Urs of Muzaffer Ozak al-Jerrahi

 

February 12th is the Urs of Muzaffer Ozak, late Shaikh of the Helveti-Jerrahi Sufi Order in Istanbul.

David Bellak visited Shaikh Muzaffer many times during the 1970s, sitting patiently in his bookshop in the old market of Istanbul and joining zikr ceremonies in the Jerrahi tekke, or sufi lodge. Shaikh David was initiated by Muzaffer Effendi into the Helveti-Jerrahi Order, and sometimes a sense of this comes through in David Dede's own teaching and leading of zikr. Suleyman Hayati Dede was welcomed to the Jerrahi tekke, as seen in the photo below, and Jerrahis and other branches of the Helveti often include a semazen in their ceremonies.

Shaikh Muzaffer was a person of great depth and spiritual authority, and also one filled with joy and energy and song. He wrote many poems and hymns under his pen-name "Ashki", which means something like "filled with divine love and yearning".

The Eye of Love

Since I gave my heart to beauty,

I can't tell right from left,

Since I saw your face at love's feast,

Like Majnun I've lost my way.

The fragrance of your litany has crazed me,

I cannot hold life's bird in its cage,

Beauty's flame has burned the moth,

Scattered my ashes in a single breath.

From the hands of the beloved I drank love's cup..

Only then I knew the cupbearer.

Exhausted, and drunk from love's torrent,

I found the eternal in this passing world.

No trace remains, am I myself?

If I'm not I, who is the I in me?

Are you me or am I you?

Being finite, who finds the infinite?

Ashki doesn't see the world now he is drunk,

Only to perfected ones is this mystery known,

The hidden and concealed become manifest,

Those who do not perceive Beauty cannot know.

Muzaffer Ozak al-Jerrahi

(translated by Muhtar Holland and Sixtina Friedrich)