Adım Adım Amasya

Monuments of the city · Tomb

İğneci Baba Tomb

Right in the middle of the bazaar. Hundreds of people walk past it every day. The man who lies inside spent his life right here too, in a shop.

Şeyh Safiyyüddin Halveti Mahkeme Çarşısı

The man in this tomb was neither a sultan nor a pasha. He was a saddler — he worked leather and sole leather and made shoes and çapula. He worked his own sole leather and prepared his own materials.1, 2 And he had a saying: “My customer is my benefactor.”1, 2

That is why Amasya has remembered him for five hundred years.

📜 What do the documents say?

His real name was Şeyh Safiyyüddin. Osman Fevzi Olcay records him briefly as follows: one of the sheikhs of the Halveti order, from Amasya, a scholar known among the people by the epithet “İğneci Baba” (iğne: needle); he died in Amasya and was buried in his tomb in the place called the Mahkeme Çarşısı.1, 3

Ayşegül Şen gives his name more fully: İğnecizade eş-Şeyh Safiyyüddin Mahmud-ı Halveti. He was one of the deputies (halife) of Şeyh Zekeriyya-yı Halveti, one of the important sheikhs of the Halveti order.4

Where exactly? Our book and Olcay say the Mahkeme Çarşısı (the Court Bazaar), Şen says the Kocacık Çarşısı.1, 3, 4 Both are right; the “court” story below explains why.

What is known about his life comes through his trade: he worked without deceit, he respected what was owed to others, and he prayed in the Saraçhane Mosque.1, 2 Mustafa Güler writes that the best straps, sole leather and morocco leather were to be found with him, and that the goods he made lasted a long time.2

The tomb also had a court

The mansion next to the tomb was formerly a court and had been endowed as a residence for the judges (kadı) of Amasya. The person who did this was the sheikh's granddaughter, Ayşe Hatun: she endowed the house to the tomb and assigned its use to the judges and the court. So the court's rent kept the tomb alive.4

1893
The tomb burned down together with the house. In this fire an important part of the old court registers — that is, centuries of records of the Amasya court — turned to ashes. Afterwards the Amasya Education Commission bought this valuable and spacious plot and put up income-producing buildings on it. In the end, not a single shop belonging to the tomb was left.4

Why are we telling you this? Because a fire burns not only a building but memory too. Who went to law with whom, which shop belonged to whom, what income which waqf brought in — it was all in those registers of Amasya. Some of the gaps met today in writing the history of Amasya begin in 1893.

What do you see today?

🗣️ What do the people say?

One of the most often told hagiographic tales (menkıbe) of Amasya. Its skeleton is the same in every telling:

  1. İğneci Baba is a shoemaker in Amasya; his brother is a shepherd in the mountains.1, 2, 4, 5
  2. The brother puts the milk he has drawn into a handkerchief and brings it to his elder brother as a gift. That the milk does not seep out of the handkerchief is his miracle (keramet).2, 4, 5
  3. He hangs the handkerchief on a nail in the shop wall.1, 2, 5
  4. A woman comes into the shop to have her foot measured; as she stretches out her foot, her heel shows.1, 2, 4, 5
  5. The brother's gaze strays — and the milk on the wall begins to drip.1, 2, 4, 5
  6. İğneci Baba warns his brother. The lesson is always the same: it is easy to stay pure alone on a mountaintop; the real art is to stand firm here, among people.2, 4, 5

But the details change. The same narrative has been collected in different forms in different villages of Amasya:

  Balaban
Kapıkaya collection5		 Güler
Amasya Efsaneleri2		 Şen
reported from Durma4
The brother's name Serçoban Kocacık Zade Serçoban
Where he lives He lies buried at Kayabaşı Akdağ, Kocacık Karasenir village
How many brothers Three: İğneci Baba, Hüseyin Dede (Çığırgan Dede), Serçoban Dede Two Two
The words spoken “Not on the mountain — if you are a man, attain it here.”
Dağda yetişmeli değil, erkeksen burada yetişmeli.		 “On the top of Akdağ… there is no sense in playing the saint.”
Akdağ'ın başında… ermişlik taslamanın anlamı olmaz.		 “The miracle is not in attaining sainthood on a mountaintop… it is in not letting the milk in the bundle drip.”
Keramet dağ başında ermekte değil… çıkındaki sütü damlatmamakta.
Afterwards Serçoban swears never to set foot in Amasya again; saying that he will die at Karasenir, he leaves For days Kocacık Zade cannot get over his shame; he recites lines of Yunus Emre —

In another variant collected by Balaban (the Çal Baba narrative) the scene is reversed: to teach the lesson, İğneci Baba calls his own wife and takes the measure of her foot, and the milk his brothers have brought begins to drip.5

A note: In summarising this tale, our book writes that İğneci Baba threw the saddler's needle in his hand and that the needle pierced his brother's calf. This detail does not occur in the collected texts we have — Balaban, Güler and Şen; in all three the brother is warned with words. On this page we give the narrative as it stands in the sources.2, 4, 5

Why do we set the variants side by side? Because a legend has no “correct version”; it has the forms in which it is told. That the brother's name changes from village to village is not a mistake but proof that the narrative is alive. The only thing that does not change is the lesson itself — and it is the lesson that has carried the narrative for five hundred years.

While you are there, look for

Key facts

Who lies here
Şeyh Safiyyüddin — popularly “İğneci Baba” / “İğneci Zade”1, 3
Full name
İğnecizade eş-Şeyh Safiyyüddin Mahmud-ı Halveti4
Order
Halveti — one of the deputies of Şeyh Zekeriyya-yı Halveti4
Trade
Saddlery; he worked leather and sole leather and made shoes and çapula1, 2
Where he prayed
Saraçhane Mosque1, 2
Location
Within the Mahkeme Çarşısı1, 3 / Kocacık Çarşısı4
Inside
Two cenotaphs: his own and his son's4
Fire
1893 — the tomb and the court house beside it burned; an important part of the old registers turned to ashes4
Coordinates
40.651821, 35.832758 — verified against OpenStreetMap
In the book
Kültürel Miras Boyutuyla Amasya, p. 49

📍 Open on the map

Sources

  1. Kültürel Miras Boyutuyla Amasya (Amasya: Amasya Üniversitesi, BAP Projesi SEB-BAP25-0233, 2026), 49.
  2. Mustafa Güler, Amasya Efsaneleri (Amasya: Eser Ofset, 1996), 27-29. — “İğneci Zade Seyfettin Hazretleri ve Kardeşi Kocacıkzade Efsaneleri”: his trade, his work ethic and the Kocacık Zade variant.
  3. Osman Fevzi Olcay, Amasya Şehri (Amasya: Amasya Belediyesi, 2010), 129. — The entry “Şeyh Safıyyüddin”: his being a Halveti sheikh, the epithet “İğneci Baba” and his tomb in the Mahkeme Çarşısı.
  4. Ayşegül Şen, Amasya Şehir Merkezindeki Dinî Ziyaret Yerleri (Yüksek Lisans Tezi, 2019), 59-60. — “3.11. İğneci Baba Türbesi”: his full name and the line of his order, Ayşe Hatun's court endowment, the fire of 1893 and the burning of the registers, the present state of the building, the two cenotaphs; the Serçoban variant reported from Durma.
  5. Tuğrul Balaban, Amasya Efsane, Menkabe ve Memoratları (Amasya: Amasya Valiliği, 2014), 102-104. — The motif sequences of the narratives “92. Serçoban (V)”, “93. İğneci Baba, Serçoban, Kocacık Baba” and “94. İğneci Baba, Serçoban, Çal Baba”.
This page has no photograph. The book has no picture of this tomb. A current photograph will be added once it has been taken.