The story of a heroic Sheikh from Khwarezm: Some evaluations on Manākib-i Sheikh Najm Al-Dīn Al-Kubrā

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyse the anonymous work Menākıb-ı Sheikh Necmeddîn Kübrā written in Khwarezm Turkish in the nineteenth century and to reveal how important it is in terms of academic research on the Kübreviyya tradition. In this article, based on Menākıb-ı Sheikh Najm al-Dīn Qubrā, the narrations about Najm al-Dīn Qubrā’s relationship with his shaykhs, his disciples and what happened to them, the struggle of Sheikh Qubrā during the Mongol siege of Khwarezm and his martyrdom are compared with the historical and Sufi information obtained so far and evaluated how they should be understood. There are various manuscripts of the work in question, including the Leningrad Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Biruni Institute of Oriental Studies of Uzbekistan and personal libraries. However, most of them are not complete and some of them are missing some narrations or chapters. In addition, this menâkıbnâme was published in Cyrillic alphabet by a group of scholars in Uzbekistan, but it is little known in Turkey. The author of the menâkıbnâme, first introduced to the scientific world by the Russian orientalist Evgenii Berthels (1890-1957), is unknown. The stories about Najm al-Dīn al-Kubrā, his disciples and the Mongol conquest of Khwarazm, which have been passed down for centuries, have been brought together in this work. In the aforementioned menākıbnāma, some of the colourful and tragic incidents that happened to Shaykh Najmādīn Qubrā (d. 618/1221) and his disciples constitute a large number. Traces of many of these are also found in other historical and Sufi sources. However, some of them have an originality not seen in other sources.