Throughout the Seyahatname Evliya Efendi lists the poets, mystics and divines of the various dervish orders which flourished in his time and before. In his descriptions of these saintly dervishes, Evliya reveals yet another aspect of the life of old Stamboul, this one, like so many others, now all but gone from the modern town. But, once again, Evliya evokes the vanished past and gives us a glimpse of what life was like here in the days of the dervishes.

The dervish movement was a reaction against the spiritual austerity of Islam and represented a desire for a more tangible religious experience. Each of the different dervish orders sought to attain communion with the divine in one way or another; some through contemplation and mysticism, others through the renunciation of worldly goods and the mortification of the flesh, and a few, like the Mevlevi and the Bektaşi, through the divine harmonies of music and dance. Whoever has heard the ethereal and haunting melodies of the Mevlevi, the famous whirling dervishes, will not soon forget them. And whoever has met a Bektaşi learns something of how the brotherhood of men could have been bound together by universal love, but never was.

The dervish communities lived in monasteries, or tekkes, where they could practise their devotions without distraction from the outside world. The dervish orders were banned and dispersed during the early years of the Turkish Republic and their tekkes are now abandoned and falling into ruins. There are scores of these silent buildings scattered around Istanbul, their windows smashed, their roofs gone, their walls half-fallen and overgrown with vines, their graveyards filled with weeds and rubbish. In their ghostly silence they are a poignant reminder of how, in the days of the dervishes, the town must have fairly hummed to the sound of their music and poetry as they sang and danced and played their way to paradise.

Evliya Efendi, who was himself a dervish for a time, evokes memories of those harmonious times in his description of the Mevlevi tekke in Beşiktaş:

Our own village of Rumeli Hisar is most richly blessed with the tombs and graves of holy dervishes, although their tekkes have long since vanished. One of the most venerated of these saints is Durmuş Dede, whose tombstone stands in a forlorn little graveyard beside the Bosphorus, in a once lovely garden now overshadowed by high-rise apartments. Durmuş Dede was a dervish-seer who lived in a tekke on this spot early in the seventeenth century. He was of great assistance to mariners, for he would advise the captains of passing boats as to whether or not the omens were favourable for their voyage. The sailors repaid his good advice by leaving him an okka of meat whenever they sailed by his house. An old boatman in the village informed me that this custom continued up until the early years of the present century, with the divinatory service perpetuated by Bektaşi dervishes who lived in a little tekke near Durmuş Dede’s grave. This holy garden also contains the graves of Sheikh İsmail Çelebi and his disciples, of whom Evliya Efendi has this marvellous tale to tell: ‘The Emperor was at Kandilli, when the bodies of the Sheikh and his disciples were thrown into the sea at Constantinople by the Stable Gate. He and his ten followers came floating down the Bosphorus to Kandilli, dancing on the waves with their heads in their hands. The Emperor’s suite seeing this miracle represented to him that they must have been unjustly executed. The Emperor then began to weep as he watched them floating against the current to the opposite shore at Rumeli Hisar, where they were buried at the foot of Durmuş Dede, and for the ten days following light was seen pouring down on their graves.’

Many of our village saints are buried in a picturesque graveyard high above Rumeli Hisar, on top of that grassy knoll called Evliyalar Tepesi, the Hill of the Saints. This was the site of the oldest of all the dervish tekkes in Istanbul, founded in 1452 by Bedrettin Baba, a Bektaşi dervish in the army of Mehmet the Conqueror. Bedrettin Baba’s tombstone can still be seen there, along with those of the long line of sainted şeyh who directed the tekke until it was finally closed in the year 1925. One of the best-loved of these şeyh was Nafi Baba, who died during the First World War and was buried behind the tekke by a squad of German soldiers who staffed an artillery post there. Although Nafi Baba has been dead now for more than half a century, there are still many fond memories of him in the village of Rumeli Hisar. An old Armenian lady told me that when she was a small girl she often saw Nafi Baba riding on his white mule up the cobbled lanes of the village to his tekke on the hill. She remembers that he had a long white beard and was dressed in a white robe and wore an enormous white turban on his head. His progress through the village was always slow and joyous, for Nafi Baba stopped to bless each doorway that he passed and distributed sweets to all the children who came flocking around him. His memory is still honoured, for each year Nafi Baba’s descendants gather together for a picnic on the Hill of the Saints on the anniversary of his death. I was once privileged to attend one of these dervish family-reunions, having been invited there by my good friend, Ali Artemel, Nafi Baba’s grandnephew. That day I had the honour of meeting Nusset Baba, the last şeyh of the tekke before its closure, and was also introduced to Güllü Hanım, one of the last surviving women dervishes. Güllü Hanım, who although now in her eighties still shows evidence of her youthful beauty, was captured in a slave-raid in the Caucasus when she was a young girl and was sold to a pasha in Stamboul. She loathed the pasha and the life she was forced to live with him and soon managed to escape from his harem, finding refuge in the Bektaşi tekke on the Hill of the Saints. Güllü Hanım lived there happily until the tekke was closed and then she moved with some of her friends and relatives to a house in Rumeli Hisar, where she still lives today. When the picnic ended, Ali and I, together with Nusset Baba, Güllü Hanım and all of the others at the picnic, drank a toast in red wine to the blessed memory of all the departed dervishes on the Hill of the Saints.

And afterwards we walked down to Nazmi’s café on the seaside, as we so often do late on a spring afternoon. We were sitting there, sipping our rakı and watching the last golden reflections of sunset in the windows across the Bosphorus, when a merry old character walked across the road and sat on the wall beside our table. He had a snow-white beard and bright blue eyes, wore a ragged turban and a shepherd’s cloak, and was shod in sandals fashioned from slices of automobile tyres. ‘Good day, my friends,’ he said to us, ‘I wish you good appetite.’ ‘Would you join us in our meal, Baba?’ said Ali to the old man. ‘Thank you, my son,’ said he, ‘I would appreciate a little bread and cheese, for I have walked a long way today and have not eaten since morning.’ ‘How far have you come, Baba?’ asked Ali. ‘I have walked all the way from Gumuşhane’ (a town far in the east of Turkey), he said, ‘and I have come to say my prayers at the türbe of my old şeyh, Nuri Baba, who is buried beside our tekke in Kasımpaşa. I have not been to Stamboul for many, many years, and now I have come to pay one last visit before I die.’ Then, after having eaten, he laughed heartily and told us that we were a fine group of gentlemen who were enjoying life in the manner of dervishes. ‘Would you join us in a bottle of wine, Baba?’ said Ali, well aware of the fabled habit of the Bektaşi sect, of which our guest was surely a member. The old dervish smacked his lips and laughed. ‘That is very kind of you, my son, but it is my custom to drink wine only with the best intentions, and since my intentions at the moment are not of the very highest I must decline, most reluctantly.’ Then he got down from the café wall and bowed to us, thanking us for our kind hospitality to an old man, and bade us goodbye. ‘When will we see you again, Baba?’ called Ali after him. The old Bektaşi laughed and said, ‘We will all see each other one day in paradise, inşallah!’ and then waved back to us as he walked off down the twilit Bosphorus road.

The oldest of the dervish tekkes still standing in Istanbul is that of İskender Paşa, which was founded in old Pera in 1492. Having heard that the tekke had recently been restored and was now open to the public, I went there one day to inspect it. When I arrived I found that the rumour was only half-true, for although the tekke had been restored it was still closed, and a sign warned me that I should not enter. But Stamboul signs are posted mostly to be ignored, and so I decided to enter anyway. And by this fortunate decision I was transported for a few brief moments to the Stamboul of Evliya’s time.

When I entered the tekke I was pleased to see how splendidly it had been restored; for there was the polished nut-wood floor where the whirling dervishes danced their spinning way to ecstasy, the stage where once sat the company of dervish musicians playing haunting melodies on the ney, or Turkish flute, the screened gallery from whence the Sultan and his court observed the dancers.

When I had finished my tour an old gentleman came over and asked me if I would care to come outside in the garden and have a glass of tea with him and his friends. I thanked him and said yes, and he led me to a grape-arbor beside the tekke. There were three other ancients sitting there and they greeted me with almost ceremonious courtesy. I could sense immediately that there was something quite out of the ordinary about these old men; their manners were so gentle and their faces so serene; their speech an older and more archaic Turkish. And then one of them produced a ney and began to play, while another sang a most lovely song which I soon recognised to be a mesnevi, one of the mystical verses of the Mevlana. From this I recognised that my companions were Mevlevi dervishes, singing and playing once again in the garden of their old tekke. I later learned that they were presently residing in Konya, where once a year they were permitted to perform their ancient rites on the feast day of their founder, Mevlana Jelal-ud-din Rumi. When the dervishes finished their song I complimented them and then I quoted these lines from Evliya’s Seyahatname concerning the playing of the ney: ‘The divines of Rum hold the playing of this instrument not to be forbidden by the law, because it was played before the great mystic Mevlana Jelal-ud-din, and it is even now played in all the tekkes of the Mevlevi. On the night of the Prophet’s nuptials the half-drum, the ney and the violin were played, and therefore these instruments continue to be played in the tekke of the dervishes.’

The old dervishes were very taken by this and were at the same time curious that a foreigner should have read Evliya Efendi’s Seyahatname. Then the ney-player asked me if I knew that Evliya Efendi was buried nearby. I was very surprised at this, for I had always thought that Evliya had died and been buried in Edirne, and so I told the old dervish of my doubts. He replied, ‘It is true that Evliya Efendi spent most of his later years in Edirne, my son, but he left there in about his seventieth year to undertake a voyage to Egypt and the Holy Land. On his return from that journey he settled once again in Stamboul and soon afterwards died and was buried alongside his ancestors, or so I have been told.’ I asked him if he knew just where Evliya might be buried. He answered, ‘According to tradition, Evliya Efendi is interred in the old burial-ground of Meyyitzade in the district of Kasımpaşa, only a short distance from our tekke.’ I told him that I was very anxious to find Evliya’s grave, for he and his Seyahatname had for many years been my guide to Stamboul, and I would now like to pay my respects to his memory in the place where he had been laid to rest. The old dervishes appreciated this sentiment and wished me God’s blessing as I stood up to leave, inviting me to come again and join them whenever I was passing by. I replied that I would surely do so, and then bade them farewell for a time, thanking them for their kindness and hospitality.

As I walked towards Kasımpaşa, I wondered if Evliya was really buried at Meyyitzade as the old dervish said. And I was also puzzled by the very name of Meyyitzade, the Son of the Dead, for it seemed to make no sense. But then I recalled the fantastic tale which Evliya told of Meyyitzade and of how he acquired this strange name:

When I arrived in Kasımpaşa I made enquiries about the Meyyitzade burial-ground, but no one seemed to know of its whereabouts. An old Jewish gentleman told me that this whole area had once been a cemetery, the Petit Champs des Morts, but that it had all been built over many years ago. The only tomb I could see was an ancient, half-ruined türbe, which stood beside the road running down to the Golden Horn. I began walking towards the türbe and then, to my astonishment, I saw on a street-sign that the name of the road was – the Avenue of Evliya Çelebi! I found the door to the türbe open and walked inside, feeling that I had finally reached the end of my search. But the only tombstones I could find within the türbe were marked with the names of Katip Mehmet Çelebi and Saliha Hatun, and the dates of their deaths, 1542 and 1685. An old inscription on the outside of the türbe stated that this was the tomb of Lagusa Kadin, that is, the Lady Who Has Given Birth, indicating that this was undoubtedly the tomb which Evliya described, where took place the fabulous birth of Meyyitzade, the Son of the Dead.

But of Evliya Efendi’s grave I could find no trace, and so my quest finally ended in disappointment. And thus Evliya’s only monument in Istanbul is a street-sign which bears his name, on an avenue which perhaps passes over his unmarked grave. But as I walked back towards Pera along the Avenue of Evliya Çelebi, I realised that there could be no more fitting monument to him, who spent his life strolling along the streets of Stamboul.