by Grigor Boykov

photo: G. Boykov, 2008

I was told about this site by Stephen Lewis back in 2004 when we first met on a Machiel Kiel-organized trip in Central Anatolia. According to Lewis the tomb of Ali Baba, a single photo of which he published in the Electronic Journal of Oriental Studies in 2001 (sarcastically no longer available online), is located near today’s village of Stambolovo (Ott.  Eller) in the region of Haskovo (Ott. Hasköy) and was kind enough to offer directions how to get to the spot. On the other hand Kiel also recalled visiting a certain tomb of Ali Baba in the area, but he could neither confirm the location nor could he indentify it as identical with the photo published by Lewis.

The building grabbed the attention of both Mariya and me, so we tried to find it in the first possible moment when we got to the area in 2005. The tomb is not near Stambolovo, as Lewis remembered, but one needs to cross the village and continue driving eastward for another 2 km, where a minor road runs to the northeast until it reaches Kralevo (Ott. Kavak mahalle) after 1,5 km. Crossing Kralevo one must follow the road for another 2 km when just before reaching the intersection linking the villages Koren and Maluk Izvor, the tomb of Ali Baba is seen on the left (northwest) side of the road. The local Bulgarian Christians know the place as “tekyata”, which is a Bulgarized dialect form for the Turkish “tekke”.

photo: G. Boykov, 2008

photo: G. Boykov, 2008

The mausoleum (türbe) of Ali Baba, which apparently was once a part of a dervish convent, sits on a small hill in a wide open plain. The building consists of a seven sided structure above the sarcophagus of the saint, accessed through a short porch, both covered by tiled roofs. The main heptagonal room which seems to be preserved in its original shape was built by several consecutive layers of roughly cut stone followed by three rows of bricks, which gives the structure a lovely appearance. The single window cut in one of the walls looks like a later addition, while bits of ancient marble spolia were walled in the original building. The porch is a lower rectangular room, which was built from a similar roughly cut local stone, having one small window. Lacking brick layers the porch is likely to have been added in later times, the main seven sided mausoleum dates probably from the early seventeenth century.

photo: G. Boykov, 2008

photo: G. Boykov, 2008

There is no dedicatory inscription nor there is any information regarding the person who built the mausoleum, but he must have also contributed for the construction of the nowadays vanished convent. The patron saint Ali Baba, however, is mentioned by the seventeenth-century travelogue of Evliya Çelebi. According to Evliya Ali Baba was a disciple of the influential Otman Baba and by the time he visited the place, the convent had between 20 and 30 dervishes (abdals), who wore seven sided felt hats. The convent did not have a pious foundation (vakf) supporting it and all the dervishes relied solely on God’s mercy for their livelihood. Evliya points that despite this fact, because of the constant donations received on a daily basis, the dervishes were not in shortage of anything but could also shelter and feed the travelers.

These remarks left by Evliya Çelebi seem to be trustworthy. It is hard to say whether Ali Baba indeed was a disciple of Otman Baba, but the links between the two convents are more than apparent. Imitating the mausoleum of Otman Baba, Ali Baba’s türbe had a rather unusual shape – seven instead of the typical for such buildings eight sides, which certainly points to a non-Sunni symbolism. The close proximity of the two sites, less than 20 km from one another, and the apparent similarity between the way of living and maintenance of the dervishes in the two convents, also strongly suggests a possible connection. A brief look at the archival records of pious foundations in the area indeed, as claimed by Evliya, shows that there is no vakf of Ali Baba’s convent.

photo: G. Boykov, 2008

In case Ali Baba was truly a disciple of Otman Baba then he must have lived at the turn of the fifteenth up to the mid-sixteenth century. His mausoleum, in the shape it could be seen today must have been a later deed of an unknown benefactor.