The Atwar-i Seb'a booklet of Sheikh Veli Ayintabi (Text-analysis)

Sheikh Veli Ayıntabi, (d. 17 Shaban 1013/8 January 1605) who lived in the important part of 16th century and at the beginning of 17th century, was a mystic poet and writer. Ayıntabi, who was a Khalwatiyya sheikh, wrote his works to educate his students. And also he wrote this booklet, which is the main subject of our thesis, to describe the levels of nafs that his followers will go beyond during their spiritual journey and to guide them. In our thesis we tried to give information about Ayıntabi's life, his family, his works, his ideas about nafs levels in consideration of his Atwar-ı Seb'a Booklet, and also Khalwatiyya. Ayıntabi handled nafs levels as seven stages, and also supported his ideas for each level with ayahs from Quran, hadiths and sayings of sufis from old term in this booklet. Our writer did not finish immediately the booklet but continued with different topics to give knowledge to his students after writing seven levels of nafs. This quality makes our thesis different from other booklets of atwar-ı seb'a. Our thesis consists of four sections: introduction and the other three sections. In the introduction section, we mentioned about the place of Khalwatiyya, of which our writer was one of the followers. In the first part, we referred to Ayıntabi's life, his family, his sheikhs, his legends, his literary personality and his works. In the second part, we discussed the therm of "atwar-ı seb'a" in tasawwuf. We reserved the third and the last part for the text. Key words: Sheikh Ayıntabi, atwar-ı seb'a, Khalwatiyya, nafs, the levels of nafs, seeker.