In memory of Mikail Bayram, a jeweller of history

We learned the news of the passing to the abode of eternity of the esteemed historian of the Seljuks, Prof. Dr. Mikail Bayram Hoca, who had been under treatment for a long time, at the very minutes when we landed in Doha for the funeral of the Martyr Ismail Haniyeh. What a coincidence that was. Returning from Doha the same day, still with the dust of the martyrs' cemetery on our feet, we headed to Konya to see Mikail Bayram Hoca off on his last journey. We conveyed to him and to those present at his funeral all the feelings, prayers and greetings that had remained in our ears and in our spiritual state during Ismail Haniyeh's funeral. We saw that in the feelings of those who rushed to pray for Mikail Hoca, the prayers for their beloved teacher, for whose funeral they had rushed, were intermingled with those for the Martyr Ismail Haniyeh.

Among the names whose acquaintance and company I counted the greatest blessing during my long years at Selçuk University was Mikail Hoca. We had also seen off another whom I always remember in the same way, Sait Şimşek Hoca, to the abode of eternity on the second day of the last Eid al-Adha. Two great stars of the knowledge and gnosis of Konya have fallen one after the other, and these are two of my strongest ties that still continue with Konya.

Mikail Bayram Hoca was a faculty member in the History Department of the same faculty where I worked for years. In Seljuk studies he was someone unsurpassed in Turkey, so to speak. With his excellent Persian, Arabic, Azeri, Kurdish, even Sasanian-era Pahlavi and Ottoman Turkish, he had more than the equipment that medieval historiography requires. As I had written before on one occasion, he knew all the settlement plans of the 2,500 households residing in 13th-century Konya, together with the identity records of the people living in them. The Konya of those years was almost engraved in his mind; he would walk street by street and house by house within it and guide those who accompanied him. For years he was perhaps the only regular of the Yusuf Ağa Library in Konya. How many times I found him there when looking for him, and even when I was not looking, passing by the library and glancing inside, I found him there. He had combed through the thousands of historical manuscripts there, read many of them repeatedly, and done studies on them.

Along with a tremendous memory that allowed him to record immediately in his mind what he read, he had a reasoning that analyzed information well. For those who wanted to research the social, cultural and religious aspects of the Seljuk period, he was a deeply learned source for understanding the history and the social, political and cultural contexts of the different currents of that period, Mevlevism, Kalenderism and Hurufism. He could also describe in every detail, from written sources, the activities of the Mongols during the period of the Seljuks' decline. In fact, not only concerning the Seljuk period, he also had unparalleled research and horizon-opening findings on the political turmoils of the periods of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs, the Umayyads, the Abbasids and the Khurramites. In particular, in order to trace the emergence of Shiism and then its synthesis with the ancient history and the religious and cultural sources of Iran, he had studied very well Zoroastrianism, the Avesta, the Khodaynamag, the Mazdakites and the Parsis. All of it from primary sources, from manuscript works, and sometimes on the spot. During his travels to Iran he had seen and met Khomeini as early as the sixties, and afterwards he continued to follow his discourses, Shiism, and its historical and current transformation or failure to transform. He had formed a personal friendship with Shahriyar, the great master of Persian and Turkish poetry, and had written poems for him. Incidentally, Mikail Hoca was also someone with a high literary taste who wrote poems in aruz meter. He had collected his poems in a divan under the title Sarayî.

One thinks that more works should have issued from this deeply learned source. Unfortunately he did not leave a quantity of works commensurate with his accumulated knowledge. The works he produced are very valuable, even on controversial subjects. Perhaps their being on controversial subjects makes them even more valuable. Thank God that Mehmet Akif Koç, who admired him after meeting him in the last 5 years of his life, made it his mission to benefit as much as possible from this treasure, whose worth strangers did not sufficiently appreciate, and to convey it to people of knowledge and thought. With him, in a series of interviews in river-conversation style, in a semi-encyclopedic format, on 99 names and 99 concepts, he brought out yet another very valuable (two-volume) work. By the end of all these interviews he reached the conviction that the epithet "jeweler of history," which he had at first hesitantly attached to him, was more than deserved.

Among the 99 names that were the subject of Mikail Hoca's research, readings and, of course, his own assessments are, for example, Ahi Evren, Sadreddin Konevî, Mevlânâ Celâleddin Rumî, Shams-i Tabrizi, Genghis Khan, Emir Timur, Ibn Khaldun, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Mehmed Akif, Said Nursî, Sayyid Qutb, Muhammad Iqbal, Khomeini, Mawdudi and Said Nursî, Halil İnalcık, İlber Ortaylı, Tayyib Okiç, Tâvît et-Tancî, Muhammad Hamidullah, Abu Ghudda, Zeki Velidi, Abdülbaki Gölpınarlı, Erol Güngör, Abdolkarim Soroush, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Annemarie Schimmel.

In his article "In the Wake of an Old-Time Scholar," Koç introduced both the Hoca and this book in more detail. He fully deserves thanks and appreciation for this work.

Another trait of Mikail Hoca was that he held views on Mevlâna quite different from what is known about his conflicts with the Ahis. Because of the very refined image he has, the very idea that the name of Mevlâna might be in conflict with anyone is in itself not very pleasing to people. But Mikail Hoca argued that the most important phase of Mevlâna's life consisted of his conflict with the Ahis, and that, owing to this conflict, in the balance of power between the Mongols and the Seljuks Mevlâna took the side of the Mongols. He substantiated these findings with strong data, with a jeweler's meticulousness and quite forcefully, but the subject was never left at the level of scholarly debate and was consigned to a sensational atmosphere. For that reason Mikail Hoca, despite all his unparalleled accumulation and competence, was virtually consigned to nonexistence and provincialized. If only it had stopped there; he was literally lynched by those who ostensibly claimed Mevlana in the name of the philosophy and cause of tolerance. Because of the lynching campaign to which he was subjected, in 2005 I had written an article about him titled "The Test of Tolerance with Mikail Bayram."

He answered all those who objected to him within an academic framework with great competence, and as far as I could know and follow, there was no claim of his that he could not prove or substantiate. His aim was never insult, but people were not ready to accept, even from a real historian, that Mevlana too was a historical figure before being turned into a cult.

We witnessed his sincerity, his devotion, his sincerity, his monotheism in all his scholarly, academic struggle for the truth. I ask God for mercy upon him, and I offer condolences to all who love him and who appreciate his worth.