Guide
The tomb of Somuncu Baba is in the Zaviye quarter of Darende, together with the mosque of the same name and the Balıklı Göl. There is no information about when the tomb was built, though the minaret of the mosque is dated 1686.
The tomb stands at the middle of the mosque, and inside it is a wooden cenotaph made with Republican-period carving. The mosque that held the tomb belonged to the lodge of Şeyh Hamit-i Veli; when it collapsed, the present mosque of stone and timber was built in its place. On the south side of the mosque is a rectangular room used today as a library, and there are stone-built graves within the tomb. The Somuncu Baba Museum is in the basement of the mosque.
Somuncu Baba is also known as Şeyh Hamîdüddin Aksarâyî. His real name appears to have been Abdullah, and most sources give him as a native of Kayseri. After completing his path at the lodge at Ardabil and living for a time in seclusion, he returned to Anatolia on his sheikh's instruction and settled in Bursa. It is related that in this period he brought wood from the forest on his donkey, baked bread with it, and carried the loaves on his back through the streets, giving them out to people with the call loaves, believers — which is where the names Etmekçi Koca and Somuncu Baba come from.
His most important successor, and the man who spread his thinking across Anatolia, was Hacı Bayrâm-ı Velî, who set his mark on Anatolian sufism in the reign of Murad II and who trained two figures of quite different temperaments, Akşemseddin and Bıçakçı Ömer Dede. Hacı Bayram met Somuncu Baba in Bursa and entered the mystical path with him; he travelled with him to Adana, to Damascus, to Mecca and finally to Aksaray, settled in Ankara around 1403–1405 with his sheikh's permission, and was at his side at Darende when he died.
