Life
According to the vilâyetname, Otman Baba was born in 1378 or 1379. Gramatikova proposes that Otman Baba came from Turkmen people of the Karakoçlu/Black Mutton Clan, in Central Asian territories and spoke an Turkmenian-accented Oghuz language with few Persian and Arabic influences, like the heterodox Muslims in northeastern Bulgaria. Küçük Abdal characterized Otman Baba spiritually as a saint and prophet and physically as imposing, strong, and brave.
While those outside his inner circle knew him as Otman Baba, other dervishes and the aristocratic sayyids called him Şah-i Kerbelâ—a reference to the prophet Muhammad's grandson Husayn, who died in the Battle of Karbala. A vilâyetname account attributes the mystic's common name "Otman Baba" to Ottoman ruler Mehmed II. When the sultan disguised himself as a commoner and visited the Eski Saray tekke (a gathering place for heterodox Muslims) in Constantinople, only Otman Baba recognized him. Convinced of the dervish’s sainthood, Mehmed addressed him as "my beloved father, Otman"—"father" translating in Turkish as "baba".
Read more about this topic: Otman Baba
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“Surely among a rich man’s flowering lawns,
Amid the rustle of his planted hills,
Life overflows without ambitious pains;
And rains down life until the basin spills,
And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains
As though to choose whatever shape it wills....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)