Habib al-Karamani and his work: Al-Atwar As-Sab'a

It had been a tradition among Khalwati poets to produce literary works explaining the seven stages (al-atwar as-sab'a) dervish goes through in his spiritual journey. Following this tradition, as one of the first Khalwati dervishes who were active in Anatolia (15th century), Habib Al-Karamani wrote a mathnawi on the same topic too. This study –as expressed in the title of our thesis- aims to put forward an extensive research on Habib Al-Karamani and his literary work: Al-Atwar As-Sab'a. Our thesis which consists of three main chapters, following the essential imformation about al-atwar as-sab'a issue given in the introduction part, begins with the very first chapter that most especially addresses Habib Al-Karamani's life. This chapter covers certain issues such as poet's birth, family, education, travels, teacher (sheikh), students, death and tomb, etc. Right after studying Al-Karamani's life comprehensively, his literary works are mentioned subsequently in the same chapter. Second chapter focuses on Al-Atwar As-Sab'a. After presenting some essential information about the mathnawi such as its name, author, language and the process of determining the followed manuscript, the verse and hadith quotations in the text are pointed out. On the other hand, in a separate part allocated to the mathnawi's analysis, Al-Karamani's thoughts on al-atwar as-sab'a issue are tried to be clarified. Classical conseptual analysis is not applied in this part, but the people and some consepts of Sufism that are mentioned in the text are explained in places when it's necessary. In addition to text analysis, the form and types of poetry used in the literary work and Al-Karamani's poetic manner are examined under separate headings. The third and final chapter, in the first place, draws attention to Bahaeddin Al-Erzincani's mathnawi which is written contemporaneously in the same period and has common features with Al-Karamani's Al-Atwar As-Sab'a in many respects so that it is certain that one of the two mathnawis was written under the influence of the other one. This part's main interest is to evaluate the originality of Al-Karamani's work by comparing the two mathnawis. It is also important to discuss this problematic issue to be able to show the difference between the approaches of traditional Islamic literature and modern sciences to the idea of plagiarism. Furthermore, in the last part, we converted Al-Atwar As-Saba's text using the Latin alphabet and following a specific transliteration system. We stated our method of reproduction of the text and we tried our hardest to set the trustworthy text. Keywords: Al-Karamani, Al-atwar, At-tawr, Khalwatiyah, Mathnawi