without inscriptions,[68] the grave stele is crowned with a three-dimensional representation of the headgear (tāj), enclosed by a simple openwork wooden grille and with ceremonial rosaries (tesbīḥ) placed on the cenotaph; further tesbīḥs for the use of the visitors hang from the railing of the grille (fig. 6).

According to Mujezinović, the partition was inscribed with about one hundred records made by the pilgrims visiting Qāʾimī’s türbe. A number of inscriptions have been partially erased over time and thereby become illegible, but the surviving graffiti attests to Bosnian ziyāra rituals or pious visitations since the death of Ḥasan Qāʾimī. From the signatures it is possible to gain an impression of the sociological composition of the pilgrims; the devotees included ʿulamāʾ (religious scholars), Ṣūfīs, numerous scholars and members of the general public. Their inscriptions attest to the honour the shaykh received after his death and to the elevated degree of veneration paid to him over the centuries. Many pilgrims cited verses, while others eulogise Qāʾimī, adding their signatures and date of visit. Among the signatories there are the names of: Šejh Muṣṭafa, dated 1148/1735–6; ḥāfīẓ Halil ef. Fočevija, dated 1186/1772–3); Mango Meḥmed from Sarajevo, dated 1201/1786–7; Izmirlija Osman, 1207/1792–3; Ḥasan-baša, dated 1221/1806–7; Sejid hadži ḥāfīẓ Muṣṭafa Konjali, Mawlawiyya, dated 1222/1807; Isević Meḥmed Emin from Sarajevo, dated 1225/1810–11; Derviš Meḥmed Mestvica from Sarajevo, the son of Hadži Aḥmed, dated 1226/1811. Mestvica visited Qāʾimī’s türbe two more times, in 1237/1821 and in 1245/1829–30; mujezin-ogli Muṣṭafa Šehri Sarajlija, dated 1228/1813–4; Abdulhamid, imām of the Sultan Bayazid (Imperial) Mosque in Foča, dated 1239/1824 (fig. 7). The imām added the following lines in Bosnian:[69]

“Here comes Ramadan –

honey and maslo (soft butter) spread [on bread] …”

Derviš Meḥmed, dated 1250/1834–35; Hadži Meḥmed Sadik Sukuti Baba, dated 1250/1834; Sejid hadži Bekir-zade Aḥmed čauš dated 1269/1852; Hadži Derviš Meḥmed-beg Zvorničanin, dated 1276/1859–60; Derviš Ībrāhīm Fikrija, dated 1296/1878–79; Ḥamza, the son of Ībrāhīm, dated 1297/1879–80; Muhamed Enverija Kadić, who visited Qāʾimī’s türbe in 1314/1896–97, put his signature under the following: “Ḥasan Qāʾimī Baba passed away in 1103/1691–92.” Below another entry, which does not carry the signature of the author, the date 1110/1698–99 has been recorded.[70]

Several entries were skilfully inscribed in the form of a tughrā; and a certain Aḥmed Miri made a calligraphic composition of the Ashabi kehfa in Arabic letters in the form of a sailing boat (fig. 8).[71] The composition refers to the Āl al-Kahf or the Aṣḥāb al-Kahf (the “Youths of the Cave” mentioned in sūrat al-kahf (the sūra of the Cave, 18:9–26), whom God enclosed in a cave where they sank into a miraculous three hundred and nine year sleep to shelter them from the depravity of the world. The story of the refuge from a hostile world is modelled upon the Christian legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus[72] and has enjoyed long-lasting popularity throughout the Islamic world.[73] The simile of the companions’ miraculous “sleep” in a sacred space such as a cave (which could be replaced by other subterranean locations such as a “pit” or a well) has been a recurring motif in Islamic mysticism. Caves are traditionally seen as places of seclusion and meditation; in Ṣūfī thought they are often perceived as a place for withdrawal from the world[74] as well as a symbol of initiation and of proximity to the divine.[75] It is also well known that Muḥammad was prepared for prophethood and received his initial Qurʾānic revelation in a cave on Mount Ḥirāʾ where he used to retire for meditation. It was in the solitude of this cave, the lonely place of mediation (Ar. khalwa, Turk. halvet) in the dark, undisturbed in his concentration upon God, that he was blessed with the first Divine words.[76] At the time of his emigration from Mecca to Yathrib (later called Medina) in 622 (in the episode known as the hijra) it was also in a cave that the Prophet sought refuge together with his companion Abū Bakr to evade the pursuers (sūra 9:40).[77] According to Ṣūfī tradition, this was the place where Muḥammad introduced Abū Bakr into the mysteries of khalwa and the silent dhikr (dhikr al-qalb, “in the heart” and dhikr al-sirr, “of the innermost being”).[78]

Popular thought ascribes numerous miracles to Qāʾimī’s charismatic powers during his life and after his death. According to one legend, Qāʾimī stayed with the Djulbegović family in Zvornik. One day, when one of the members of this family had to go to war, Qāʾimī gave him a phylactery (pusul) with secret inscriptions which saved him his life.[79] It is said that if one takes a vow in the name of Qāʾimī and recites the sūra Yāsīn (36), called the “heart of the Qurʾān” that is recited for the deceased or the dying and their benefit in the world to come, the vow will be fulfilled.[80] The saint is said to also posses the sacred gift of healing of human ailments. A certain Hadži Ḥarbā who was very ill went to the evliya’s türbe in Zvornik and after offering his prayers miraculously recovered.[81] It is also said that during the First World War, Zvornik and the region around it was protected by Qāʾimī. It is thanks to the powers of the evliya that no one was injured.[82]

Before the total demolition of the türbe during the 1992–95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it housed six documents from the first half of the thirteenth/nineteenth century that relate to the setting up of the curator of the holy places, the keeper, or türbedār, and his revenues. The türbedār functions as a kind of intercessor for the pilgrims, instructs the visitors about the local etiquette of devotion and administers the alms (adak, nedhir). The first known türbedār of Qāʾimī’s türbe is Šejh Omer of Jedren (Edirne) in Eastern Thrace who also served as zāviyedār of the tekke in Zvornik. After his death in 1234/1819, the shaykh was succeeded by his son Meḥmed.[83] It is interesting to note that one of the present türbedārs of Qāʾimī Baba’s resting place is a woman; Hiba and Šaban Šehmedović alternately take care for two weeks of the türbe (fig. 9).

Mujezinović furthermore records several precious manuscripts and artefacts which were housed in Qāʾimī’s türbe before its destruction during the 1992–95 war which also resulted in their loss. These include a large-format Qurʾān copied by the calligrapher Meḥmed, the son of Ḥasan, who was the imām of the Kzlaraga džamija and a sibjan mualim (teacher at a religious primary school), in Belgrade in 1251/1835[84] as well as a hand-written manuscript on Islamic rituals transcribed by Ībrāhīm, the son of Abdulah, in the madrasa of Yahya Paša in Belgrade in 1213/1798.[85] He also notes several antique ceramic candlestick holders, a few calligraphies (levḥas), a green flag with a beautifully worked tip made of tuč (very hard, heavy wood) that had survived in the türbe before its destruction.

The only objects preserved in the present-day türbe are two ancient ceremonial weapons of choice that are characteristic dervish accoutrements and insignia, which are often displayed in the semāʾkhānas of tekkes:[86] a traditional battle axe (tabar) bearing one crescent-shaped blade and a curving thin long handle[87] as well as a halberd-like combat spear[88] used for throwing or hurling with a pointed head surmounting paired lozenge-shapes of which the shaft is missing (fig. 10).[89]

These also serve as apt symbols in the türbe of a Qādiri shaykh for taṣawwuf as taught by the Ḥanbalite ʿAbd al-Qādir consists in:

“… a war, a jihād, greater than the holy war fought with weapons, against self-will; in thus conquering the hidden shirk, i.e. the idolatry of self and, in general, of creaturely things; in recognizing in all good and evil the will of God and living, in submission to His will, according to His law.”[90]

The sixth/twelfth-century mystic ʿAmmār al-Bidlīsī (d. between 590/1194 and 604/1207) analyses the greater jihād (lit. “striving for faith”, or “struggle on the path of God”) declaring that man’s lower soul (nafs) is the greatest enemy to be fought.[91] The goal of disciplining the nafs is to train it in such a way that all negative activities associated with it become extinct.[92] This spiritual exercise is related to the well-known saying of the Prophet:[93]

“We are returning from the lesser jihād to the greater jihād.”

The adoption of the practice of khalwa as a form of greater jihād is elaborated by the celebrated mystical poet Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (604/1207–672/1273) in the sixth book of the Mathnawī. It is illustrated in the story of ʿIyādi, who in the hope of becoming a shahīd (martyr in combat for the faith), had taken part in seventy campaigns against the infidels. When despairing of receiving the apogee of a believer’s aspirations, he turned from the lesser jihād to the greater jihād to become a “true “ or “living” martyr (fī l-ḥaqīqa):[94]

“When (I saw that) martyrdom was not the lot of my spirit, I went immediately into (religious) seclusion and (entered on) a forty days’ fast.

I threw myself into the Greater Warfare which consists in practising austerities and becoming lean. [3785–3786]

…

I vowed that I would never put my head outside of (come out of) seclusion, seeing that this body is alive,

Because everything that this body does in seclusion it does with no regard to man or woman.

During seclusion the intention of (all) its movement and rest is for God’s sake only.”

This is the Greater Warfare, and that (other) is the Lesser Warfare: both are (fit) for (men like) Rustam and Haydar (ʿAli).” [3799–3803]

In his poetry Qāʾimī alludes to one of the most famous Ṣūfī ḥadīths (traditions), “Die before you die” (ölumden once ölmek), death of the self before the (natural) death. He calls upon the dervish to naught the self, to utterly efface and annihilate himself; to totally detach himself from the world and earthly matters; to break away from the world while alive; to live only for God:

O thou, distracted, death exists!
Where are pride and shame?
Kill yourself, come!
There is no God but He![95]

Thus when the mystic reaches the advanced stages of the path, he undergoes annihilation of the nafs that is accompanied by a subsistence (baqāʾ) in which he achieves the witnessing (shuhūd) of waḥdat al-wujūd and which prepares him for the concomitant annihilation of the spirit (rūḥ).[96] He accelerates the spiritual disintegration of the self to achieve union with God. This path is ultimately experienced by the mystic as being drawn upwards, as fanāʾ (“passing away, effacement”) in God:

To (achieve) this there must be four witnesses: this world and the other world,
Existence and total abandon [terk-i terk, “the abandon of the abandon”], then you will go and regain the lights.[97]

The display of arms, the battle axe and the halberd-like spear, as ritual emblems in Qāʾimī’s türbe, thus confer upon him the spirit of a dervish ghāzī or Muslim warrior for the faith. The greater jihād moreover involves the practice of khalwa or halvet, i.e. ascetic discipline, vigils at night, nocturnal supplications, gradually increased fasting and concentration of the mind, mainly by means of dhikr (lit. “reminding oneself”). It is particularly noteworthy that Qāʾimī Baba conducted his spiritual retreat of forty days (arbaʿūn, or čilla) in a standing position (qāʾimun), a practice which gave rise to his name. The latter furthermore associates him with the term qāʾim (“riser”) and with Qāʾim Āl Muḥammad (in Shīʿī circles commonly seen as the Mahdī); hence referring to the member of the family of the Prophet who will restore religion and justice on earth, often qualified as al-Qāʾim bi ‘l-sayf, “the one who shall rise with the sword”. In many of his poems Qāʾimī calls upon the manifestation of the promised rightly-guided leader of the last days, the Mahdī, the “Expected One”, “the miracle of the mysterious sword”:

Since it is the Mahdī who is the designated guide; then the treacherous will sacrifice his soul;

This is the (Islamic) tradition, know this, it is the miracle of the mysterious sword.[98]

….

His appearance is the veil. He exists on the earth, he is the sea and the earth

[O qāʾim baḥr ile berde],

His luminous appearance manifests itself in all forms; the ears, the sense of hearing and the eyes exist in the existence, in the world [God is the one who hears all and who sees all; sūra 2:121]! [99]

….

Jesus and the Mahdī will exert themselves, they will come to kill Dajjāl;
It is an eternal promise of the Truth; through it the tyranny of the world will be removed![100]

In the last verses of the qaṣīda Qāʾimī prophesises that Jesus (ʿĪsā) will come down at the same time as the Mahdī[101] and help him to overcome the Antichrist (Dajjāl), the “deceiver”, who will come before the end of time and will let impurity and tyranny rule the world.

The Bosnian poet’s verses are imbued with the sense of an omnipresence and omnipotence of God. Only the help of God inspires the ghāzī. He invokes the waḥdat al-shuhūd “the oneness of witnessing” of the ghāzīs fighting for the waḥdat al-wujūd. And the oneness of being is the essence of Divine unity (al-tawḥīd), the profession of God’s oneness, the fundamental nature of Islam:

They are witnesses of all things, they are the fighters of this Oneness of Being,
They are the witnesses of this world through themselves; there exists nothing but this Oneness![102]

 

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Illustrations

Fig. 1 Ḥājjī Sinān Āghā Tekke in Sarajevo (1047–9/1638–40). Photograph by the author, 2011.

Fig. 2 Türbe of Šejh Ḥasan Qāʾimī in Kula Grad, Zvornik, before its destruction during the 1992–95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Fig. 3 The rebuilt türbe of Šejh Ḥasan Qāʾimī in Kula Grad, Zvornik, after its destruction during the 1992–95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Photograph by the author, 2011.

Fig. 4 An old linden tree situated next to the türbe of Šejh Ḥasan Qāʾimī. Photograph by the author, 2011.

Fig. 5 New wooden partition in the rebuilt türbe of Šejh Ḥasan Qāʾimī. Photograph by the author, 2011.

Fig. 6 New wooden cenotaph covering the grave of Šejh Ḥasan Qāʾimī framed by two simply cut tombstones without inscriptions. Photograph by the author, 2011.

Fig. 7 Record of Abdulhamid, imām of the Sultan Bayazid (Imperial) Mosque in Foča, dated 30 Shaʿbān 1239/30 April 1824 inscribed on the wooden partition in Šejh Ḥasan Qāʾimī’s türbe. After Mujezinović, 1974–82, repr. 1998, p. 129.

Fig. 8 Calligraphic composition of Arabic letters in the form of a sailing boat inscribed on the wooden partition in Šejh Ḥasan Qāʾimī’s türbe. After Mujezinović, 1974–82, repr. 1998, p. 128.

Fig. 9 Hiba Šehmedović, one of the two present türbedārs of Šejh Ḥasan Qāʾimī’s resting place. Photograph by the author, 2011.

Fig. 10 A battle axe and a halberd-like combat spear displayed in the türbe of Šejh Ḥasan Qāʾimī. Photograph by the author, 2011.

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