Gül Baba (died 1541), also known as Jafer, was an
Ottoman Bektashi
Bektashism (, ) is a tariqa, Sufi order of Islam that evolved in 13th-century western Anatolia and became widespread in the Ottoman Empire. It is named after the wali, ''walī'' "saint" Haji Bektash Veli, with adherents called Bektashis. The ...
dervish poet and companion of
Sultan Suleiman I () who took part in a number of
campaigns in Europe from the reign of
Mehmed II
Mehmed II (; , ; 30 March 14323 May 1481), commonly known as Mehmed the Conqueror (; ), was twice the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from August 1444 to September 1446 and then later from February 1451 to May 1481.
In Mehmed II's first reign, ...
onwards.
Biography
A native of
Merzifon
Merzifon is a town in Amasya Province in the central Black Sea region of Turkey. It is the seat of Merzifon District. (''Marsiwān'', in the
vilāyet of
Sivas, Anatolia), he was the son of Kutb’ül Arifin Veli’üddin İbn Yalınkılıç. In
Hungary
Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...
, Gül Baba is known as the "Father of
Rose
A rose is either a woody perennial plant, perennial flowering plant of the genus ''Rosa'' (), in the family Rosaceae (), or the flower it bears. There are over three hundred Rose species, species and Garden roses, tens of thousands of cultivar ...
s," a literal translation of the meaning of his names in Turkish; he is said to have introduced the flower to the country. However, this is likely a misunderstanding of the metaphorical meaning of the Turkish name, which referred to the dervish's status derived from his deep mystical knowledge of
Allah
Allah ( ; , ) is an Arabic term for God, specifically the God in Abrahamic religions, God of Abraham. Outside of the Middle East, it is principally associated with God in Islam, Islam (in which it is also considered the proper name), althoug ...
. Roses, wild and domesticated, were already in Hungary by the time of the Ottoman invasion. The name could also be a corruption of ''Kel Baba'', meaning "Bald Father".
Gül Baba is thought to have died in
Buda during the first
Muslim
Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...
religious ceremony held after the Ottoman victory of 1541, or alternatively to have been killed during fighting below the walls of the city on August 21, 1541. Suleiman, who was also
Caliph
A caliphate ( ) is an institution or public office under the leadership of an Islamic steward with Khalifa, the title of caliph (; , ), a person considered a political–religious successor to the Islamic prophet Muhammad and a leader of ...
, declared him
patron saint of the city and is reputed to have been one of the coffin bearers. Gül Baba's descendants are the Marzioglu family, some of whom were the pashas of the
Trebizond Vilayet.
Tomb

Gül Baba's octagonal tomb (''
türbe'') is located on Mecset (mosque) Street,
Budapest
Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...
, a short but steep walk from the
Margaret Bridge in the district of
Rózsadomb. It was built by
Ottoman authorities in Hungary between 1543 and 1548, on the orders of the third
pasha of Buda, and has a shallow dome covered with lead plates and wooden tiles.
[Peterson, Andrew (1994). ''Dictionary of Islamic Architecture''. London: Routledge. , p. 112.] It was left undamaged when the
Habsburg armies captured the area during the
Second Battle of Buda in 1686, but was converted into a
Roman Catholic
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...
chapel by the
Jesuits
The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
, who renamed it "St Joseph's Chapel".
The land later came under the ownership of János Wagner, who maintained the site and allowed access to Muslim
pilgrim
The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , , "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star.
Computer scientists and mathematicians often vocalize it as ...
s coming from the Ottoman Empire (''see
Islam in Hungary''). In 1885, the Ottoman government commissioned a Hungarian engineer to restore the tomb and, when work was completed in 1914, it was declared a national monument. The site was restored again in the 1960s and in the 1990s and is now the property of the
Republic of Turkey. A large-scale renovation was completed in October 2018, when the site was inaugurated by Hungarian prime minister
Viktor Orbán and Turkish president
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (born 26 February 1954) is a Turkish politician who is the 12th and current president of Turkey since 2014. He previously served as the 25th prime minister of Turkey, prime minister from 2003 to 2014 as part of the Jus ...
.
See also
*
Batiniyya
*
Taṣawwuf
References
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gul Baba
Year of birth missing
1541 deaths
16th-century poets from the Ottoman Empire
Political people from the Ottoman Empire
Male poets from the Ottoman Empire
Sufi poets
Islamic pilgrimages
Writers from Budapest
Suleiman the Magnificent
People from Merzifon
Muslims from the Ottoman Empire
Sufi saints from the Ottoman Empire
Bektashi Order