Suleyman Hayati Dede, Shaikh of Konya - A Biography
“I come to plant Mevlana’s message of universal love in this soil. The way of Mevlana, of Rumi, will grow in the West in its own way.” Suleyman Hayati Dede
Suleyman Hayati Dede was the Mevlevi Shaikh of Konya until his passing in 1985. "Hayati", meaning "Divinely Alive", was his sufi name. He was born Suleyman Lorasulam around 1904 in Konya, Turkey, the old Roman city of Iconium which rose to prominence as the seat of the Seljuk Sultans of Rum a thousand years ago.
The young Suleyman Lorasulam was fascinated by the Whirling Dervishes - the Mevlevi Sufi Order, created by followers of the great poet and mystic Jelaluddin Rumi to continue their teacher's spiritual influence after his death in 1273. Rumi was known by his students as Mevlana, meaning "Our Master", and so the sufi lineage stemming from him was called Mevlevi. Rumi was buried in Konya and his sufi descendants had their central training centre, or "tekke", beside his tomb.
Suleyman began visiting the Konya Mevlevi tekke when he was 15 years old. When he was 18 he was accepted into the sufi order and given a job as trainee cook in the kitchen. In the Mevlevi tradition, the kitchen is the central focus for training novices, and Rumi's poetry is full of images and metaphors for the similarity between cooking food for guests and the process of spiritual maturation as a human being. He married a young woman named Farishte, a descendent of Rumi and of Genghis Khan.
In 1925, the government of the Turkish Republic closed all the sufi schools in the country, making the practice of sufism illegal. Rumi's tomb was made a national museum. While most of the sufis dispersed, their stories lost to time, Suleyman continued to train with his teachers in Konya. He was given permission by the government to open the kitchen at the museum to feed the poor, and he cooked on special occasions for members of the family of Rumi's descendents in Istanbul.
His teacher was Filibeli Huseyin Sitke Dede. Sitke Dede (d.1933) had been the Reciter and Teacher ("Mesnevihane") of Rumi's Mesnavi, his six volume masterpiece composed in Persian poetry, in the Konya tekke before it closed. In addition to continuing to teach students such as Suleyman Lorasulam, Sitke Dede gave public lectures on Rumi's teaching for the people in Konya. After his death, Suleyman would visit his grave each year in the last few days of Ramadan and speak with him.
Much about these years remains unknown. Sufism was illegal, and the police could have stamped out the surviving pockets of sufi practice had they been visible. In 1941 Bakir Celebi, one of the hereditary leaders of the Mevlevi Order, appointed Suleyman Lorasulam as a teacher. Later he was given the title "Dede" - meaning "Cherished Elder" in the Mevlevi tradition in around 1957, when the last Konya Dede passed away. It may have been Izzet Celebi, wife of the late Bakir Celebi, who named Suleyman "Aşçı Dede", "Cook Dede", because of his ongoing service in feeding guests. He was given a house beside Rumi's tomb, where he quietly led sessions of sufi zikr (recitation/meditation) and teaching when it was safe to do so.
His students in Konya asked him to begin leading Mevlevi Sema, the iconic traditional ceremony of Whirling. Before doing so, he approached Dr Celaleddin Celebi in Istanbul, Bakir Celebi's son. In a private ceremony in the 1960s, during a period of greater repression of sufism, with the survival of the Mevlevi tradition at risk, Dr Celebi appointed Suleyman Dede as a Postneshin Shaikh to lead Sema ceremonies.
In many sufi orders, the role of "Shaikh" indicates someone is the main teacher or spiritual guide in a lineage. In the Mevlevi tradition, which predates the more formal sufi orders which developed slightly later, the role of Shaikh is a symbolic and honoured role for someone who takes the place of Rumi in the Whirling Ceremony, sitting on the red sheepskin which represents the 'place of burning', alongside other ceremonial functions. Hence a Mevelvi shaikh is called a "postneshin" - one who sits on the 'post', the red sheepskin.
Before the banning of sufism in 1925, the actual spiritual and practical training of Mevlevi novices was not led by shaikhs, but by experienced elders. There was a network of spiritual guides, under the overall guidance of a "Ser Tariq", the head teacher of the Order, distinct from the ceremonial role of shaikh (though an elder might hold both roles.) The Mevlevi tradition has always been centred on the Sufi path of love and, particularly, on love of Rumi and his works, rather than an overall Shaikh leading everything, as happens in many sufi orders.
Suleyman Dede thus inherited both these roles. From his teachers in Konya including Sitke Dede, he matured as a Mevlevi guide (a sufi "murshid"). From Dr Celaladdin Celebi he was appointed a postneshin sheikh, the Shaikh of Konya - traditionally the highest position in the Order.
In the 1970s, when Suleyman Dede was an old man, spiritual seekers from Europe and America journeyed to the East, open to new practices and new ways of seeing the world. Some of these, such as Reshad Feild and David Bellak, visited and lived with Suleyman Dede in his home in Konya, and invited him to teach in the West. Touched by the sincerity of these young seekers, and inspired by Rumi, Suleyman Dede made many visits to the West, including Canada, America, Britain and Germany. He encouraged and empowered Westerners to create new Mevlevi-influenced communities of practice, and supported the mutual appreciation and confluence of Rumi's way with those of other spiritual teachings - such as the Circassian Kebzeh tradition of Murat Yagan, and the Fourth Way school of J G Bennett in the lineage of the Armenian mystic Gurdjieff.
Speaking of Suleyman Dede's visit to Canada in 1978, his representative Majid Buell recalls: "When we first met Dede we were for the most part totally ignorant... But the Ashk (love) that flowed from him inflamed us all. It took us beyond the mind and the Nafs (ego) and opened our hearts."
And recalling the effects of taking part in his first Sema ceremony with Suleyman Dede in America in 1976, Ibrahim Gamard (now a Mevlevi shaikh himself), writes: "That first Samâ' was the most blessed one my wife and I have ever experienced. I remember, just afterwards, walking up some concrete steps leading outside from the auditorium in order to cool off. I sat down and looked up at the stars, and it felt like the whole sky was opening up to me beyond the physical dimension."
Suleyman Dede held nothing back - he taught people of all religions, and whilst always speaking of and sharing his own Islamic roots, he never insisted that a student or even a teacher convert outwardly to Islam. He intuited that a new time was here, that a new possibility had opened to share Rumi's teaching far from its Anatolian home, and through which he might ensure the tradition's survival. Some feel he was wrong to allow people who were not muslims to lead and teach. For Suleyman Dede, it was never an either/or choice... his heart led him to place trust in a handful of people in whom he saw real potential as spiritual guides, some of whom went on to become muslim, and others didn't. His successors welcome and include people of all religions equally, a distinctive feature of his legacy.
Suleyman Dede also taught men and women the practice of Turning, and allowed them to participate together in Sema, breaking with the Ottoman Turkish custom of male-only ceremonies and generally only men learning to Turn. He was inspired to make this step after some of his female students questioned why in work and daily life they could mix with men, but yet in religious practice they were still segregated. Mixed Sema has still not been accepted by many Mevlevi communities in Turkey - Suleyman Dede was a pioneer of inclusivity.
A young woman in America asked, “How long will it take for Rumi’s work to become known?” Dede replied, “This I do not know. It may be ten years, fifty, or one hundred years, or even five hundred years. But one thing I do know is that it will happen. Why? Because we are here, planting the seeds for Mevlana.”
Here is a list drawn up in 1981 of all those appointed by Suleyman Dede as teachers or shaikhs to share the Way of Mevlana in the West. This might be thought of as the spiritual family of Suleyman Hayati Dede, together with all those who afterwards learned from his spiritual representatives. Suleyman Dede reached so many different hearts and personalities - all types of human beings.
Mevlevi Teachers in the West appointed by Suleyman Hayati Dede
Jalaleddin Loras, San Francisco, California
Reshad Feild, Longmont, Colorado
Daud Bellak, The Mihrab Gallery, San Anselmo, California
Yaksan Valdez, Kailua, Hawaii
Murat Yagan, Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Canada
Dr. Pierre Elliot, The Claymont Society, Charlestown, West Virginia
Carl Badman, N. Delta, British Columbia, Canada
Majid Buell, N. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Latif Precious, Quathiaski Cove, British Columbia, Canada
Wahid Kemp, Mission, British Columbia, Canada
Ivan Rhodes, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Shems Friedlander, New York, New York
Bob Wilhite, Traditional Studies Center, Pittsboro, North Carolina
Hamid Turner, La Mirada, California
Salik Schwartz, New York, New York
Yasin Jonathan Krieg, San Francisco, California
Habib Calans, Santa Cruz, California
Kabir Helminski, Putney, Vermont
"Dede's Angels"
Today, several strands of Suleyman Dede's legacy stand out. His son Jelaleddin Loras created the Mevlevi Order of America, one of the largest Mevlevi organisations outside of Turkey. Kabir Helminski created the Threshold Society with his wife Camille, and Kabir was appointed as a postneshin shaikh by the late Dr Celaleddin Celebi too. Pierre Elliot joined the way of Rumi with the way of Gurdjieff in the Claymont Community in America and among his students back in the United Kingdom. David Bellak moved to Edinburgh from where he has quietly taught many students and seekers over the decades. In Canada, Majid Buell and friends continue to hold a Sema ceremony each year in memory of Suleyman Dede. Reshad Feild through his books and his teaching spread Rumi's influence all over the world. Shems Friedlander is a celebrated sufi author.
Suleyman Dede saw deeply into the hearts of his Western students and shared something profoundly beautiful with profound courage, making a leap from simply teaching a tradition to fully passing it on to others in new worlds, beyond the historical context in which it had first grown. Very few teachers are able to make that final gesture - to open the hands and let go of what you most cherish, and let it find its own path in freedom.
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