Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq (Cafer-i Sadık) – Life, Works and the Alevi Path

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Who was Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq (Cafer-i Sadık)?

Born	699, Medina
Martyred	765, Medina (Baqi)
Age	66
Father	Imam Muhammad al-Baqir (Muhammed Bakır)
Mother	Umm Farwa (Ümmü Ferve)
Wife	Hamida (Hamide)

Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq is the grandson of Imam Zayn al-Abidin (Zeynel Abidin) and the son of Muhammad al-Baqir. His mother is Umm Farwa, on her father’s side the daughter of Qasim, son of Muhammad, son of the Caliph Abu Bakr. On her mother’s side Umm Farwa is the daughter of Asma, daughter of Abdurrahman, another son of Abu Bakr. Umm Farwa is thus a granddaughter of Abu Bakr on both her mother’s and her father’s side.

The kunyas (honorific names) of Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq are “Abu Abdullah, Abu Ismail, Abu Musa; his title (lakab) is al-Sadiq (the Truthful)”. That is why he is known as “Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq”. Before passing away, his father Muhammad al-Baqir invited the distinguished figures of the Shia to his house, and together they listened to his father’s testament.

Imam Muhammad al-Baqir recited the verse stated in verses 132 and 133 of the Sura al-Baqara in the Quran: “The Prophet Abraham enjoined upon his sons to preserve the religion of God in which he believed.” He said that he, too, recommended as his successor his 36-year-old son Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq, whom he had raised very well, and that he believed he would fulfil the office of imam worthily.

The stations of rehber, pir and mürşid and the Four Gates and Forty Stations, which Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq ordered and established, are the inner (batini, mystical – tasavvuf) interpretation of the Quran. This path and erkân, the faith of the Anatolian Alevis, is the mystical thought (tasavvuf) of Islam. It is the path that the Prophet Muhammad and Imam Ali followed in the Cem of the Forty (Kırklar Cemi): the path of earning God’s good pleasure, drawing near to God and becoming one with Him. According to this faith, during worship blessings (salavat) are recited upon the Ehl-i Beyt, embodied in the persons regarded as holy (the Prophet Muhammad, Imam Ali, Fatima, Hasan and Husayn); the tevhid (affirmation of God’s unity) is chanted, God’s forgiveness is sought for their sake, repentance is made, and wishes and requests are offered.

Together with the other eight imams descended, among the Prophet Muhammad’s grandchildren, from Imam Zayn al-Abidin, the son of Imam Husayn, the Twelve Imams are complete. In all the tevhids, hymns (ilahi), düvazdeh (poems on the Twelve Imams), bağışlama (prayers of intercession) and prayers of repentance that Alevis recite in their worship, they always invoke the names of the Twelve Imams and ask God to forgive their sins and accept their prayers. This is proof of how much the Anatolian Alevis love and respect the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad and how deeply they are devoted to them.

The entire Islamic world has accepted without dispute how pre-eminent Imam Ali was in knowledge and justice. This hadith of the Prophet Muhammad also clearly proves how pre-eminent Imam Ali was in knowledge. The Prophet Muhammad said: “I am the city of knowledge and Ali is its gate; whoever wishes to come to me should first go to Ali.” Thus almost all the children of this lineage, never departing from the footsteps of their forefather Imam Ali, regarded it as their most sacred duty to equip themselves first of all with knowledge. When we study the lives of the Twelve Imams, all Islamic histories prove that they were scholars who left their mark on the eras in which they lived.

The Era of Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq: from the Umayyads to the Abbasids

The struggle of Imam Zayd and Yahya

Zayd, the eldest son of Imam Zayn al-Abidin, pursued his studies until around 717 CE. We see that Imam Zayd was a profound scholar of Islamic jurisprudence (fıkıh). He was a student of Wasil ibn Ata al-Ghazzal, the founder of the Mu’tazila school. He became the founder of the Zaydiyya order, which systematised the philosophy of jurisprudential understanding. Politically, he held that his forefather Imam Ali had been partly wronged. Although he defended everywhere and at all times that Imam Ali was superior in every respect to all the caliphs and that the caliphate that was his right had been taken from him, he did not oppose the view of his nephew Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq on the question of the caliphate.

On another side were Imam Zayd’s brother Abdullah and his sons Muhammad and Ibrahim. And on yet another side, Zayd, the son of Imam Hasan, his son Hasan, his son Ismail, his son Muhammad, his son Zayd, his son al-Hasan (Shahristani), and others of Ali’s lineage maintained that the caliphates of Abu Bakr and Umar were a great injustice and never accepted them. They constantly fought against the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties, each according to his strength. Al-Hasan Shahristani, the sixth grandson of Imam Hasan, was the founder of the Caspian (Hazar) Alevi state in 864 CE. Until 947 CE this Alevi state was ruled by the grandsons of Imam Hasan.

Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz, who came to the caliphate in 717 CE, abolished the custom introduced by Muawiya of “cursing Ali and his descendants in the Friday sermon”. He returned the date groves of Fadak (Fedek), which had been taken from Fatima, to the descendants of Ali. He likewise returned to their owners all the property that the sons of Umayya (the Umayyads) had seized from the Ehl-i Beyt. This just Umar ibn Aziz was poisoned and killed by Marwan of the Umayyads and by his own mother, the wife of Yazid. In his place the cruel Hisham, one of his cousins, became caliph. When the returned property was being divided among the grandsons of Imam Hasan and Imam Husayn, a scheme by Hisham, who was also of the Umayyad line, came to light.

When Imam Zayd, as the representative of Imam Husayn’s grandsons, applied to the caliph together with a few relatives to receive their property, the accursed Hisham forced Yazid, the son of Yusuf ibn Umar, who had been governor of Kufa before him, to claim that Zayd owed him a very large sum. The caliph summoned Zayd to Kufa to question him. In the face of this scheme and the false witnesses who were made to testify, the property that was the right of Ali’s lineage was taken back in Imam Zayd’s case.

Having come to Kufa, Imam Zayd did not return to Medina. He covered his tracks and stayed in Kufa. Zayd began preparations for a great uprising against the Umayyad caliph; within a year 15,000 people enrolled in the list of the secret army he was preparing. During this time Zayd’s army also found support in Mosul and Basra. Preparing to take power in complete secrecy, the supporters of the Ehl-i Beyt set 6 January 740 CE as the starting date of the movement.

Unfortunately, Yusuf ibn Umar, the governor of Kufa, learned the starting date of the movement through his spies. Before that date, as a precaution, he arrested many of the leading notables. He summoned the rest of the people to the mosque and managed to keep them under guard with a few Syrian soldiers. That night Imam Zayd, with a force of 300 men who had remained with him, attacked the mosque and freed the people held there. But the cowardly men lost heart, went home on leaving the mosque and did not join Imam Zayd’s army. While fighting until the darkness of the following evening against 2,000 Syrian warriors sent against him from Hira, he was wounded by an arrow. That night, in the house where he had taken refuge, he surrendered his soul to God as the arrow was being removed. A watercourse was drained, his body was buried in the bed of the stream and the water was let back over it.

Following a denunciation to the governor of Kufa, the location of the body was discovered; they dug it up, cut off the head and sent it to Damascus to the Caliph Hisham. The body was crucified in Kufa. It remained hanging like this for five months, until the death of the Caliph Hisham.

After the death of Imam Zayd, his son Yahya went to Khorasan and became active there as a candidate for the imamate. The non-Arab peoples – the Turks, Persians, Kurds and many Turkmen tribes in Tokharistan, Kuhistan, Tabaristan and Khorasan – had embraced Islam within the framework of the Ehl-i Beyt faith. Carrying with them a number of values from their old religions that served humanity, they had accepted the Ehl-i Beyt faith and partisanship for Ali as the religion of Islam. When we look at history, we see for ourselves that the Islamic faith that spread in these regions was not the Sunni sharia. Al-Shahristani states this clearly in the work cited, p. 272.

A large part of the Turkic peoples fought for a long time together with Yahya against the oppressive Umayyads. By the time of Yahya’s death, the Ehl-i Beyt faith, which we call the Alevi faith, had spread over a very wide area from Kufa to Balkh and Central Asia. Yahya, too, was killed in 743, again by Hisham’s governor; like his father, his head was cut off and sent to Damascus, and his body was crucified on the city walls of Juzjan (Cüzzan).

Abu Muslim and the offer of the caliphate

After 727 CE the grandsons of Marwan of the Umayyad line fell out with one another over the caliphate, and brothers killed one another. When Imam Ja’far took up the office of imam, Hisham, the son of Abd al-Malik, was caliph. After his death he was succeeded by Walid, the son of his brother Yazid. In Walid’s time the Umayyads fell out among themselves and Walid was killed. During these struggles for the throne, Yazid and Ibrahim, who appeared to be heirs to the caliphate, were also killed. In their place the last caliph, Marwan, known by the nickname “Himar” (the Donkey), held the caliphate.

In Tokharistan, Tabaristan and Khorasan there lived numerous Karluk and Khalaj Turkic tribes subject to the Yabgu Turks, as well as Persians. Because they had witnessed Yahya’s martyrdom in a righteous struggle, they later became willing supporters of the rising of Abu Muslim (Ebu Müslim). After a great struggle, on 26 April 750 they killed Marwan, the last caliph of the Umayyads. They put an end to the Umayyad dynasty, which for a century had dominated the destiny of the Islamic state and had turned upside down the Islam brought by the Prophet Muhammad.

In the time of the Caliph Marwan, Abu Muslim’s uprising in Khorasan had begun. After Abu Muslim caught and killed the Caliph Marwan in the town of Busir in Egypt, where he was hiding, the office of caliph became vacant. While the uprising was still under way, Abu Muslim sent an envoy to Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq asking him to accept the caliphate. Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq, however, did not accept this offer. Abu Muslim made the offer of the caliphate to Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq a second time, but again Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq declined. When Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq did not accept, he then offered the caliphate to Abdullah ibn Hasan, one of the grandsons of Imam Hasan. Although Abdullah was willing, he fell into hesitation, wondering why Imam Ja’far had not accepted.

So he went and consulted Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq. The Imam said: “This order is not the order established by our forefathers Muhammad and Ali, nor the Islam they brought. Such a caliphate is not worthy of our lineage. It would therefore be better for all of us if you gave up this desire.” After this conversation Abdullah, the grandson of Imam Hasan, also declined the offer of the caliphate made to him. Yet, probably because of the oppression the Ehl-i Beyt had suffered until then, all the uprisings carried out were made in the name of the lineage of Muhammad and Ali, in the name of the Ehl-i Beyt.

Meanwhile, Muhammad ibn Ali, one of the grandsons of Abbas, the uncle of the Prophet Muhammad, put forward a claim: “He claimed that the imamate had passed to them from Abdullah ibn Muhammad Hanafi, the grandson of Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya.” When Muhammad died in Damascus in 743, his son Ibrahim launched a systematic uprising in the name of the sons of Abbas. But when the last Umayyad caliph, “Marwan Himar”, had Ibrahim arrested and killed, Ibrahim’s brother Abu’l-Abbas took over the leadership of the uprising. The popular movement that Abu Muslim had started in the name of the Ehl-i Beyt, and the people who were weary of the oppression and rule of the sons of Umayya, had formed a strong army around Abu Muslim. Fearing this strength of Abu Muslim, Abu’l-Abbas made a devilish manoeuvre. He sent an envoy to Abu Muslim to tell him that he wished to join him in order to support him. This union brought down Umayyad rule. But when the children of Ali did not accept the caliphate, it became necessary to offer the caliphate to Abu Abbas, who was of the same lineage – among the grandsons of Abbas, the uncle of the Prophet Muhammad – and stood at his side.

Abu Muslim’s wish and desire was to give the caliphate to the lineage of Imam Ali. When the children of Ali did not accept the caliphate, he was obliged to make Abu Abbas caliph in 749 CE, placed the entire government and administration under his authority, and himself returned to his homeland as governor of Khorasan. Although this event greatly pleased the people in the first days, Abu Abbas disappointed everyone when he soon resorted to oppression and cruelty. At the same time he planned how to get rid of Abu Muslim, who had handed him this opportunity on a golden platter. Knowing that he could not destroy him just anywhere, he invited him to his palace and killed him at that invitation.

When Abu Abbas died, he was succeeded by the second Abbasid caliph, Ja’far al-Mansur (Cafer-i Mansur), known by the name “Piç Cafer” (Ja’far the Bastard), a cruel man hostile to Ali’s lineage; as soon as he came to power he had many of the children of Ali killed. As before, the children of Ali were again pursued and killed everywhere. His Holiness Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq was poisoned and martyred in the year 148 of the Hijra, 765 CE, by the Abbasid caliph Ja’far al-Mansur.

Having read this far, you may say: what was the need to describe the struggle of the Ehl-i Beyt against the Umayyads, when the heading says that “IMAM JA’FAR AL-SADIQ” would be discussed? I am convinced that you will find the answer if you read the text carefully to the end. Still, I would like to express it in one sentence: “I have considered it my duty to share with you, my readers, the information that my research – however limited – has brought me: about the struggle waged by the lineage of the Ehl-i Beyt after the event of Karbala, about how, in the face of the Sunni Islamic sharia, they preserved the Islamic faith of the Ehl-i Beyt, today’s Alevi faith, and about how and by whom our path and erkân were established.

The Umayyads looked down with contempt not only on the children of Ali but also on the non-Arab Turks and Persians. Treating them as mawali (slaves, clients) prepared the ground for the people to turn against them. Their crucifying the bodies of Imam Zayd and his son Yahya and exhibiting them for months plunged the supporters of the Ehl-i Beyt into such mourning that they wore black clothes and used black banners.

Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq, who lived until 765 CE, thus lived during the years of the fall of the Umayyads and the founding of the Abbasids. He never allowed politics into his life. Throughout his life Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq occupied himself with learning and science. His aim! To bring order to and give effect to the Islamic faith brought by the Prophet Muhammad and Imam Ali, the path and erkân of the Ehl-i Beyt. The destruction wrought in the Islamic world until then and the schools of law (mezhep) that had emerged had completely turned upside down the religious beliefs brought by the Prophet Muhammad. The fabricated rules of the Umayyads had been given an Islamic cloak and presented to the people.

The Qarmatians and the Dârul Hikme Schools

Because only the imams of the Ehl-i Beyt lineage and their children stood up against this fabricated Islam they had introduced, the Umayyads and Abbasids had launched a secret campaign of death against them. Wherever they found the opportunity to catch them, they killed them. In the face of these dangers, during the uprisings of his uncle Zayd and his son Yahya and after them, Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq sought to establish the path and erkân of the Ehl-i Beyt systematically within the Qarmatian esotericism introduced by his cousin Hamdan ibn Muhammad, the grandson of Imam Hasan.

After Karbala, until 695, those of the Ehl-i Beyt lineage and those who stood by them openly showed their opposition to the Umayyad order. As a result of the oppression and massacres inflicted upon them for this, they rallied around Abdullah, the son of Imam Hasan, and rose up. This uprising was bloodily suppressed by the Umayyad armies. Because most of those who took part in the uprising were black slaves, the histories call this uprising the “ZANJ” revolt (Zenc).

Although many of those who joined this uprising in Basra were killed, the people who held the Ehl-i Beyt faith continued their rebellions, whenever possible, until 972. During this time the rebellions of Zayd, the son of Imam Zayn al-Abidin, and of his son Yahya, and the rebellions of Abdullah, the son of Imam Hasan, were suppressed most bloodily by the Umayyad armies. After this oppression and these massacres, the imams belonging to the Ehl-i Beyt lineage and their children decided that a secret organisation was indispensable. The first among the grandsons of the imams to do so, Hamdan ibn Muhammad, the grandson of Imam Hasan, founded the “QARMAT” organisation under an assumed name. So that they would not again suffer various massacres and persecution, all real names were kept secret in this secret organisation. The imams and the children of the imams were given code names (pseudonyms). Some historians write that the Qarmatians invented the cifir (cipher) system, which until then had been unknown in the world.

The esoteric Qarmatian system founded by the grandsons of Imam Hasan and Imam Husayn was a necessity, to protect their faith and themselves against the Umayyad and Abbasid oppression of the time.

Hamdan ibn Muhammad, one of the grandsons of Imam Hasan, preserved the Alevi faith of the Ehl-i Beyt, its path and its erkân, as they had come down from his great forefather Imam Ali to his own time. The esoteric system he built, within the Arab, Persian, Turkish and Kurdish communities gathered around the Ehl-i Beyt lineage, upon the mystical thought of Islam, the tasavvuf faith, was given the name “QARMATIANISM” (Karmatilik) after his pseudonym. Qarmatianism is a religious and political organisation of the Arab, Kurdish, Turkish and Persian peoples gathered around the Ehl-i Beyt lineage, whose foundation rests on the mystical thought of Islam and the tasavvuf faith.

Hamdan al-Qarmat (Hamdan ibn Muhammad), who is presented as the founder of the Qarmatian sect, Husayn al-Ahwazi and Maymun al-Qaddah were introduced under these pseudonyms. Being introduced under these pseudonyms was a system of protection against Umayyad and Abbasid oppression. The secrecy of this movement was regarded as the source of its success. The scholars of the Ehl-i Beyt lineage, many of whose names were kept hidden, are the people who brought into being a philosophical monument such as the “IHVAN RISALELERI” (the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity, Ikhwan al-Safa). They never revealed their names and preferred to remain among the unknowns of history.

The first condition in Qarmatianism is to have an upright, honest and pure character. To achieve this, it was necessary to read a great deal and attach importance to a good education. To train enlightened scholars, they founded schools called “Dârul Hikme” (House of Wisdom) within their own esoteric organisation and made the entire Qarmatian community literate. These Dârul Hikme, founded at university level, continued until around 1170 in the city of Salamiyya (Selamiye) in Syria, in the city of Ahvaz in Iran, in the city of Mahdia (Mehdiye) in Tunisia, in Cairo in Egypt, in the city of Mansuriye in Azerbaijan, in Samarkand and in Khorasan.

In all the other smaller towns, too, smaller versions of these schools continued their activities in secret; after the 1170s the Dârul Hikme schools were destroyed and closed by the Abbasids. After that the scholars of the Ehl-i Beyt lineage dispersed to Anatolia and Central Asia. There they continued their duties by changing their names and taking on the form of the dergâh (lodge) system. The histories show us very clearly that the dergâh system run by our dedes is likewise the continuation of the small Dârul Hikme schools that the Qarmatians founded in every village and every town.

In the Qarmatian religious way of life, apart from the services of nübüvvet (prophethood), velayet (sainthood) and imamet (imamate), no distinction was made between women and men in legislation, the judiciary and the executive, as we would say today, in crafts, in work, in school and in education. Women were granted equal rights with men in every area of life. In relations with individuals who were not Qarmatians, the obligation to keep the secrets was absolute. Just as the principle “SER VER, SIR VERME” (give your head, but not the secret), which exists in Alevism to this day, is a continuation of the esoteric system that has come down from Qarmatianism to our time.

Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq and the Path and Erkân: Talip, Rehber, Pir, Mürşid

Within this system Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq introduced the system of talip, rehber, pir and mürşid, the highest value in the Ehl-i Beyt faith. He established the path and erkân at that time. The Qarmatian (Ehl-i Beyt) faith interprets the verses of the Quran and the teaching of the Messenger of God (Resulullah) differently from the fabricated Umayyad understanding of Islam. In the Ehl-i Beyt’s understanding of tasavvuf, the path and erkân were given their order at that time, based on the form of worship. In the Qarmatian schools, a pir from among the descendants of the Prophet (evlad-ı resul), whose eye of the heart is open, who has reached the summit and who is over 50 years old, is raised to the station of “Dâhilik”. The one who sits in this station is called “HUJJA” (Hüccet). The station of the Dâhi is the highest station. In today’s Alevi faith we call this station the station of “mürşid”. It is the gate of marifet (gnosis) and hakikat (truth).

Below the station of Dâhilik there is the station of “Zül Masa”. Those who sit in this station have grasped the Qarmatian wisdom, its secret and its knowledge; according to their position they take on duties in various places. They are generally those who guide (irşat) the people in teams. They bear primary responsibility for spreading the Qarmatian faith. They must be at least between 30 and 40 years old. Young people are not admitted to this station. This station is called “Zül Masa”. The pirs who serve here were given the name “El-İhvan, El-Fudala”, meaning “those who guide”. They are subordinate to the station of Dâhilik and receive their orders from the “Hujja”. As in today’s Alevi faith, is not the one who sits at the gate of tarikat, who guides the talip, judges and purifies him, conducts his görgü (examination) and sorgu (questioning) and holds the station of pir, called a pir? It can be seen that the religious order is the same; only the names have been translated from Persian and Arabic into Turkish.

Below the station of “Zül Masa” there is the station of “Ed-Dâhi el-Ekber”. Those who sit in this station are called “Ed-Dâhi el-Mezun”. They are the ones who examine those who wish to join Qarmatianism by means of certain formulas and accept them into the path. If there is something they do not know or a problem of the talip they cannot solve, they ask the pirs “El-İhvan el-Fudala” in the station of “Zül Masa”. Is this not, as in our Alevi faith, the “gate of the rehber”, who takes the talip’s first ikrar (vow)? If, while taking the talip’s ikrar, the rehber meets a problem he cannot solve, does he not ask the pir in the next higher station of pir? Our path and erkân as handed down to this day are exactly the same system that Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq established.

In Qarmatianism, people who have no musahip (spiritual companion) and have not entered the path and erkân are called “Mükâlib”. Just as in our Alevi faith talips who have no musahip and have not entered the path and erkân are generally called “Ham Ervah” (unripe souls). During the period in which he lived, Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq founded the “Dârul Hikme” school in the “Mosque of the Prophet” (Mescid-i Nebi) in Medina, taught Quranic exegesis (tefsir), hadith, jurisprudence (fıkıh), logic and philosophy in a university system, and trained more than two thousand students. Foremost among them, the imams of the Hanafi, Shafi’i, Maliki and Hanbali schools of law were all students of Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq.

The Ehl-i Beyt lineage left its mark on history through the value it placed on knowledge. They turned the al-Azhar Mosque (El-Ezher), which the Abbasids used as a mosque in Cairo, into “al-Azhar University” and gave it as a gift to Egypt and the Islamic world. Next to al-Azhar University they opened Dârul İlme libraries (Houses of Knowledge). The “Qarmatian Epistles”, the main sources of Islamic history, were written by the geniuses trained in these schools. Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq had seven sons and three daughters. In order: Imam Ismail, Seyit Abdullah, Seyit Muhammad, Seyit Ishaq, Seyit Abbas, Seyit Ali, Imam Musa al-Kazim. Unfortunately I could not find the names of his daughters in the written sources I read.

The Works of Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq

• The “Risâletü Abdullah bin Necâşi”, written to Najashi (Necâşi), the governor of Ahvaz.
• Epistles containing religious questions; “Sheikh Saduq, in his Hisal” writes that this epistle is by Ja’far al-Sadiq.
• The epistle known as “Tevhid’ül-Mufaddal”; it is called “Bihâr’ül-Envâr”.
• The epistle he wrote to his companions (ashab), “Kulayni – Rawdat al-Kafi” (Küleyni – Ravzatül kâfi).
• His epistles to the advocates of ra’y and qiyas (personal opinion and analogy).
• His epistles on the spoils of war.
• His testaments to Abdullah ibn Jundab (Cendüb).
• His testaments to Abu Ja’far Numan al-Ahwal.
• The epistle known as “Nesr’üd-Dürer”, held by some of the Shia.
• The epistle he wrote on love for the Ehl-i Beyt, on tevhid and on faith.
• The epistle he wrote on livelihood and earning.
• The epistle he wrote on obtaining one’s sustenance (rızk).
• His epistles on the creation of the human being.
• His aphorisms.
• The epistle narrated from his student Jabir ibn Hayyan al-Kufi; in the “Vafi’i Mira’tül-Cinan” it was written about the attributes of God Most High, the foundations of tevhid, divine justice, prophethood (nübüvvet), the imamate, velayet and worship.

Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq was at a very advanced level in the sciences; “Jabir ibn Hayyan” (Cabir bin Ayan) was his student. He obtained all his knowledge of chemistry from him. Unfortunately, the destruction that has occurred again and again throughout history has wiped out the unparalleled sources of knowledge that such scholars left to humanity.

When the Fatimid state was destroyed by Saladin (Selahattin Eyyubi) in 1171, the sheikhs al-Islam of the Abbasids’ Sunni sharia issued permission (cevaz) for the books in the library to be burned and destroyed as contrary to the sharia. After that, wherever Dârul İlme libraries existed, they were burned, thrown into the Nile or plundered. Of 64 great epistles, 34 were thrown into the Nile as contrary to the sharia; 30 are kept in the National Library in Cairo. If in future these epistles are studied thoroughly by our own people, the truth will also become clear.

It can be seen that, according to these sources, the founder of our Four Gates and Forty Stations and of the stations of mürşid, pir, rehber and talip is Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq. The small booklet we have, which we call the Buyruk, is a small part of those valuable epistles. It did not come into being later, as some ignorant people claim.

The Dergâhs in Anatolia and the 1915 Mineyik Congress of Dedes

Until 1512 CE, the time of the Ottoman caliph Yavuz (Selim I), the Alevi dergâhs served exactly according to the system of the Dârul Hikme schools.

After Yavuz Sultan Selim and his son Suleiman the Magnificent (Kanuni Süleyman), with their oppressive persecution of the Alevis, had bloodily killed and wiped out all the dergâhs, pirs and talips, the relationship between talip and pir in the Alevi faith changed – the system changed!

With the disappearance of the dergâhs, the place and abode of the pir to whom the talip should go became uncertain. So that the houses and whereabouts of the pirs would not be known or discovered, the pirs began to travel round the villages where their talips lived. Because visits to the talips took place very irregularly and it remained uncertain which tribe was attached to which seyit ocak, they continued the Alevi path and erkân through an esoteric system. And so it has continued from that day to this. If we look at the essence of the matter, the talip who believes in and has faith in the path and erkân of the Ehl-i Beyt must go once a year to the ocak of his pir and resolve his difficulties (müşkül). Renewing his ikrar is the most important of the indispensable sacred values of our faith.

As early as the beginning of the nineteenth century we find in certain sources Seyyid Mahmut Efendi, who lived in the village of Mineyik near Malatya, descended from the line of Zayn al-Abidin and was postnişin (head) of the Zeynel Abidin ocak. After him his son Hüseyin Dede, known as Sakallı Hüseyin Dede (Hüseyin Dede the Bearded), was chosen. On an instruction he received from Ahmet Cemalettin Çelebi, the postnişin of Hacı Bektaş Veli, Hüseyin Dede organised a “Congress of Dedes” (Dedeler Kurultayı) in the village of Mineyik in the autumn of 1915, attended by more than 40 seyyid ocaks. The election of the Hüseyin Doğan dedes to the station of mürşid is based on this historic congress. Many important decisions were taken at this congress. The ocak of Hacı Bektaş Veli was recognised as the “Station of Velayet” (Velâyet Makamı). Ahmet Cemalettin Çelebi was confirmed as mürşid-i kâmil (perfect mürşid) and head of all the seyyids in the whole of Anatolia.

After the massacre of the Alevis begun in 1512 in the Ottoman period, all existing Alevi and Bektashi dergâhs were also closed in 1826, after the massacre of the Janissaries. Dedes and babas were exiled, and the Alevi path and erkân faced extinction. The main purpose of the meeting of the seyyid ocaks at Mineyik was to determine, as the “institution of the dedes” (Dedelik Kurumu), the stations of mürşid, pir and rehber. One of the important decisions taken by the Council of Seyyids was that the talips of the seyyid ocaks were assigned village by village, town by town. Source: the interview given by Prof. İzzettin Doğan Dede to Cem magazine. The aim was to continue the order established by Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq in the time of Qarmatian esotericism. Anatolian Alevism, which had come close to being lost, had entered a dead end. At this meeting of the seyyids they decided, without changing the essence of the path and erkân, and bearing in mind that it was no longer possible for the talip to go to the dergâh, to keep this faith we hold sacred alive within the possibilities of the age, by the seyyids travelling round the villages of their talips. And so the final division of the talips among the ocaks, and the determination of each ocak’s talips, was definitively decided at this Congress of Seyyids held in 1915.

Unfortunately, some people who do not believe in the Alevi faith and merely play at Alevism are making incredible efforts to abolish the pirs who have carried this faith on to this day, and the station of pir. To tear the Alevi faith away from the Prophet Muhammad, Imam Ali, the Quran, the Ehl-i Beyt and the Buyruk of Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq, they deliberately point the young people, who do not know the values of the Alevi faith, to the Sunni sharia and say: look, this is Islam – do we resemble them at all? With claims such as “Alevism lies outside Islam” they try to lead them into unbelief and assimilate them. In fact, today’s Sunni sharia, as Yaşar Nuri Öztürk says, “is not the sharia that Muhammad brought. It is the fabricated sharia that the Umayyads brought.” That is why we Alevis do not accept this Sunni sharia that is practised as the Islam brought by Muhammad. Had we accepted it, we would have done what they do and gone to their mosques. This means that the Alevi understanding of Islam and interpretation of the Quran are very different from the Sunni understanding. Those who do not believe in this faith should not waste their efforts trying to deceive the young: “The sun cannot be plastered over with mud.”

Source: Seyit Derviş Tur, Erkânname – Aleviliğin İslam Yorumu ve Alevi Erkânları (Erkânname – The Alevi Interpretation of Islam and the Alevi Rites), expanded 3rd edition (ISBN 975-6791-52-7).

Translated from the Turkish original by Seyit Derviş Tur.