In Ramadan, Shaykh Hisham visited a Qadiri zawiya in Sarajevo, for suhba with the contemporary Sarajevan mujahid and Qadiri murshid, Shaykh Sead Halilagić. Born in 1956 in Sarajevo, Shaykh Sead trained as an electrical engineer, and then graduated from Cairo University’s Language Institute, with a degree in Arabic. He worked at IRCE (Energoinvest Research and Development Center for Energy) as a sector manager, but when the aggression began against Bosnia and Herzegovina during the collapse of Yugoslavia, Halilagić joined the active fight on the front lines. In 1984, he was initiated into the tariqa of Shaykh Abdal Qadir al-Jilani, through the line of Shaykh Abdal Razzaq, the son of Shaykh Abdal Qadir al-Jilani, at the hands of Sheikh Hajji Fejzullah Effendi Hadžibajrić.
Shaykh Fejzullah, one of the greatest ulama of the Balkans, is said to have initiated only nine murids – Shaykh Sead was one of them. Shaykh Fejzullah, born in 1913 in Sarajevo, took his first line at the hands of the wali of Kosovo, Hajji Shaykh Selim Sami, in 1933, the same year he graduated from the famous Gazi Husrez Bey madrasa in Sarajevo – Shaykh Selim passed away in 1952. A comprehensive biography of Shaykh Fejzullah can be found at https://www.biserje.ba/godisnjica-smrti-sejha-i-intelektualca-fejzulaha-ef-hadzibajrica/ , written by Professor Samir Beglerovic. In it, it is mentioned that Shaykh Fejzullah had ijaza in the Qadiri, Rifa’i, Mevlevi, Shadhuli, Badawi, and Naqshabandi tariqas, at the hands of the likes of Shaykh Husein Tajyar, Shaykh Mujahidin Effendi Ansari (Mjuhidin-efendija Ensari) in Kasum in 1965 (who declared him a shaykh in the Qadiri and Rifai’i tariqas), and Shaykh Yusuf al-Jilani of the Qadiriyya in Baghdad in 1969. Shaykh Sead mentioned in a private gathering with Shaykh Hisham that Shaykh Fejzullah also took the Shadhuli tariqa at the hands of Shaykh Abdal Halim Mahmud, Shaykh al-Azhar, in Cairo. Shaykh Fejzullah became the shaykh of the Hajji Sinan Tekke in 1978, and passed away in 1990, buried on the evening of Laylat al-Qadr in Sarajevo, having also been known for his regular teachings from the Masnawi of Rumi from 1965 to 1988.
This all is in the pedigree of Shaykh Sead, who received his ijaza from Shaykh Fejzullah for irshad and the conducting of group dhikr in 1989, and eventually became the shaykh of the Hajji Sinan Tekke. In 1991, Shaykh Sead was also appointed general secretary of the Tariqa Centre at the Rijaset of the Official Islamic Community. When the Tariqa Centre of Bosnia was founded in 1977, Shaykh Sead’s shaykh, Shaykh Fejzullah, had been elected as its first ‘Shaykh al-Mashaykh’.
“The Zawiya of Shaykh Sead is Hajji Sinan’s Tekke, also known as Silahdar Mustafa-Pasha’s Tekke, built between 1638 and 1640. It is presumed that funding for the tekke’s construction was provided by the wealthy Sarajevo merchant, Hajji Sinan, or his son, Mustafa Pasha, who worked as an armorer and served Sultan Murat IV. The tekke was designed by the architect, Kasim Aga, from Albania, who also designed some buildings within the Sultan’s Topkapi Palace complex in Istanbul. Sinan Tekke’s greatest visual attraction is the calligraphy design on the wall of the courtyard. Known as “Suleiman’s Seal”, the rosette design is nearly three meters wide with the words, “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his Messenger”, painted 12 times in the fresco style. There is a tomb with two headstones in the cemetery next to the tekke, where Hajji Sinan and his wife were interred. In 1768, the first asylum for psychiatric patients was opened in Hajji Sinan’s Tekke, marking the beginning of organized health care in BiH.”
Shaykh Sead and Shaykh Hisham in Ramadan 1445
The Qadiri silsila of Shaykh Fejzullah
From within the zawiya walls
Shaykh Fejzullah Effendi
