Chapter 6

Portrait of a Shaykh as Author in

the Fourteenth-Century Anatolia:
Gülşehri and His Falaknāma
Selim S. Kuru

‫ﺑﺪر )و( ﮔﻬﺮ )و( ﺳﲓ )و( زری‬

ّ ‫ﻣﻦ‬
‫ﻣ ﮑﲌ ﺮﺗ ﺐ ّزر و زﯾﻮری‬
‫دل ﻫﺮ ﺎﻓﻞ از اﺣﻮال ﺧﻮﺶ‬
‫درﻓﻠﻜ ﺎﻣﻪ ﺑﺪاﻧﺪ ﺎل ﺧﻮﺶ‬
Using pearls, jewels, gold and silver
I organise an ornament of pure gold
So the heart of each fool will recognise in the Book of Skies
his condition by learning the states he traversed (fol. 18a/5-6)

In the early pages of the Falaknāma (Book of Celestial Spheres), a Persian verse-
narrative, Gülşehri explains the purpose of his composition, which is to provide
his foolish (ghāfil) readers with an ornate mirror that shows the ‘states of becom-
ing’ they had experienced so that they will understand the condition they are in
now.1 Gülşehri’s theologically grounded Falaknāma, a telling of the journey of
the soul through celestial spheres and its embodiment through four elements
with a focus on concepts of mabda’ and maʿād, is a unique work that draws on a
rich literature that was in the making.2 At the end of each section of the Fa-

1 The Falaknāma is available in an edition and Turkish translation. For the translation, see
Gülşehri ve Felek-Nâme, translated by Saadettin Kocatürk (Ankara: T. C. Kültür Bakanlığı
Yayınları 1982), for the edition of the text in Kocatürk’s handwriting see Gülşehri ve Felek-
Nâme: İnceleme ve Metin, edited by Saadettin Kocatürk (Ankara: Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve
Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Yayınları, 1984). Kocatürk’s translation lacks commentary and, al-
though helpful, frequently does not make sense as it lacks annotations. His introductions
to the edition and the translation, on the other hand, are useful. I also consulted a digital
copy of the unique manuscript preserved in Ankara, Milli Kütüphanesi, Adnan Ötüken İl
Halk collection, no. 817. Since Kocatürk also uses folio numbers in his edition and transla-
tion, my references are to the folio numbers and verses on the MS copy. The verse num-
bers are assigned by me. The manuscript is available to registered users for a fee through
the online Türkiye Yazmaları Toplu Kataloğu, https://www.yazmalar.gov.tr, under the ar-
chive number 06 Hk 817.
2 Starting with Sanā’ī (d. 525 /1130)’s Sayr al-ʿIbād ilā’l-Maʿād, mabdaʿ and maʿād seem to be
popular topics for Perso-Turkic literatures as various scholars took them as a departure
point for their didactic compositions on the mystical path (sayr u sulūk) in Anatolia such as
Najm al-Dīn Rāzī and Yunus Emre. For Sanā’ī’s work see, Kathryn V. Johnson, “A Mystic’s
Response to Claims of Philosophy: Abû’l-Majd Majdûd Sanā’ī’s Sayr al-ʿibād ilā’l-maʿād,”
176 SELIM S. KURU

laknāma, Gülşehri praises his power over words, which he compares to gold, sil-
ver and precious stones, and the power of his work as a reflection of the celestial
spheres. Thus, he invites his readers to turn their gaze away from the lowly earth
to the high skies. Towards the end, this time with a boastful punch, he argues the
uniqueness of his Falaknāma and his own prowess in the sciences:
‫ﻧ ﺴﺖ ﺟﺰ ﮔﻠﺸﻬﺮی اﻧﺪر ﻣﻠﮏ روم‬
‫ﭼﻮ او ﻓﺎﺿﻞ در اﻧﻮاع ﻠﻮم‬
‫ﭼﻮن ﻓﻠﮑ ﺎﻣﻪ از ا ﻦ َان ﺮﺴﺖ‬
‫ﻻﯾﻖ َان ﺟﺮ و َان ﻣﺸﱰﺴﺖ‬
There is no one like Gülşehri in the realm of Rūm,
no one as learned in various sciences.
Since the Falaknāma, distinct from this or that,
is good for him who buys, or for her who sells it (140b/12-13)

Rather than drawing on the content and sources of this unique work, in this arti-
cle I begin by commenting on Anatolian Turkish literary studies in order to pro-
vide context for the answer to the question of why the Falaknāma has been ne-
glected in modern scholarship. Then, I focus on the issue of Gülşehri’s constant
use of his penname in the Falaknāma and the Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr (Conference of the
Birds), his Turkish adaptation of the work by ʿAṭṭār (540/1145-618/1221)of the
same name: this repetition echoes the desire for authority over his work. Finally,
I discuss patronage relations by comparing the introductory chapters of the Fa-
laknāma to a passage in Gülşehri’s Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr. The poet presents the Persian
language Falaknāma to the Ilkhanid ruler, Ghazan Khan (r. 694/1295-703/1304),
but in his Turkish language Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr he provides an entirely different story
to explain his reason for composing the Falaknāma. Gülşehri’s persistent use of
his penname and his change of heart about the pretext behind his Persian Fa-
laknāma provide a precious glimpse into the literary scene at the turn of the four-
teenth century in Anatolia, or Rūm.

Whither Anatolian Literature?

Anatolian literature in Turkish appears to have emerged through the cracks of the
socio-political environment at the turn of the fourteenth century that lacked a

Islamic Studies 34, no.3 (1995): 253-295. Najm al-Dīn Rāzī’s Mirṣād al-ʿIbād (composed in
622/1223) focuses on these concepts, see Najm al-Din Razi, The Path of God’s Bondsmen:
From Origin to Return, tr. Hamid Algar (New York: Columbia University 1980). Yunus
Emre’s only extant verse-narrative Risâletü’n-Nushiyye (composed in 707/1307) is another
literary work that is grounded upon theological knowledge in order to prepare the ordi-
nary people for the mystical path, see Yunus Emre, Yunus Emre Divanı 3: Risaletü’n-
Nushiyye, edited by Mustafa Tatçı (Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı Yayınları, 1991). There are
many modern editions of Yunus Emre’s work. For a brief article on the concepts of mabda’
and maʿād in theology see, M. Sait Özervarlı, “Mebde ve Mead,” TDVİA, vol. 28, 211-212.
 PORTRAIT OF A SHAYKH AS AUTHOR IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY ANATOLIA 177

centre of cultural production. The Byzantine Empire had lost its power due to
internal and external pressure and the Seljuk state had been disintegrating since
the second half of the thirteenth century. While the enthronement of Ghazan
Khan in 694/1295 signified a period of centralisation for the Ilkhanid state, it
was constantly under pressure from the Mamluk Empire, and loosening its grip
on Anatolia. Anatolia was being divided into increasingly stronger principalities,
or city-states. Even though it is difficult to identify a central power over Anato-
lian cities of the period, the amazing proliferation of literary and historical texts
in this period imply the presence of conditions for intellectual conversation,
networks of patronage, textual production and transmission in a region that was
constantly being reshaped by wars and upheavals.3 One of the problems of liter-
ary-historical scholarship is how to reconstruct such conditions at the turn of the
fourteenth-century inner Anatolia and how to understand the “birth” of a Turkic
literary language as the continuation of a particular intellectual tradition.
The birth of an Anatolian Turkish literary language has been investigated only
by identifying available texts as reservoirs of linguistic evidence for Turkish inde-
pendent of Persian literary production unless the works discussed are transla-
tions. Therefore, many works of literature produced in the Persian language dur-
ing the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries remain to be studied within their
Anatolian contexts. With the exception of Fuat Köprülü’s ideologically moti-
vated work and Lars Johanson’s brilliant article, which convincingly argued that
Anatolian Turkish was established on the basis of the works of Mawlānā Jalāl al-
Dīn Rūmī (604/1207-672/1273), almost no analytical studies exist on the multi-
cultural and multi-lingual nature of literature in this period.4 While there is a
growing body of scholarship on Persian historical narratives, the development of
a local written Persian literature in Anatolia that gave birth to a local written
Turkish literature has yet to be studied.5

3 For an important article on the importance of cities for historiography of this period and
for references to the scholarship see, Rachel Goshgarian, “Opening and Closing: Coexis-
tence and Competition in Associations Based on Futuwwa in Late Medieval Anatolian Cit-
ies,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 40, no.1 (2013): 36-52. Goshgarian’s argument
for the cities as a unit to study cultural transformations in late medieval Anatolia is impor-
tant for approaches to literary history of pre-Ottoman Anatolia as well.
4 Mehmed Fuad Köprülü, Early Mystics in Turkish Literature, ed. and tr. Gary Leiser and
Robert Dankoff (New York: Routledge 2006). Lars Johanson, “Rumi and the Birth of Turk-
ish Poetry,” Journal of Turkology 1, no. 1 (1993): 23-37.
5 There is a growing literature on historical narratives in Anatolia. For bibliographical refer-
ences see, A.C.S. Peacock and Sara Nur Yildiz (eds), The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Soci-
ety in the Medieval Middle East (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013). For the strong sense of local
identity in Anatolian historiographical tradition see, A. C. S. Peacock, “Aḥmad of Niǧde’s
al-Walad al-Shafīq and the Seljuk Past,” Anatolian Studies 54 (2004): 95-107. While the de-
velopment of this local sense is investigated in the modern Turkish scholarship thanks to
nationalist ideologies that stress the uniqueness of the birth of Western Turkic as a written
language in Anatolia, this body of scholarship developed under the influence of Fuat
Köprülü’s work neglects the close relations with the Persian literature and emphasises con-
178 SELIM S. KURU

Throughout the thirteenth century, inner Anatolian cities hosted prolific au-
thors writing in Arabic and Persian, who had established a strong tradition of a
sacred literature that reconfigured prevalent mystical ideas.6 The dream of a
world beyond the grim living conditions appears to have had a strong grip on
authors’ imaginations; in this context the author acting as a seer re-evaluated
older sources in order to reveal descriptions of a world beyond that otherwise
remains hidden.7 Authors of this literature strived to develop a particular prose
style in their written compositions that increasingly included rhyming prose and
poetry.8 By materializing invisible worlds through stylistic devices, poetry gener-
ated further commentary on the ambiguities in the texts about the divine and
the sacred expanding ways of imagining.9 Verse narratives that covered topics re-
lated to the expression of the sacred, on the other hand, were rare.

tinuity with the Eastern Turkic written traditions. For a rich display of scholarly approaches
to the historical writing, literature and localism in historiography with respect to Persian
historiography see various articles edited by Charles Melville, Persian Historiography (Lon-
don: I.B. Tauris, 2012). For a list of authors composed Persian works in Anatolia see Tahsin
Yazıcı (prep. Osman G. Özgüdenli), “Persian authors of Asia Minor,” Encyclopædia Iranica,
available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/persian-authors-1 (accessed online
at 25 November 2014). Ahmet Kartal researched Persian literature produced in Anatolia:
Şiraz’dan İstanbul’a Şiir Rüzgarları: Türk, Fars Kültür Coğrafyası Üzerine Araştırmalar (Istanbul:
Kriter Yayınevi, 2008). However, these attempts to acknowledge the role of literary Persian
in Anatolia cannot capture the richly interwoven fabric of various languages that fuelled
distinct literary languages in this region of the world in this particular period.
6 For a general article with bibliographical references on history of Sufism in Anatolia see Ah-
met T. Karamustafa, “Antinomian Sufis,” in Lloyd Ridgeon (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to
Sufism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 101-124, esp. 115 ff., and Ethel Sara
Wolper, Cities and Saints: Sufism and the Transformation of Urban Space in Medieval Anatolia
(Philadelphia: Penn State University Press, 2003). For an essay in Turkish on cultural life in
Anatolia around this period, Ahmed-i Dai, Çengnāme, ed. Gönül Alpay Tekin (Cambridge
MA: Harvard University, 1992), 1-56 and a survey of literature see Barbara Flemming, “Old
Anatolian Turkish Poetry in its Relation to Persian Tradition,” Turcologica 62 (2006): 49-68.
7 For a discussion of secular and/or sacred authorship in Italian context during a close pe-
riod of time see Gerhard Regn, “Double Authorship: Prophetic and Poetic Inspiration in
Dante’s Paradise,” Modern Language Notes 122, no.1 (2007), 167-185. On late medieval
European authorship with theoretical questions relevant for research on early Anatolian
contexts see, Alastair Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the
Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011, 2nd ed.).
8 As indicated by the introduction of Najm al-Dīn Rāzī (Dāya) to his Mirṣād al-ʿIbād there
was an ongoing discussion about kinds of poetry. In this extremely influential work that
was composed in Anatolia (first recension in Kayseri in 618/1221 and second in Sivas in
620/1223), Dāya criticises worldly themes in poetry by quoting two quatrains by Khay-
yām, Najm al-Din Razi, The Path of God’s Bondsmen, 54. See also, J. T. P. de Bruijn, Of Piety
and Poetry: The Interaction of Religion and Literature in the Life and Works of Hakîm Sanâ’î of
Ghazna (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1983). While de Bruijn’s work provides an important study of
religion and literature in the works of Sanā’ī, the ingrained relationship between theology
and poetics in literary works produced in Anatolia is yet to be investigated with respect to
formal and thematic modalities.
9 Wolfhart Heinrichs identifies two separate canonical corpora for the tenth-century medie-
val scholar in Arabic: one religious, or scriptural, i.e. Quran and hadith, and the other
secular, i.e. poetry and other literature. The latter was the unsullied corpus of pre-Islamic
 PORTRAIT OF A SHAYKH AS AUTHOR IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY ANATOLIA 179

Identifying what counts as “literature” among a myriad of texts that were pro-
duced in Anatolia may start a productive discussion to detail the concepts of au-
thorship and patronage for this particular space and time period. In my view
what is literary, as distinct from what is historical, was determined by particular
‘religious’ ideals; in other words, by one of the manifestations of religious writing
that appeared in this period as literature through a growing deployment of po-
etry in prose. Works produced in thirteenth century Anatolia by a diverse group
of natives, visitors or migrants, such as Awḥad al-Dīn Kirmānī (d. 635/1238?),
Ibn ʿArabī (560/1165-638/1240), Najm al-Dīn Rāzī (Dāya) (573/1177-654/1256),
Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī (605/1207-673/1274), Fakhr al-Dīn ʽIrāqī (610/1213-688/
1289), and Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, articulated new interpretations of mysti-
cal thinking, gradually and consistently employing poetry. Their expression of
complaints about this world and the yearning for a parallel world beyond the
vagaries of the life on earth were linked to the socio-political contexts in Anato-
lia. The growing deployment of poetry to express these topics may also be re-
lated to the multilingual contexts available in Anatolia at this period.10 In this re-
spect, Gülşehri and his work provide important clues.11
Gülşehri is clearly an enigmatic figure, from whose pen we have two major
verse narratives, one in Persian, the other in Turkish, and a few poems. We only
know the dates of his two major works, 701/1301 and 717/1317 respectively.
While his work in Turkish has been the focus of editorial efforts and scholarly ar-
ticles, his Persian verse narrative Falaknāma, even though it is available in an edi-
tion and Turkish translation, has rarely been a subject of study.
Anatolian literatures of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries are commonly stud-
ied through the lens of Turkish, and primarily as the birthplace of Western Turkic

Arab poetry that the scripture overwhelmed miraculously, “On the Genesis of the Haqiqa-
Majāz Dichotomy,” Studia Islamica 59 (1984): 111-140. We can imagine for a thirteenth
century scholar a similar canonical corpora, however, there appeared by that time a third
corpus that can be exemplified by creative work of Ibn al-ʿArabī which drew inspiration
from both corpora. While commentaries on pre-Islamic poetry might have remained im-
portant tools in Anatolia during this period, a new canon of poetry in Persian that may be
defined as sacred was also being shaped as a model. For such a canon of didactic or theo-
logically grounded works recorded by Gülşehri, see Selim S. Kuru, “Gülşehri, the Seventh
Sheikh of the Universe: Authorly Passions in Fourteenth-century Anatolia,” Journal of Turk-
ish Studies = Türklük Bilgisi Araştırmaları 40 (2013): 281-289.
10 Lars Johanson’s aforementioned article opens up a fresh space for the investigation of rela-
tionship between multilingualism and poetic expression in the thirteenth century Anato-
lia, Johanson, “Rumi and the Birth.”
11 Processes of adapting older texts involve localization, see Sara Nur Yıldız, “Battling Kufr
(Unbelief) in the Land of Infidels: Gülşehrī’s Early Fourteenth-century Turkish Adaptation
of ʿAṭṭār’s Manṭiq al-ṭayr,” in A.C.S. Peacock, Bruno de Nicola, and Sara Nur Yıldız (eds),
Islam and Christianity in Medieval Anatolia, (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 329-347. Here while
she reads two sections from Gülşehri’s adaptation of ʿAṭṭār’s Mantiq al-Ṭayr with respect to
the matter of conversion, Yıldız also demonstrates how Gülşehri assimilates stories to an
Anatolian context. I thank to the author for sharing the manuscript of her article with me
prior to its publication.
180 SELIM S. KURU

as a written language that developed into a classical literary language under Otto-
man patronage after the fifteenth century. This teleological view limits the appre-
ciation of early Anatolian Turkish texts, which were a major part of the multilin-
gual literary system of the period. Not only literary texts in Arabic and Persian by
multilingual poets/authors, who are better known by their works in Turkish, have
been utterly excluded from literary histories, but even those works that are in Turk-
ish, mostly produced before the fifteenth century, are not often evaluated for varie-
ties in themes and composition, or literary appreciation. And very few Anatolian
literary works have been examined within their social and historical contexts.12 Lit-
erary historical surveys are generally lists of works without references to transmis-
sion of knowledge, networks of patronage, textual production, in short the produc-
tion, function and politics of literature. They are rather considered witnesses to a
purer stage in the development of Turkic language in Anatolia and subjected to re-
search in order to identify biographical information about their authors or study
the linguistic characteristics of Turkish preserved in them. While these works have
been appreciated ideologically as testaments to a “purer” stage of Turkish, the liter-
ary characteristics they display are dismissed as outdated and not worthy of inves-
tigation. This indifference to the literary aspects of early Anatolian Turkish texts re-
flect the logic of a particular form of Turkish nationalism that was striving to de-
tach itself from Islamicate, Arabicate and Persianate influences. These literary char-
acteristics were defined not only by Arabic and Persian-origin lexical items, but
also by rhetorical embellishments and devices.13
While investigating the earliest verse narratives produced in Anatolian Turkic
for another project, I was impressed by Gülşehri’s free adaptation of Farīd al-Dīn
ʿAṭṭār’s Manṭiq al-Ṭayr.14 Throughout my undergraduate and graduate education,

12 There are brilliant examples, such as Gönül Tekin’s aforementioned work on the Çengnāme,
and Barbara Flemming’s Fahris Ḫusrev u Šīrīn. Eine türkische Dichtung von 1367 (Wiesbaden:
Franz Steiner Verlag, 1974). In these works Tekin and Flemming display a sensitivity for
textual as well as political and cultural contexts through scant biographical information on
respectively Ahmed-i Dai (early fifteenth century) and Fahri (late fourteenth century). For
a recent article on literary culture of Anatolia through a study of Sulṭān Walad’s work see,
Franklin Lewis, “Sultan Valad and the Poetic Order: Framing the Ethos and Praxis of Po-
etry in the Mevlevi Tradition after Rumî,” in Kamran Talatoff (ed.), Persian Language, Lit-
erature and Culture: New Leaves, Fresh Looks (New York: Routledge, 2015), 23-47.
13 Ironically, Fuat Köprülü, who is frequently introduced as the father of nationalism in Turk-
ish literary studies, while introducing Gülşehri in 1918, stressed that many literary passages
from Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr “are of such excellent literary quality that they can be read with pleas-
ure even today,” and defined Gülşehri as a “true artist” who is “artistically superior” to the
early Anatolian Turkish writers of fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Köprülü also promised
to publish a study on Gülşehri and his work which unfortunately never materialised. Also
his stress on Gülşehri’s artistic merit unfortunately was not followed up by the scholarship,
which instead teleologically evaluated his work as an early step in the development of Turk-
ish literature in Anatolia. See Köprülü, Early Mystics in Turkish Literature, 209 and 257n84.
14 See Selim S. Kuru, “Destanı Mesnevide Anlatmak: Gülşehri, Aşık Paşa ve Mes’ud’un Eser-
leri Hakkında Gözlemler,” in Hatice Aynur, Müjgân Çakır, Hanife Koncu, Selim S. Kuru
 PORTRAIT OF A SHAYKH AS AUTHOR IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY ANATOLIA 181

I had heard about this text, read sections of it, and even attended a graduate
seminar in which four Turkish translations of ʿAṭṭār’s work were compared.15
However, none of the classes or scholarly and popular articles had prepared me
for the literary pleasures found in Gülşehri’s work. In fact, beyond their literary
quality, Gülşehri’s two verse narratives raise several questions about the literary
and religious life during the tumultuous early fourteenth century Anatolia; ques-
tions that are complicated by the issue of patronage, which was in constant flux as
rulers – Seljuk dynasts, Ilkhanid overlords, and local governors – came and went
without being able to establish a centre or continuity for a localised canon of lit-
erature to form. Although beyond the scope of this article, the following ques-
tions inspired by Gülşehri’s works are valuable to articulate as rich areas for fur-
ther research into understudied dimensions of Anatolian literary cultures: How
did the intellectual networks, represented by a heterogeneous group of individuals
who, in retrospect, would be related to each other, such as Yunus Emre
(638/1240-720/1320), Hacı Bektaş Veli (d. 669/1271?), Sulṭān Walad (d. 712/
1312), Ahi Evren (d. 660/1262?), cope with the changes that shaped their worlds?
How did education and textual production continue while cities were besieged,
destroyed and rebuilt? What were the means of producing texts, that is, the whole
process of composition and publication – the material means of supplying paper,
ink, securing a place, time, and money to write, reaching sources, and finally,
finding venues for publishing the final product? How did the mechanism of pa-
tronage function at this time? What kinds of support mechanisms other than
court patronage prevailed for intellectuals? More specifically, what kind of mo-
tives were there to compose verse-narratives and poetry? Was it that there was a
great demand, or great awards for those written, versified or ornate prose, texts?
Who were reading these texts and what kind of reading practices did exist?
Against the backdrop of this vast horizons for textual and literary investiga-
tion, it is only one step for a literary historian to provide comparative descrip-
tions of organisational principles behind lengthy texts that determine the rela-
tionship between narrative organisation, and knowledge formation and transmis-
sion. Rather than testing older texts against contentious modern understandings
of textuality that revolve around concepts such as the distinction between fact
and fiction, my interest here is the task of appreciating the narrative strategies in
early fourteenth-century verse, long overlooked in favour of its Turkish linguistic
content. Pursuing the thread of research in previous two articles, in which I

and Ali Emre Özyıldırım (eds), Eski Türk edebiyatı çalışmaları 4: Mesnevî, Hikâyenin Şiiri (İs-
tanbul: Turkuaz, 2011), 195-216, especially, 201-205.
15 This excellent course was offered by Zehra Toska at the Boğaziçi University Turkish Lan-
guage and Literature department in 1993. For an article on the Turkish translations of
ʿAṭṭār’s Manṭiq al-Ṭayr see, Zehra Toska and Nedret Kuran Burcoğlu, “Ferideddin-i Attar’ın
Mantıku’t-tayr’ının 14, 16, 17. ve 20. Yüzyıllarda Yapılmış Türkçe Yeniden Yazımları,” Jour-
nal of Turkish Studies=Türklük Bilgisi Araştırmaları 20, no. 2 (1996): 251-265.
182 SELIM S. KURU

compared the three earliest Turkish verse-narratives, including Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr by

Gülşehri, with respect to their formal characteristics and attempted at a close
reading of a particular section in this verse-narrative this article focuses on Gül-
şehri’s Persian verse narrative.16 As I mentioned in the introduction, here, with a
focus on his incessant deployment of his penname in the Falaknāma and the in-
troduction section of this text, I will try to understand Gülşehri’s anxiety a
shaykh and his strong desire to be recognised as an “author.”

Gülşehri: Shaykh and Author

Rūm ilinde bir mubaṣṣır isterem
kim aña Çin bütlerini gösterem
Rūm ili bütlerini peydā ḳılam
daḫı Çin bütlerini yağma ḳılam
Gendözimi her ser-efrāza uram
gül şarından odı Şīrāz’a uram
I need someone with clear sight in Rūm
so that I can display idols of China for him
I can then reveal the idols of Rūm
to pillage those from China
I shall challenge all the proud people
and thus hit Shiraz with fire from City of Roses17

Towards the end of his 4438 verses-long Turkish adaptation of Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr,

the first lengthy verse narrative in Anatolian Turkish composed in 707/1317, Gül-
şehri claims that he can compose poetry to reveal the otherwise invisible true
beauty of Creation through making idols with words. In a direct manner, Gülşe-
hri ends his work boasting first that not only he can “display” (göstermek) the
‘idols of China’, a topos for beauty, but he can also pillage (yağma ḳılmaḳ) those
by rendering visible (peydā ḳılmaḳ) those of Rūm—here meaning Anatolia.18

16 Kuru, “Destanı de Anlatmak”; idem, “Gülşehri, the Seventh Sheikh of the Universe.”
17 Aziz Merhan, Die Vogelgespräche Gülşehris und die Anfänge der türkischen Literatur (Göttingen:
Pontus Verlag, 2003), 312, couplet 3168. There is another edition of the text: Gülşehri’nin
Mantıku’t-tayrı (Gülşen-nâme), ed. Kemal Yavuz (Ankara: Kırşehir Valiliği Yayınları, 2007).
The Yavuz edition which relies on one manuscript is also available online: http://ekitap.
kulturturizm.gov.tr/Eklenti/10685,girispdf.pdf?0 (Visited on 24 May 2015). Since Merhan
edition includes variants from all extant manuscripts of the work, references are to page
and couplet numbers in that edition. I employed modern Turkish alphabet in quotations.
Unless otherwise indicated, translations are mine.
18 For idols as a topos see William Hanaway, “Bot,” EIr, vol. 4, 389-90. Here, by the word
idol, Gülşehri must be referring to visual representations of Chinese beauties. In a brilliant
article Oya Pancaroğlu discusses a chapter from a twelfth century cosmological work on
the importance of figural depictions to inspire people to contemplate this world in order
to reach knowledge of the other world, “Signs in the Horizon,” Res: Anthropology and Aes-
thetics 43 (2003): 31–41. In the case of Gülşehri’s verses, while there is no clear distinction
between artistic and verbal representation, the Chinese idols are the visual representations
 PORTRAIT OF A SHAYKH AS AUTHOR IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY ANATOLIA 183

Gülşehri here divulges a particular understanding of composing poetry as a

way to expose what is invisible to plain sight. This understanding also implicitly
points to a conversation about the central position of “Chinese idols” as a chal-
lenge. However, the poet is confident that he will render them defunct through
poetic manifestation of the fresh idols of “Rūm.” Gülşehri also connects Shiraz
to “leaders” (ser-efrāz) whom he challenges. Leaders in this verse have to be verbal
“idol”-makers. He says that he can, when he finds a mubaṣṣir gets into competi-
tion with the leaders of poetry and that he can burn down even the city of Shi-
raz, i.e. surpass the poetry produced in Shiraz, most probably by Saʿdī (d.
691/1292), with the fire of his words from Anatolia.19
Chinese idols refer to a set of classical visual imagery. Shiraz, on the other
hand, represents more contemporary verbal imagery. These two here are brought
up as traditional and contemporary challenges for Gülşehri as a poet. However,
Gülşehri’s words are still problematic as they imply a topographical triangle that
brings together three distinct geographical locations. China, as unsurpassed a dis-
tant yet powerful cultural centre might have been made close by the influence of
Ilkhanid cultural practices, and Shiraz, while not necessarily that close to inner
Anatolia, apparently perceived by Gülşehri as a rival city close enough to reach
his fame. This particular perception of poetry that is defined by an imagined ori-
gin (Chinese idols) and a contemporary poet (Saʿdī of Shiraz) reflects upon a
vast literary topography revealing an understanding of poetics and an intriguing
contemporary literary network.20

and the Rum and Shiraz are verbal responses to those in a competitive spirit. This interac-
tion of visual and verbal is a ripe field of investigation into the integrated view of various
media, visual and verbal, in conjuring the same knowledge of the universe beyond. Of
course, here China might have been used in reference to Ilkhanids; however, this is a slight
possibility.
19 A verse from one of his Turkish ghazals supports this argument as Gülşehri juxtaposes the
relation of Saʿdi to Shiraz and himself to Gülşehir: “Her metādan biline bir maʿden / bize Gül-
şehrī Sadī’ye Şīrāz.” In her unsurpassed study of Gülşehri, Shepherd translates this couplet
as follows: “A mine will be known by each product / for us Gülşehir for Sadi Shiraz,”
Vanessa Margaret Shepherd, “The Turkish Mystical Poet Gülşehri with Particular Attention
to His Mantıku’t-tayr” (PhD Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1979), 313. In this dis-
sertation Shepherd compares Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr with ʿAṭṭār’s original, transliterates and trans-
lates lengthy sections from Gülşehri’s work, and discusses manuscript evidence for Gülşe-
hri and his works. While there is no mention of Saʿdī in the Falaknāma, it is significant
that he idolises Saʿdī and his Gulistān in the Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr only two decades after the
poet’s death. Saʿdī’s work was apparently already famous in Anatolia. Furthermore, at least
for Gülşehri, it surpassed all other works, as Saʿdī appears as the leader of the rest of the
poets in Gülşehri’s pantheon of universal shaykhs.
20 See Domenico Ingenito, “‘Tabrizis in Shiraz are Worth Less than a Dog’: Saʿdī and Hu-
mām, a Lyrical Encounter,” in Judith Pfeiffer (ed.), Politics, Patronage and Transmission of
Knowledge in 13th-15th Century Tabriz (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 77-126. In this article Ingenito
the important topic of locality and access in thirteenth-century Persian poetry through a
discussion of literary competition between Saʿdī from Shiraz and Humām from Tabriz.
The article reveals the importance the feelings of belonging played in these poets’ lives.
184 SELIM S. KURU

While an extended discussion of these fascinating verses is beyond the con-

fines of this article, it is important to note how they carry implications about the
prevalent perceptions on challenges for a poet active in Anatolia at the turn of
the thirteenth century. However, for the purposes of this article, the first line
quoted above requires further examination since it communicates Gülşehri’s
search for a mubaṣṣir, an intriguing word which defines someone who has the
power of sight, who exposes the hidden, as well as, who watches over someone.
An appreciation of Gülşehri’s poetry then requires an ability to see through rep-
resentations, and an inclination to delve into an adventure into the unknown.
Thus Gülşehri seeks someone who can appreciate the reflections of his vision in
the form of poetry. Through the support of such a patron, his words will spread
all the way to Shiraz, being more powerful than what is offered by Chinese idols.
These lines then demonstrate that, when he was composing the Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr
in Turkish, Gülşehri was seeking a patron, and he was doing this through provo-
cation. His call is not for any patron, but for one who could appreciate a particu-
lar form of poetry that is to say a learned person. Otherwise, he had no doubt
about the power of his words, in competition with paintings from China or po-
ems from Shiraz, reveal the hidden. Some features of this verse-narrative that
comes down to us in six manuscript copies, the only dated ones from the late fif-
teenth century, suggest that he most probably was not able to find one.21
As a matter of fact, some fifteen years before, through his Falaknāma, seeking
patronage, Gülşehri had reached out to the Ilkhanid Khan, Ghazan. Dated
701/1301-2, the Falaknāma, i.e. Book of the Celestial Spheres, also a verse-narrative,
is in Persian and preserved in a unique manuscript copied in 18 Safer 843/August
1, 1439.22 We do not have any information about the reception of this more
than 3500 couplet work by Ghazan Khan who died in 703/1304, two years after
the completion of the Falaknāma. Since Gülşehri composed his second verse-
narrative Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr in Turkish, it may be unlikely that Gülşehri was seeking
patronage from the Ilkhanid ruler of the time, the recently enthroned Abū Saʿīd
Bahādur Khan (r. 717/1317-736/1335), or a Mongol governor, but rather he must
have been looking for the support of a Turkish-speaking ruler. The venture of

21 For a discussion of this and bibliographical references see Kuru, “Gülşehri, the Seventh
Sheikh of the Universe,” 289.
22 According to the following verses Gülşehri started his composition in 699 and finished it
in 701 in two years and two months:
‫ در ﺳﻨﻪ ﺳﺒﻊ ﻣ ﻪ ﮐﺮدﱘ راﺳﺖ‬/ ‫ا ﻦ ﮔﻠﺴﺘﺎ ﺮا ﮐﻪ ﺑﻮی ﺟﺎﻧﻔﺰاﺳﺖ‬
‫ در ﺳﻨﻪ ا ﺪی ﺴﻠﮏ اﻣﺪ ﲤﺎم‬/ ‫در ﺳﻨﻪ ﺳﺒﻌﻤﯿﻪ اﻧﺪوﺧﺖ م‬
‫ در دو ﺳﺎل اﯾﻨ ﺎ دو ﻣﻪ ﺮداﺧﺖ ﮐﺮد‬/ ‫زا ﮑﻪ ﺻﺎﺣﺐ ﻧﻈﻢ از ﻫﺮ ﮔﻮﻧﻪ ورد‬
I composed this rose-garden with revitalizing scents in the year seven hundred // In the
year seven hundred it gained its title / in seven hundred one it was complete // The author
of these verses compiled roses of various kinds / in two years two months ago [?] (fol.
31b/13-32a/1-2).
 PORTRAIT OF A SHAYKH AS AUTHOR IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY ANATOLIA 185

composing a verse narrative in Turkish language by a poet who had previously

composed a Persian verse narrative reflects the shifting balances in inner Anato-
lia with respect to literature, authorship and patronage in these momentous
times.
It is difficult to assess the reception of Falaknāma which deals with various
branches of knowledge positioned within the frame story of the creation of soul
and its descent to the earth. Both the Falaknāma and the Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr are es-
sentially visionary manuals which can also be read as handbooks of proper con-
duct in which the model behaviour for individuals is expressed through stories,
parables, and exhortations.23 As such, they reflect Gülşehri’s theological and
mystical training and articulate his desire to assume a position as a spiritual
leader beyond his community. The stories in both texts might have attracted the
attention of lay readers/listeners; however, their rhetorical features and references
imply a learned readership. While a comparison of these two texts is beyond the
confines of this article, it is important to note that, while the Persian Falaknāma
requires a learned eye with its thick terminology in the expression of its theologi-
cal subject matter, the Turkish Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr with its attractive frame story and
digressive passages about contemporary topics, such as futuwwa, and abundant
stories translated from several sources must have attracted a larger audience.24
That Gülşehri found interested readers is clear from a series of references to his
penname throughout the fifteenth century.25 His recognition seems to be due to
his Turkish verse-narrative than the Falaknāma, as Yusuf-ı Ankaravi (d. 866/1461)
praised Gülşehri’s Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr in his Ṭariḳatnāme that is itself a translation of
ʿAṭṭār’s other verse narrative, the Musībatnāma.26 Apart from Yusūf-ı Ankaravi,
Şeyhoğlu in his Kenzü’l-Kübera (composed in 803/1401) quotes two verses from
Gülşehri.27 Hatiboğlu (d. after 838/1435) in his Leṭāyifnāme (composed in
817/1414) and Larendeli Kemal Ümmi (d. 880/1475) praised him as a major poet

23 Toska and Kuran Burcoğlu argue there is thematic continuity between the two texts. While
the former is about the descent of the soul, the latter is about its ascent. Although this
needs further elaboration, that the Falaknāma lacks discussion on worldly and contempo-
rary topics which abound in the Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr supports this argument. Toska and Bur-
coğlu, “Ferideddin-i Attar’ın Mantıku’t-tayr’ı,” 253-254.
24 For a discussion of Gülşehri’s learning and sources see Shepherd, “The Turkish Mystical
Poet Gülşehri,” 136-148.
25 Agâh Sırrı Levend, in his dated yet still valuable introduction to the facsimile edition of
the Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr, identifies and quotes references to Gülşehri by these poets. Gülşehri,
Mantıku’t-tayr: Tıpkıbasım, with an introduction by Agâh Sırrı Levend (Ankara: Türk Tarih
Kurumu 1957), 5-7.
26 See İsmail Hikmet Ertaylan, “Yeni ve Değerli Bir Dil ve Edebiyat Belgesi: Tarikatname,”
Türk Dili ve Edebiyatı Dergisi 1, no. 3-4 (1946): 235-244. In this short article Ertaylan tran-
scribes 80 verses from the verse narrative and provides facsimiles of five pages from the
manuscript that was then in a private collection. He doesn’t give any specific information
about the manuscript copy that he says was defective.
27 Şeyhoğlu, Kenzü’l-Küberâ ve Mehekkü’l-Umerâ, ed. Kemal Yavuz (Ankara: Atatürk Kültür
Merkezi, 1991), 58.
186 SELIM S. KURU

counting his name among their masters along with Sanā’ī, ʿAṭṭār, Jalāl al-Dīn
Rūmī, Saʿdī, as well as Turkish poets Dehhani (fourteenth century), Elvan (d. after
760/1358-59), Ahmedi (d. 815/1412), and Şeyhoğlu (d. 817/1414 ?).28 Moreover, in
the Mecmūʿatü’n-Neẓā’ir, the earliest anthology of parallel (nazīre) poems, compiled
in 840/1436, Ömer b. Mezid included one ghazal by Gülşehri; in his Cāmiʿü’n-
Nezā’ir (composed in 918/1512) Eğridirli Hacı Kemal included three of his
ghazals.29 The only critical remark, which is also the earliest mention of his name
in historical record, comes from Ahmedi’s İskendernāme, where the author criticises
Gülşehri for his boastful attitude.30
A digression on this point is necessary here, because, thanks to Ahmedi, there
has been an emphasis in modern scholarship on Gülşehri’s excessive use of his
own penname (takhalluṣ) in his verse-narratives.31 Gülşehri incessantly inserts
verses with his penname ninety-six times in the Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr and around sixty
times in the Falaknāma, but he never mentions his real name. This narrative
strategy may sound impulsive, however, an author’s signing each section of a
verse-narrative apparently was not an uncommon phenomenon. Niẓāmī of
Ganja (535/1141-605/1209), for example, in his Makhzan al-Asrār, the work that
made him one of the six “shaykhs of the universe” in the eye of Gülşehri, signs
each chapter of his work with a verse that includes his penname. While this is
not true for Niẓāmī’s romances, the fact that this technique is employed in his

28 Hatiboğlu, Letâyifnâme: İnceleme, Metin, Sözlük, Tıpkıbasım, ed. Veysi Sevinçli (İstanbul: Tö-
re Yayın Grubu, 2007); In Kemal Ümmi’s 37 verse ghazal, Gülşehri is mentioned in the
35th verse. See Abdurrahman Güzel, “Kemâl Ümmî Dîvânı: İnceleme, Metin,”PhD Disser-
tation, Gazi Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, 1997, 654.
29 Three of these ghazals are found in Eğridirli Hacı Kemal, Cāmiʿü’n-Nezā’ir, MS Istanbul,
Beyazıt Devlet Kütüphanesi 5782, fol. 152b-153b, 164b, 288b (There are three different
paginations in pencil on this manuscript, these numbers follow the top left corner of the
left page), one in Ömer bin Mezid, Mecmūʿatu’n-Nezā’ir, ed. Mustafa Canpolat (Ankara:
Türk Dil Kurumuı, 1995), 139-140, one at the end of one of the manuscript copies of the
Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr, Türk Dil Kurumu Library, MS A120, fol. 50-51. Two are found in a short
verse narrative Keramat-ı Hace Evren that is attributed to Gülşehri and was published by
Franz Taeschner, “Zwei Gazels von Gülşehri,” in Fuat Köprülü Armağanı: 60. Doğum Yılı
Münasebetiyle (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1953), 479-485. Shepherd provides transcribed
editions, English translations, and when available, facsimiles of Gülşehri’s seven extant ga-
zels in Turkish, “The Turkish Mystical Poet Gülşehri,” 301-341.
30 Ahmedi, İskender-nâme: İnceleme – Tıpkıbasım, ed. İsmail Ünver (Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu,
1983).
31 Ahmedi’s much cited verse with Gülşehri’s name is included after the doxology in the in-
troductory section of his lengthy verse-narrative, in a short section about his humility in
comparison with others. This verse curiously is not found in the manuscript published in
facsimile by İsmail Ünver, however, it is in the online edition by Yaşar Akdoğan, which
does not reference for his manuscript source. Ahmedi, İskender-nâme, ed. Ünver), fol.
5a/438-444; Ahmedi, İskender-nâme, ed. Yaşar Akdoğan http://ekitap.kulturturizm.gov.tr/
Eklenti/10667,ahmediskendernameyasarakdoganpdf.pdf?0 (Visited on 24 May 2015), cou-
plets 437-445. For an article on recensions of Ahmedi’s text, which is preserved in more
than seventy-fivemanuscripts, see Caroline Sawyer, “Revising Alexander: Structure and
Evolution, Ahmedi’s Ottoman İskendernâme c. 1400,” Edebiyât 13, no. 2 (2003): 225-243.
 PORTRAIT OF A SHAYKH AS AUTHOR IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY ANATOLIA 187

didactic work the Makhzan al-Asrār makes it clear that Gülşehri was following his
example. As a matter of fact, Ahmedi, while criticising Gülşehri for constantly
praising himself, employed his own penname thirty-one times in his İskender-
nāme. Yet his strategy of signing his name is not as systematic as Gülşehri’s. This
particular device for marking lengthy works in verse in this period requires fur-
ther investigation.
This can be explained by his desire to be known as a poet who transcended
the position of being an ordinary man, or an ordinary city shaykh (şār şeyhi), as
juxtaposed with a shaykh of the universe (ʿālem şeyhi).32 In both verse-narratives
and in some of his ghazals, Gülşehri refers to his life as a shaykh, yet he never re-
veals any information about his private and professional background; his family,
his friends, or his teachers are never mentioned. This omission about personal
information in Gülşehri’s work contrasts with some of his contemporaries; for
example, Sulṭān Walad, whose works constantly refers to his father and his circle
of relations.33 Gülşehri appears to have been quite familiar with Walad’s works.
Walad had died only five years before the composition of Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr, in
which he appears as the as the last shaykh of the universe.
Gülşehri’s desire to become a “shaykh of the universe” through a literary
composition forcefully appears in his Turkish work. It can also be argued that, in
the Falaknāma, the section where he introduces himself as a famous local shaykh
is parallel to the more direct exposition of this desire in the Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr. In
the Persian text, on the other hand, while there is a more self-confident tone
throughout his verses, there is no direct mention of any poets as literary models.
The erasure of his given name and the omission of any biographical information
about his scholarly background seems to be Gülşehri’s conscious choice. Interest-
ingly enough, in the unique manuscript copy of the Falaknāma, his name is
erased, leaving a black smudge in its place that represents our knowledge about
the man: almost nothing.34

32 Gülşehri’s constant repetition of his penname can also be interpreted as a plea for recogni-
tion as an individual author. Daniel Hobbins argued that there was a development in the
thirteenth century France from a collective sense of authorship towards author-as-an-
individual, Daniel Hobbins, Authorship and Publicity before Print: Jean Gerson and the Trans-
formation of Late Medieval Learning (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).
However, the individual authorly persona, Gülşehri painstakingly promoted was defined
by having composed a book that he perceived as a vehicle which will elevate his position
as a universal shaykh.
33 Sulṭān Walad’s case may be considered as extraordinary; for references to his background,
family, friends, patrons, etc. in Sulṭān Walad’s works see Lewis, “Sultan Valad and the Po-
etic Order,” and Alberto Fabio Ambrosio, “‘The Son is the Secret of Father’: Rūmī, Sultān
Veled and the Strategy of Family Feelings,” in Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen and Alexandre
Papas (eds), Family Portraits with Saints. Hagiography, Sanctity and Family in the Muslim World
(Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 2014), 308-326.
34 For a detailed account of discussion around Gülşehri’s origins and given name in scholar-
ship see, Shepherd, “The Turkish Mystical Poet Gülşehri,” 20-42.
188 SELIM S. KURU

While Gülşehri produced one of the earliest, if not the first, verse narratives in
Anatolian Turkish with his free-style adaptation of Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr, as he power-
fully expressed in this work, his earlier Persian work Falaknāma definitely meant
much more to him. So much so that, as I have argued in an earlier article, when
he composed Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr he introduced Falaknāma, which he had originally
dedicated to Ghazan Khan asking for his patronage, to a Turkish readership in a
fascinating section as the work that elevated him to the position of the seventh
shaykh of the universe.35 Appearing in the middle of the Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr, this sec-
tion almost turns it into a pedestal for the Falaknāma, an occasion to promote it.
He might have thought that having written a Persian verse narrative would exalt
his position in the eyes of his Turkish readership. However, the original introduc-
tory section of the Falaknāma presents a very different reason for the composi-
tion that leads me consider Gülşehri as an author within an unstable, or shifting,
network of patronage.

A Guidebook for Celestial Spheres

Even considered outside possible religious, political, social and literary contexts
that might have informed it, the Falaknāma is an intriguing text for the composi-
tional and thematic features of its introduction. The title of the work introduces
the book as a guide to the secrets of the universe; it is also used in various verses
throughout the text, in general to mark the section endings. Various subtitles
(some of which are indicated by an empty space) reflect a particular principle of
organisation. Unlike the Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr, the Falaknāma includes very few stories
under the subtitles mathal or ḥikāyat.36 My work on the manuscript copy has been
challenging due to the organisation of the knowledge of the other world that draws
on a myriad of sources, as well as its thirteenth and fourteenth century contexts.
I identify four major sections in the Falaknāma: (I) Introduction, (II) descent
of the soul through the celestial spheres, (III) formation of bodies as hosts of
souls, and (IV) a relatively short conclusion. The introductory section that I fo-
cus on in this chapter is quite lengthy with 851 verses. It presents (1) a relatively
short tawḥīd section, i.e. testimony to the oneness of God [fol. 1b-4a; 74 cou-
plets], (2) four separate invocations, munājāt, three of which end with a brief
story [fol. 4a-14b; 262 c.],37 (3) a eulogy for the Prophet Muḥammad, naʿt [fol

35 Kuru, “Gülşehri, the Seventh Sheikh of the Universe,” 281-289

36 Apart from the first three stories that are linked to the invocations (6a, 9a, 13a), all stories
are delivered in the conversations between the soul and the people of the spheres (ulviy-
yûn) (72b, 76b, 81a, 86b, 88a, 91a, 94a, 98b, 104b, 108a). Shepherd identifies seven of
these stories in Turkish in the Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr. See the detailed analysis of all stories pre-
sented in the Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr in Shepherd,“The Turkish Mystical Poet Gülşehri,” 100-135.
37 Not only the existence of the four supplications (munājāt) in the form of short discourses
to acknowledge God’s hidden existence in this world, his compassion, his generosity, and
 PORTRAIT OF A SHAYKH AS AUTHOR IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY ANATOLIA 189

14b-16b; 53 c.]. After these 389 verses long commonplaces, the subsection that
is described in this article starts with (4) a brief description of the lowliness of
this world, and culminates with a request from a beautiful young person to ex-
plain the creation of soul and its return to God (mabda’ and maʿād), which transi-
tions to the dedication of the book with a panegyric for Ghazan Khan with
praises for a ṣāḥib-dīwān ʿAlā’ al-Dīn, who will deliver the work, and finally, a
mention of a “sulṭān” [fol. 16b-33b; 462 c.].
The unusually lengthy introduction constitutes one fifth of the whole. In the
four invocations, Gülşehri, on the one hand, prays to God for forgiveness, on
the other criticises his times and identifies himself in several couplets as the best
reader and reciter of ‘the book of celestial spheres’ that can be read through the
experiences of humankind in this world.
Each invocation ends with a verse that promotes the power of Gülşehri’s
verses with a description of his Falaknāma. The following is an example from the
second supplication:
‫ﻛﺰ ﻓﻠﻜ ﺎﻣﻪ ﭼﻮ ﺧﻮاﱎ ﻣﻪ اى‬
‫از ﻓ ﺮﺮ زﱎ ﻫﻨﮕﺎﻣﻪ اى‬
‫روى ﮔﻞ را ﭼﻮن رخ ﺮﮔﺲ ﻣﻜﻦ‬
‫وﻦ زر ﺻﺎﰱ ﻣﺎ را ﻣﺲ ﻣﻜﻦ‬
‫ﻧﻈﻢ ﮔﻠﺸﻬﺮى ﻛﻪ ِﻋﻘﺪ ﮔﻮﻫﺮﺳﺖ‬
‫ﮔﻨﺞ د ُّرش ﺧﻮان ﳘﯿﺎن زرﺳﺖ‬
Whenever I read a section from “the book of the celestial spheres” [i.e. Falaknāma]
I raise a commotion far beyond the highest sphere
Don’t turn the face of the rose into the cheek of the hyacinth,
Don’t make copper out of our pure gold
The verses of Gülşehri form a necklace of jewels
Read them as a treasure chest of pearls, or a money-belt of gold (9a/7-9)

In these verses, using references to alchemy, Gülşehri not only warns against the
misuse of this science, but also boasts about the power of his own verses that trans-
forms words into matchless jewels. The four supplications set the tone for the core
narrative. The couplets that endorse his poetic persona, Gülşehri, and his work, the
Falaknāma, establish a transition for the stories. For example, the quotation above
where Gülşehri resembles his verses to pure gold is followed by a story about a
man who mixes copper to silver coins and sells them cheaper than the value of sil-
ver. In the story, which is related to warn readers against cheats, the worldly body
resembles copper and the heavenly soul silver (fol. 9a/10-10b/4).

finally, his power respectively, but each one of them also acknowledges the power of Gül-
şehri in being able to illustrate these aspects through his book Falaknāma. Each supplica-
tion, except the third, adds with couplets that include Gülşehri and his work’s title and
culminates in a story. The lacking story must be dropped during the copying. Just like in
the case of excessive penname use, Niẓāmī’s Makhzan al-Asrār, which has two separate
supplications, seems to be the model for those multiple sections in the Falaknāma.
190 SELIM S. KURU

After a conventional naʿt section that follows the four supplications, a

Quranic verse serves as the heading for the main body of the verse-narrative:38
‫ِا َّن ۪ﰲ ٰذ ِ َ ﻟَ ِﻌ ْ َﱪ ًة ِ ُﻻ ۬و ِﱄ ْ َاﻻﺑْ َﺼ ِﺎر‬
Following the Quranic verse which stresses the power of sight that is a quality
Gülşehri is proud of, as we have seen above, the fourth section of the introduc-
tion presents a fascinating narrative. While this section sets the tone for the main
topic of the Falaknāma, it also presents the most informative section about the
context of its composition. In this section, after a lengthy description of the
lowly (sufli) world as temporary and deceptive (fol. 16b/3-20b/7), Gülşehri de-
scribes a gathering he holds with a group of beautiful young people towards the
end of the holy month of Ramadan; the most beautiful among them, most
probably a disciple of his, praises Gülşehri and encourages him to speak instead
of being “a silent nightingale in the middle of a rose garden” (fol. 22a/13). The
beautiful youth asks him to comment on the purpose behind the creation of
human beings starting with the descent of the soul and its return to the source
upon the end of days, i.e. mabda’ and maʿād (fol. 23b/10-11). The beautiful dis-
ciple’s name is never given, but he seems to function for Gülşehri’s work as
Ḥusām al-Dīn Çelebī does for that of Rūmī. The disciple’s praises for Gülşehri
take a strange turn in the following verses:
‫م ﮔﻠﺸﻬﺮى ﻛﻪ ﺧﱲ ﺎﺳﺖ‬
‫در ﴎ ﻫﺮ ﻛﻮى ازو ﻫﻨﮕﺎ ﺎﺳﺖ‬
‫ززﻣﲔ ﺮ ﭼﺮخ ّﺮد ﭼﻮن ﻣ‬
‫ﺷﻬﺮﻩ ﮔﺮدد ﱒ ﭼﻮ ﺳﻠﻄﺎن ﻓ‬
‫ﺎﺻﻪ در ا م ا ﻦ ﺷﺎﻩ ﺎن‬
‫آﻓ ﺎب ﺎﱂ ]و[ ﻣﺎﻩ ﺎن‬
‫ﺷﺎﻩ ﻫﻔﺖ اﻗﻠﲓ ﺎزان ﺎن ﻛﻪ ﺮ‬
‫ﻫﺴﺖ ﻋﻜﺲ ﺎﰎ او ﺮ ﺳﭙﻬﺮ‬
The name of Gülşehri is the seal of all names
There rises commotion wherever it is heard
He ascends from the earth to the skies like an angel
and gains fame as the sultan of the spheres
During the reign of the Sultan of this realm,
who is the sun of the universe and the moon of the world:
Ghazan Khan, the sultan of the seven climes,
the sun is just a reflection of his seal on the skies (fol. 23a/10-12)

38 There are two verses that contain this expression in the Quran: “In this is a warning for
such as have eyes to see,” Quran 3:13, and 24:44 This same verse is employed by the third
oldest Turkish verse-narrative by Aşık Paşa in his Garibnāme. It is quoted in the fourth
chapter second division on the nature of Creation after the verse 758, see Kemal Yavuz
edition available online, http://ekitap.kulturturizm.gov.tr/Eklenti/10669,garib-namepdf.
pdf (Visited on 15 December 2014).
 PORTRAIT OF A SHAYKH AS AUTHOR IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY ANATOLIA 191

In these lines praise for Gülşehri named as the sultan of the spheres shifts to
praise for Ghazan as the sultan of this world. It is already a daring act to com-
pare a shaykh with a king, however, it adds further insult to injury because, as I
have explained above, the praise follows a section that denigrates the human
world. On the one hand, the ruler is exalted by mention of his justice that gives
order to the world, yet, on the other, there is the implication that no worldly sul-
tan can find a cure for the abject nature of this realm, as Gülşehri previously and
later in the text expounds. The story of the soul descending through celestial
spheres to acquire a body may not necessarily be the best choice of topic for a
Khan who was recently converted to Islam.
The lengthy panegyric section addressing Ghazan Khan is articulated in the
text by the beautiful young man who instigates Gülşehri to write. This praise
poem of 132 couplets, following the same rhyme and meter scheme of the verse-
narrative involves four other characters along with the narrator, the disciple (fol.
23a/9-28a/10). Ghazan Khan, the eulogised patron-to-be, an unnamed “sultan”
that has been supported by Ghazan (fol. 27b/a-28a/4), one ʿAlā’ al-Dīn, the
ṣāḥib-dīwān who is praised as the best candidate to deliver Gülşehri’s work to
Ghazan (fol. 26a/5-27b/2), and finally Gülşehri. The use of the common topos
of the “beautiful young man’s request” as the reason for composition is crea-
tively employed in the Falaknāma. By conveying the praise in his disciple’s
mouth, Gülşehri not only improves upon this topos, but he also avoids directly
praising the ruler and inserts verses of praise for himself. This is fitting, since ear-
lier in the introduction, his verses deny the honour of being an ʿārif i.e. a gnos-
tic, a seer, to those who aspire for worldly gain and thus it wouldn’t sound con-
vincing if the praise emanated from his own mouth:
‫ا ٓ ﮑﻪ ﻣ ﺸﻮرﻧﺪ ﺎرف ﻧ ﺴ ﺪ‬
‫ذرﻩ ای در ﰷر واﻗﻒ ﻧ ﺴ ﺪ‬
‫ﭘ ﺶ ﻻ ﻫﻮﰏ ﺎن ﻻ ﳽ ﺑﻮد‬
‫ﰷر ﺎرف ﺟﺎﻩ ﺟﻮﱙ ﰽ ﺑﻮد‬
A mystic under command is not a seer
he cannot observe a bit of the task
As this world is nothing compared to the Divine
why would Gnostics seek a post (19b/1)

Moreover, Ghazan is portrayed in the panegyric recited by the disciple as the

hand that will clear the clouds that overshadow Gülşehri, and a helper who will
not only benefit from his wisdom, but also will spread his verses around the
world. Although certain ambiguities in the panegyric require further attention,
there is no doubt that it reflects Gülşehri’s self-confidence. His comments else-
where in the work about how local administrators pay him respect him and heed
to his words maybe meant to draw the khan’s attention to his own local power
(fol. 20b/5-7), which Gülşehri claims as not so important for him elsewhere (fol.
20a/9-13). It may be assumed that Gülşehri is following the advice of his disciple
192 SELIM S. KURU

and in order to reach his words to the universe he seeks recognition by Ghazan
Khan. As if Ghazan’s confirmation of his work would endow it with power of
accessibility.39
Ghazan is praised here for having brought order back to Rūm, and in an enig-
matic passage, for protecting and supporting “our sultan” (fol. 27b/9-13). Except
for these five couplets there seems to be no reference in the Falaknāma to Sultan
ʿAlā’ al-Dīn Kayqubād III (698/1298-701/1302), who was on the throne for three
years when Gülşehri completed his composition. While the fact that he does not
pay attention to Kayqubād III as a possible patron points toward the politics of
patronage in this period, the fact that he compares himself, as quoted above to
Ghazan Khan reveals this individual shaykh’s, Gülşehri’s, writerly desires.
The third person cited in the panegyric section is a certain ʿAlā’ al-Dīn, under
whose justice, Rūm has gained order (30b/2). Saadettin Kocatürk identifies this
person as ʿAlā’ al-Dīn Sāwa who served as vizier to the Seljuk sultan Masʿūd II (r.
683/1284-702/1303; d. 708/1308).40 Yet, according to the Musāmarat al-Akhbār
by Karīm al-Dīn Mahmud Aqsarā’ī (d. 733/1332-3), Sāwa also served ʿAlā’ al-Dīn
Kayqubād III in the period when the Falaknāma was written.41
This section clearly states that in presenting his Falaknāma to Ghazan Khan,
Gülşehri expects recognition, protection, and more importantly promotion by
the ruler, so that his wisdom would be universally recognised. However, fifteen
years later, in the Manṭıḳu’t-Ṭayr, Gülşehri tells us another story about the com-
position of the Falaknāma: One day, when he is strolling through town in grief
for not having a name (here he means a penname) and a book as, what he calls, a
town-shaykh (şār şeyhi) with aspirations to become a universe-shaykh (ʿālem şeyhi),
he finds himself in a garden where the six “men of the universe” (cihān eri)—
Sanā’ī, ʿAṭṭār, Niẓāmī, Saʿdī, Rūmī, and Sultan Walad,—are convened around a
fountain. He has an exchange of words with Saʿdi (d. 690/1291-2), who, after in-
sulting Gülşehri for indulging in the simple life of a town shaykh, invites him to

39 Gülşehri’s verses resonate with “shaykhly” anxieties about courtly patronage. However,
problems around disseminating his vision and ideas beyond the town he was living in
seem to have encouraged Gülşehri to reach out to a distant possible patron, who must
have been seen interested in promoting such written works. For a discussion of Ghazan
Khan’s interest in more learned “institutional” Sufis see, Reuven Amitai-Press, “Sufis and
Shamans: Some Remarks on Islamization of the Mongols in the Ilkhanate,” JESHO 42,
no. 1 (1999): 27-46. Given the variety of Sufis that were in the entourage of Ghazan
discussed in this article (esp. 34-36), it can be argued that with his theological knowledge
and communal leadership position, Gülşehri might have thought himself as a strong
contender, as he expressed in his work, for Ghazan’s attention.
40 Gülşehri ve Felek-Nâme, 59.
41 For references to ʿAlā’ al-Dīn Sāwa see in Turkish translation, Aksaraylı Kerimeddin
Mahmud, Selçukî Devletleri Tarihi, edited with annotations by F. N. Uzluk, translated into
Turkish by M. Nuri Gençosman (Ankara: Uzluk Yayınevi, 1941), 316, 321, 326, 328 and in
the edited Persian text, Aksaraylı Mehmed oğlu Kerîmüddin Mahmud, Müsâmeret ül-
Ahbâr: Moğollar Zamanında Türkiye Selçuklu Tarihi, ed. Osman Turan (Ankara: Türk Tarih
Kurumu Basımevi, 1944), 279, 285, 287, 294.
 PORTRAIT OF A SHAYKH AS AUTHOR IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY ANATOLIA 193

be a man of the universe upon the condition that he writes a book. If he does
that he will be the seventh universe-shaykh. After Gülşehri leaves the garden in
great distress, he wanders aimlessly in the streets of the town when he comes
across a veli, i.e. a saint, who gives him the penname Gülşehri and asks him to
compose a book with the title of Falaknāma. Gülşehri composes the book and
rushes back to the garden to present six “universe shaykhs” his new name and
with his book. He defends his penname and the book’s title as good as the other
six shaykhs’ pennames and their book titles, upon which all six men of universe
accept him as their seventh.42
With this account in the Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr Gülşehri provides a different rationale
for the composition of his earlier work, the Falaknāma. The Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr lacks
a proper introduction, it has no dedication or reason for composition section,
no invocations, and no names of possible patrons appear in the text. Still Gülşe-
hri expresses his intention as spreading his wisdom, promoting his authorly
powers in ninety-six couplets that are spread throughout the text, marking al-
most each turn of the narrative. He is his own boastful self after fifteen years, yet
seemingly without much hope for external support and without a potential
sponsor for his work.
It is clear that in the lengthier Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr, by changing the story of the
composition of the Falaknāma, Gülşehri is trying to impart a new and different
message. Here he points out that he had become the seventh universe-shaykh
long ago, some fifteen years earlier, through his writing of the Falaknāma. As such
in the Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr, the description of how he composed the Falaknāma, and
especially its endorsement by a series of mystic poets writing in Persian serves to
legitimise Gülşehri as a shaykh of universe. However, one of his more curious
readers could have checked the Falaknāma and learned about the fact that the Fa-
laknāma was in fact dedicated to Ghazan Khan, and not written through a fantas-
tical experience. Was this a literary trope? Or did Gülşehri assume that the reader-
ship of Manṭıḳu’t-Ṭayr would not be able to read Persian? Or was there a recen-
sion of the Falaknāma with a different introduction that included the story in the
Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr as the reason for composition?
There must be something additional behind this change, especially when one
considers the fact that the first lengthy verse narrative in Turkish, a text quite ex-
traordinary in itself thanks to its composition and use of narrative techniques, is
made into a vehicle to promote an older text in Persian by the appearance of the
section on seven shaykhs of the universe as a digression. What did exactly Gülşe-
hri try to communicate and whom he was addressing in his second verse narra-
tive? His constant use of his penname while hiding his true identity, as well as the

42 For the edition of this section see, Aziz Merhan, Die Vogelgespräche Gülşehris, 219-225. For a
transcription and English translation of this section with annotations see, Vanessa Marga-
ret Shepherd, “The Turkish Mystical Poet Gülşehri,” 164-191
194 SELIM S. KURU

alternative story regarding his composition of the Falaknāma fabricated in his later
Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr deserve further exploration into the split between patronage and
spiritual writing, and between being a shaykh of town, an oral transmitter of
knowledge of the hidden and a shaykh of the universe, a particular form of au-
thor who composes verse-narratives in Persian. These conscious textual acts, I be-
lieve, indicate that Gülşehri defies to be considered a mere compiler, or as a well-
established term in the Medieval European literary studies a “scriptor”; rather he
aspired to be an author; an author who writes a book not about the facts of this
world (a historical narrative, for example), but a visionary author who can report
about conditions in another world, following a specific Persian tradition of didac-
tic verse-narratives, identified by a series of works by six authors as discussed
above. As such, his conception of authorship is very different from our modern
understanding of the term. It implied being a seer-poet, who was not as limited to
being a shaykh whose words can reach only to the members of his community,
but rather one whose words reach to whole universe through his book.43 Here it
can be argued that Gülşehri considers what “city shaykhs” do to be futile and
worldly acts in comparison to composing a work that will be revered by everyone
and lead them all on the Path of Knowledge.
Gülşehri’s fame continued until the early sixteenth century. His second work
is preserved in six manuscripts, two of which were copied in the late fifteenth
century in Mamluk Egypt. As noted above, his poems made it into anthologies,
one composed in Eğridir, a central Anatolian town, and another in Egypt at
around the same time. Was this an instance of revival of his fame after more
than a hundred years? Why did no sixteenth century Ottoman biographer, in the
discussion of fourteenth-century poets, make mention of Gülşehri? One could
argue that a Turkish translation of Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr, which continued to be an in-
fluential work, deserved at least a line of acknowledgment. Finally, why was this
work copied at least twice in the Mamluk domains rather than in the Ottoman
lands in the late fifteenth century? More importantly for this article, what were
the conditions that shrouded the Falaknāma, a relevant text in its contemporary
contexts, by a seven centuries long forgetfulness?
Even though his name was mentioned by prolific fifteenth-century authors,
Gülşehri did not enter the canon of Anatolian literature that developed under the
patronage of the Ottoman dynasty. Until the impeccable scholar Mehmed Fuat
Köprülü rediscovered him, his works laid dormant for almost four hundred years.

43 Roland Barthes announced the death of author, arguing that text as a fabric of quotations
rejects any authority other than a reader’s, as such we can only talk about a “scriptor.”
However, the repetition of a penname and sabab-i ta’līf sections in some medieval narra-
tives display authors’ resistance to “death”. See Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Au-
thor,” in Image / Music / Text, tr. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 142-7.
For a discussion of poets as scriptors vs. visionaries as well as secular and prophetic author-
ship, with respect to Dante Alighieri see ibid., “Double Authorship,” 169-170.
 PORTRAIT OF A SHAYKH AS AUTHOR IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY ANATOLIA 195

Almost one hundred years after Köprülü’s discovery, because he provides us with a
glimpse of a moment in a literary turn in Anatolia through a series of textual
strategies, Gülşehri’s works still require attention for implications regarding the lit-
erary and religious history of Anatolia. The literary turn in Anatolia that frames
Gülsehri’s Falaknāma and Manṭıḳu’ṭ-Ṭayr, as well as it is indicated by them, re-
quires further exploration about authorship and forms of religious leadership, the-
ology and poetics, politics of patronage, and use and function of literary languages
within the framework of Turkish as it gradually outshined Persian as “the” literary
language through the seemingly reluctant pens of Anatolian authors.44 Through
emphasizing his penname and his high regard for Persian, even while composing
one of the earliest literary monuments of Anatolian Turkish literary language, Gül-
şehri also invites us to reconsider the conditions for the use of the intertwined lit-
erary languages of Anatolia: Arabic (with respect to sources), Persian (with respect
to the poetics of Sufism) and, last and but not least, Turkish (with respect to local-
isation); whereas the position of other languages– e.g. Greek and Armenian – sug-
gested by the macaronic verses of Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī still mystifies me.
*
Reconfiguring contemporary religio-mystical literature in a Persian verse-narrative,
promoting his poetic persona through repetition of his penname, and transform-
ing his Turkish verse narrative (an innovative adaptation of one of his favourite
Persian didactic works) through an inventive semi-autobiographical section as a
pedestal for his previous Persian work, Gülşehri inventively transforms forms and
themes available for him in the early fourteenth-century Anatolia in order to ex-
press his anxieties of being forgotten and his desire to be recognised as a “world”-
wide famous author. While his anxieties must have been formed by a particular
understanding of the fates of local shaykhs, his desire was definitely was shaped by
an individual understanding of “fame” in the early fourteenth-century Anatolia.

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