:bism1: TARIQA KHALWATIYA One of the widespread and ramified orders of Sufis is that of the Khalwatiya (or Helvetiye). The order takes its name from the Arabic word `khalwa' a method of withdrawal or isolation from the world for mystical purposes. The founder of the order is Shaykh Sidi Abu Abdullah Siraj al-Din Umar al-Ahji or Umar al-Khalwati who died about 800/1397 in Tabriz. The Tariqa was propelled very far after him by his disciple Sidi Yahya Shirvani (d.1463), from Shamakhi in the Caucasus. About 1460, Yahya Shirvani moved from Shamakhi to Baku to attract around him ten thousand people. Shaykh Yahya had a number of disciples and men of charisma like Pir Ilyas of Amasya and Zakariya al-Khalwati who inherited the secret of the Shaykh and moved the headquarters of Tariqa to Amasya in north central Anatolia after their Shaykh's death in 868/1463. With the transfer of the Khalwati nucleus to Amasya, the inner circle of the order gave it a decisive new direction. The thirty- year reign of sultan Bayazid (1481-1511), formerly the governor of Amasya, was the real heyday of the Khalwati order in Ottoman Turkey. The sultan himself attended the meetings of the Khalwati order and visited regularly Shaykh Tariqa Khalwatiya Sidi Ahmad al-Erzinjani, Muhammad Jamal al-Din al-Asara'i better known as Chelebi Khalifa, who became the master of Khalwati order after his Shaykh Sidi `Umar Aydini Habib Qaramani. At royal request the headquarters of the Tariqa were moved from Amasya to Istanbul, and when the Shaykh and his disciples reached the capital, they were presented with a former Byzantine church to remodel into a Zawiya. Sultan Bayazid turned over his son Ahmed to Shaykh Chelebi to be educated. About 1500, Chelebi Khalifa, who had served as the head of the order in its most crucial move and through an important period of establishment in the capital, died. The succession passed to Chelebi's son-in-law, Sidi Sunbul Sinan. During the reigns of Sulayman the Magnificent (1520-1566) and Selim II (1566-1574) the Khalwatiya under the leadership of Shaykh Sidi Muslih al-Din Merkez Efendi expanded both in the capital and in the provinces. The Tariqa had built a number of zawaya in Istanbul and many more elsewhere. The Tariqa expanded quickly to many Ottoman provinces.
