Master · Sayyâdî line
Sayyid Abdullah al-Hāshimī al-Makkī, the Arap Şeyh
A Meccan descendant of the second Pîr who spread the Sayyâdî path from Afghanistan to Anatolia and settled in Sivas, where he founded a lodge and was honoured by Sultan Abdülhamid II.
I. His life
He was the son of Sayyid Muḥammad ʿAẓīm al-Hāshimī, of the Sayyâdī family of Mecca. From his father he received khilāfa in the Rifāʿī-Sayyâdī path and in the Qādirī, Badawī, Shādhilī, Saʿdī, Naqshbandī and Mevlevī paths; he then took further Sayyâdī khilāfas in Medina.
He spent twenty years spreading the path in Afghanistan and taught in Syria, Yemen, Egypt and Anatolia. In Istanbul the Sultan gave him the title Şeyhü'l-Ekber and made him Nakîbü'l-Eşraf, head of the descendants of the Prophet, for inner Anatolia. Altuntaş, citing an Ottoman archival file, places his settlement at Sivas in 1876, at the Sultan's request, to calm unrest in the province. In 1913 he endowed a two-storey house in Sivas to his lodge, naming his sons as its sheikhs in turn.
As a member of the İttihad-ı Muhammedî society he was sentenced after the events of 31 March 1909 to permanent exile in Mecca; his family recall that he stayed there seven years. He returned to Sivas, and both sources record that Mustafa Kemal sent his family a telegram of condolence and money for the funeral.
The Risale adds that he took part in the 1919 Sivas Congress, hosted Mustafa Kemal, and saved him from an assassination attempt; and that the delegates' meals were cooked in his lodge.
II. Two biographies, thirty-five years apart
- Born 1795, Mecca; died 13 October 1922, aged 127
- Born 1245 AH / 1829 CE, Mecca; died 13 November 1922, aged about 92
Altuntaş's reading rests on a dated document in the sheikh's own words; the Risale's rests on community memory, which often lengthens the lives of saints. We follow Altuntaş for the dates, while recording the tradition's 127 years as part of how the line remembers him. He died in October or November 1922.