İrşadi Baba

Who was İrşadi Baba?

İrşadi Baba was one of the most famous Sufi masters of his time in Northeast Anatolia. He was born in Bayburt in modern day Turkey. He worked as an imam and he was affiliated with one of the Uwaysi lineages of Naqshbandi Tariqa.

He wrote sufi poems. He also started writing Stories of Prophets in a poetical form. His grandson Aglar Baba completed these series of poems. However, he lost the only copy of this book during World War I. Other poems of İrşadi Baba are well-preserved and published in the Turkish language. Unlike his grandson Aglar Baba, İrşadi Baba used a simple language in his poems. He was more of a folkloric poet and he rarely referred to the scripture and tradition. Some of the major themes he was preoccupied were divine love, reality and asceticism.