The Alevi deyiş between poetry and music

The Alevi deyiş have a form in which poetry and music intertwine. The main musical elements in the deyiş repertoire are based on poems. In other words, although the Alevi deyiş can be transmitted verbally or in writing, traditionally this transmission occurs through musical performance. Emphasizing the distinction between music and text in the formation of Alevi music, Ayhan Erol (Reference Erol2009, 133) reminds us that texts are the only tools that ensure the unity of Alevi music. Thus, we can say that Alevi poetry forms the basis for the emergence of music. The poems are coupled with such a variety of melodic expressions that each performance of a poem creates a different music. Thus, in different regions the same Alevi poem is performed with different music and similar tunes are performed with different poems. This diversity has emerged through the circulation of poetry and music among Alevi communities who have lived in different regions for centuries and have relations with each other at different levels (Özdemir Reference Özdemir, Weineck and Zimmermann2018a, 179). What we have is a tradition that is constantly evolving in great variety.

The historical evolution of the literary form of the deyiş remains obscure. The most common element in the poems’ textual form is the quatrain, a formal aspect that probably became prevalent from the sixteenth century onwards with the rise of the âşık (minstrel) tradition (Karamustafa Reference Karamustafa, Havlioğlu and Uysal2023). Early fifteenth-century precedents from Bektashi poetry, such as those of Kaygusuz Abdal and Sadık Abdal, often keep to the Islamicate form of the couplet, although in some poems inner rhyme allowed couplets to be broken down into quatrains during oral recitation.Footnote ⁴ Another distinguishing formal aspect of the deyiş is the use of the syllabic meter, which once again distinguishes the deyiş tradition from cosmopolitan Islamic precedents originating from Arabic and Persian poetry.Footnote ⁵

Although the deyiş were mostly in the repertoires of âşıks who did not put their poems into writing, some Bektashi and Abdal poets were an exception to this. The term abdal denoted members of the antinomian Sufi group Abdals of Rum (Anatolia) as well as some Kizilbash poets (Karamustafa Reference Karamustafa1994, Karamustafa Reference Karamustafa and Ridgeon2014, Oktay Reference Oktay2020). For instance, the seventeenth-century poet Virani Abdal composed written works and has a Divan (poetry collection by a single author) (Oktay-Uslu Reference Oktay-Uslu2020a). In such cases, the same poem lived in both oral and written universes, with different rules of transmission, thus resulting in further variety. It was also common for poems not found in divans to become part of oral repertoires under the name of that poet, never being written by the poet in question. Poems attributed to Shah İsmail (1487–1524) are the most famous example of this (Arslanoğlu Reference Arslanoğlu1992; Csirkès Reference Csirkès2015; Gallagher Reference Gallagher2018).

Sacred texts of Alevism named buyruks dating back to the sixteenth century contain some deyiş bound together with the buyruk texts. The term buyruk is a general designation for works that convey the core principles of Alevism, along with various Sufi teachings, through Quranic references and narratives about Muhammad and ʿAli b. Abi Talib. Although this label does not appear within the manuscripts themselves, it is sometimes applied to the entire manuscript (which consists of multiple texts) and at other times to the longest treatise within the collection (Bisâtî Reference Taşğın2003, 1–10; Karakaya-Stump Reference Karakaya-Stump2010). The buyruks are separated into two groups, as the teachings of Shaykh Safi or of Imam Jaʿfar. The poems of Kaygusuz Abdal, Nesimi, and Hatayi are found in a buyruk from the Shaykh Safi group with a seventeenth-century date (Bisâtî Reference Taşğın2003, 83–91). Similarly, a poem by Virani Abdal appears in a buyruk belonging to the Imam Jaʿfar group (Bozkurt 2011, 289–290). While the buyruks were a rare source of oral poetry, the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries marked an important breaking point. This was the first time that the deyiş were written down in a systematic fashion in poetry collections in the form of mecmua or cönk. As numerous written compilations of different kinds of oral poetry emerged, music and text gradually separated, resulting in early Republican anthologies, and consequently the above-mentioned disciplinary divide.

While the Alevi deyiş are sung mainly in Turkish, the deyiş were also written in many other languages such as Albanian (Yiğit and Dibra Reference Yiğit and Dibra2013) or Kurdish (Bayrak Reference Bayrak2015). The deyiş repertoire has circulated in different regions and cultures with many different performers such as âşıks (singer–poets), dedes (Alevi male religious leaders), anas (Alevi female religious leaders), and zakirs (music performers in Alevi rituals), as well as non-professional performers and popular musicians, all of whom continue to play important roles in transmitting Alevi belief. As the deyiş moved beyond its original ritual context with popular musicians, it became a cultural phenomenon in which various populations in Turkey participated, sometimes moving beyond the national context to be embraced by other cultures as well.

The saz or bağlama (Anatolian lute) is an important memory tool that functions as the foundation of performance in Alevi oral culture and the anchor of its identity (Hendrich Reference Hendrich, Erll and Nünning2004, 176). Saz, a Persian word meaning instrument, is mostly used to mean instrument in Ottoman/Turkish music, but in folk music and Alevi music cultures it is generally used for long-necked lute instruments (also called bağlama). As described in the poems of numerous poets who lived in different periods, starting from Kaygusuz Abdal, saz- or bağlama-like instruments have played an important mediating role in the performance of Alevi deyiş. For this reason, the sanctity of the saz is still expressed with the phrase “stringed Koran” (telli Kuran) by Alevi communities (Özdemir Reference Özdemir, Weineck and Zimmermann2018a, 172). The saz reinforces the power of music and poetry for Alevis. The rich musical diversity of Alevi communities living in a wide region is one of the main reasons for the liveliness in the transmission of the Alevi deyiş. In this multi-actor universe, the pillar of relations between actors is the deyiş.

The deyiş as history and identity

The words of the deyiş create and perpetuate interpretive communities, groups formed around a collective interpretation of the poetry that is based on shared affect (Oktay-Uslu, Reference Oktay-Uslu2020a). This act of group formation takes place during performance: during the cem ceremony (the central Alevi rite) or any other social context that brings people together around the ritualistic or artistic appreciation of the deyiş. In this physical setting, the deyiş themselves, together with the ritualistic acts that are bound to them, anchor the act of coming together as a community. That is, the community is established as a community essentially through a ritualistic experience of the deyiş. In the context of the cem, this experience is an embodied one that actualizes each participant’s entire knowledge of the Alevi tradition in its historical, religious, and aesthetic aspects.

Markus Dressler (Reference Dressler, Peter, Schrode and Stegmann2025) underlines a similar ritual experience in the context of ziyaret (Arabic ziyāra, the practice of visiting sacred Alevi places). Dressler (Reference Dressler, Peter, Schrode and Stegmann2025, 276) argues that for the Alevi tradition, as well as other Islamicate traditions, we must put “emphasis on devotion to sacredness embodied in saints, embodiment of the divine in sacred sites and things, and the affective dimensions of piety.” Similarly, the Alevi belief on the transformation of people to can (souls) during the cem ceremony is a metaphor for embodiment, one where the individual becomes the sacred site. This transformation is expressed by the dede during ritual and referenced in the poems. The can (Persian jān) can be defined as a soul stripped of identity, that is no longer gendered, as the soul was during the Preeternal Pact prior to the creation of the universe (Oktay-Uslu Reference Oktay-Uslu2020b). Yet this is not disembodiment, but a transformation that takes place in the body. As Norris (Reference Norris2001, 115) explains, “transcendence is not a disembodied spiritual experience, however; it is experienced by and in the body. More accurately, it is a state of the body.” This metaphysical transformation to one’s initial state of perfection rests on an experience of the deyiş that is at once deeply personal and fully communal. Music as the carrier of affect leads this process, because as Steckel (Reference Steckel1994, 29) underlines, “participation in musical experience is in itself transforming.”

Cem Kara (Reference Kara2023) demonstrates the array of emotions that are expressed in the deyiş, such as sorrow, anger, and love, stressing their role in forming an Alevi community. Kara’s list of emotions can be complemented by the array of emotions that are expressed by those who take part in the performance as performers and listeners during the cem ceremony. The relationship between the emotions expressed in the room and those contained in the deyiş itself is fascinating. The former includes not only the facial and bodily gestures and ritualistic movements of the listeners, but also the ritualistic acts of those who undertake the on iki hizmet (twelve services), the duties performed in Alevi cems that have sacred and esoteric meanings. Let us take two examples: the poetic genres of the miraçlama (poetry of the ascension) and mersiye (elegy). The first of these contains an account of the Ceremony of the Forty (kırklar cemi) that takes place during the Prophet’s Ascension according to Alevi lore. According to this account, which forms the mythical archetype of the cem ceremony, the Prophet and the forty saints dance the semah (ritual dance). The poetic narration of the mythical semah coincides with the actual semah in the cem ceremony. This is one of the highest emotional points of the entire ceremony; it expresses itself as a collective state of rapture. Similarly, the singing of the mersiye coincides with the act of mourning for the martyrs at Kerbela, when the Prophet’s grandson and his family were slain by the Umayyad army. The water that is distributed at this point stands for the water that was withheld from Husayn’s family during the battle, representing the utmost act of cruelty. The collective act of mourning is anchored in the words of the mersiye. This is also where collective crying takes place, especially during the anniversary of the events in the month of Muharram.

Both examples demonstrate the cem ceremony as a rich emotional journey that is anchored in the words of the deyiş at each moment. As a whole, the embodied experience of the ritual revolves around the deyiş. Community is made during ritual, and although the physical community dissolves at the end, the sense of community remains and is perpetuated through a repetition of the deyiş. In this regard, each performance of the deyiş, whether in a private room or at a public concert, includes a ritualistic element by the very fact that it contains a remembrance of the primary ritual context, that of the Alevi cem. In other words, each performance of the deyiş is part of the same “affect programme.” This is why the deyiş create interpretive communities not only in the actual sense, in a physical setting that brings people together, but also in the imaginative sense, as each Alevi’s personal experience of an imagined community. Even during a private act such as the listening of the deyiş with one’s headphones, the community is always there: as a memory, and as a possibility.

This memory is located in the words of the deyiş: For the listener, the very capacity to understand them creates a personal link to a collective past. This “understanding” begins with an understanding of the meanings of the words. In their oral preservation of a poetic tradition dating from the Ottoman period, the deyiş preserve a past vocabulary that is no longer in use. Through an Ottoman Turkish (and thus a partly Arabic and Persian) terminology as well as a collection of stylized literary tropes and metaphors, the deyiş preserve and perpetuate a particular language. This makes them a rare living heritage of Ottoman Turkish and its literary traditions. The modernization of Turkish literature took shape beginning with the Tanzimat era (the period of administrative and cultural reforms in the Ottoman Empire, starting in 1839), through increasing engagement with Western literary models, leading to the adoption of new genres and forms of expression in place of traditional poetic and narrative structures (Tanpınar Reference Tanpınar1949; Uslu and Altuğ Reference Uslu and Altuğ2014). This project was imagined as a radical break from the past. Even the academic structure of Turkish Literature in higher education reflects this understanding, whereby premodern and modern literature are understood to be two distinct fields. The role of the deyiş as a locus not of radical modernization but of seamless continuation is of utmost importance for our understanding of literary history. The implications of this for our context are clear: the deyiş preserve the past by perpetuating a specialized language and aesthetic. Access to this language requires participation in a particular interpretive community.

The earlier examples of the miraçlama and the mersiye also lay bare the role of the deyiş in the preservation and re-creation of historical consciousness. The deyiş teach history. From our point of view, this history is both factual and mythical. Yet we can imagine that for the premodern believer, the factual and the mythical were fully merged in that all history was sacred history. The word “re-creation” is key here: it is through the act of re-creation that sacred history is made present. The overlapping of the content of the deyiş with the ritual acts in the cem is an instance of re-creation. Yet this re-creation is not limited to the ritual setting but extends to personal and collective life stories. Hence, the events at Kerbela become the mythical archetype not only of persecution by the Ottoman state, but of modern oppression as well. Each massacre that is remembered, whether it be Maraş or Madımak,Footnote ⁶ is remembered in relation to the historico-mythical archetype of Kerbela (Zırh Reference Zırh and Değirmencioğlu2014, 107). Thus, remembering Kerbela, or historical knowledge itself, serves as the key to a continuous hermeneutical act. The deyiş, in preserving the past, create avenues for collectively interpreting the present. This collective hermeneutical effort stands at the core of identity.

One example for the primacy of the deyiş for different Alevi groups is the Hakikatçi movement that emerged in the nineteenth century. The Hakikatçi (lit. followers of truth) movement emphasizes face-to-face conversations or muhabbets by singing and playing the Alevi deyiş instead of cem ritual-based worship (Özdemir Reference Özdemir, Özdemir, Hamelink and Greve2018b, 163). This movement, which has so far led to the emergence of many poets (such as Haydari, Meluli, Mücrimi, Afe Ana, etc.) and singer–poets (such as Ali Haki, İbreti, İbrahim Erdem, etc.), introduced the Alevi deyiş as a tool to implement their beliefs. Although the leaders of this movement proposed changes to some services in the Alevi cems, they were never against the cem itself. They focused on a deyiş-centered understanding of truth instead of cem-centered ritual and argued that this represented a higher stage in the Alevi spiritual hierarchy (Özdemir Reference Özdemir, Özdemir, Hamelink and Greve2018b, 164–169).

The role of the deyiş in the transmission of Alevi identity and religiosity can be best observed in the lives of non-practicing Alevis, younger urban generations whose “Aleviness” rests primarily on their relationship to the deyiş tradition, as listeners and often non-professional performers. The aesthetic appreciation of the deyiş, even when the religious content of its words is foreign, creates a sense of identity that anchors the listeners’ and performers’ senses of self and their positions in society. In this regard, the deyiş create a sense of “Aleviness,” in relation not only to religious belief, but also to narratives of discrimination, exclusion, and persecution. In both practical and imaginal terms, the deyiş make community.

A similar argument is made by Janina Karolewski (Reference Karolewski and Schulze2015, 107), who says “even young Alevis who do not attend Alevi rituals, who oppose religion, or who grew up without religious education within their families, recognize songs of the Alevi âşık tradition or, sometimes, even know them by heart.” Karolewski (Reference Karolewski and Schulze2015) underlines that the musical and poetic tradition “serves as a cultural asset,” allowing Alevis to firmly negotiate their positions vis-à-vis society. Our earlier discussion of embodiment is a key to understanding this phenomenon. For this, we must reframe the term “embodiment” as “embodied knowledge,” i.e. knowledge that is intellectual, affective, and sensory. The earlier examples of the miraçlama and mersiye express precisely this type of traditional knowledge that is communally experienced and transmitted during performance. The affective and sensory dimensions of this embodied knowledge are anchored in the music. Because of this, even in cases when the language (the vocabulary, terminology, metaphors, and historical references) is lost, by the preservation of the aesthetic dimension, something of the hermeneutic act is preserved as an embodied emotional content. This very phenomenon brings music to the center stage: a musical communion with tradition, by itself, provides access to a history that is both historical and mythical. The music carries the memory of the past even when all else is gone. It becomes the anchor of personal and group identity.

Authorship and oral transmission through the pen name (mahlas)

When Albert Lord and Milman Parry first formulated the role of orality in oral epics, they transformed our understanding of artistic creation in the oral realm (Lord Reference Lord1960). The Alevi deyiş tradition reaffirms their fundamental dictum that each performance is an act of re-creation. This rests on a notion of authorship that is radically different from that of written traditions. The deyiş are re-created with each performance. Unlike the pre-modern scribes of manuscripts, who also had more agency than we imagine today, performers were and still are much more than transmitters. In transmitting tradition, they make tradition. Drawing on Richard Bauman’s concept of performance (Bauman Reference Bauman1975, 293), Dorothy Noyes (Reference Noyes2009, 248) defines tradition as the transfer “of responsibility to an audience for a display of communicative competence.” If we adapt this definition to religious tradition, then the act of “communication” that requires competence becomes one in which sacrality, history, and art are transferred at the same time. This is the very responsibility of the singer–poet. Performers and listeners of the deyiş engage with tradition in a dynamic way. They carry it by remaking it.

The notion of authorship in the deyiş is best exemplified by the role of the pen name (mahlas). The mahlas is always mentioned in the last stanza of the poem. This is in common with Caucasian singer–poet traditions at large, as well as Islamicate poetry traditions. Many Alevi deyiş have been performed countless times over the centuries and transmitted both orally and in writing. The dynamism that this has caused can be traced in the transformation of pen names. As underlined before, it is not uncommon for one deyiş to have one mahlas in one region and another mahlas elsewhere. For poets such as Pir Sultan Abdal (flourished sixteenth century), who did not write their poems down, there is no way of tracing an “original,” even when poems were recorded in various later manuscripts.

It was also not uncommon for the same poet to have more than one mahlas to use in poems with different content. A striking example is Ali Haki (1889–1961), an important poet of the Hakikatçi movement, who used a total of twelve pen names: Figani, Hicrani, Gedai, Gulami, Ali, Hoca, Hürü, Efdali, Harhari, Visali, Ednai, and Haki (Doğan Reference Doğan2020, 34–35). Poets could also adopt the poems of other poets with their own pen names. For instance, in the notebooks of Âşık Ali İzzet Özkan (1902–1981), a popular singer–poet of the twentieth century, folklorist İlhan Başgöz (Reference Başgöz1994, 52–57) came across poems that do not belong to Özkan but are written under his pen name. In addition, the deyiş written by male poets under the pen names of female poets are important examples of the relationship between gender roles and the Alevi deyiş. In two of his poems, Bektashi poet Edip Harabi (1853–1917) criticizes gender roles using the female pen names of Naciye and Zehra (Ceylan Reference Ceylan, Köksal, Kaçar and İlhan2017). Two Hakikatçi poets, Meluli (1892–1989) and Ali Haki, also had poems under female pen names. While Meluli wrote with the name of Latife belonging to his daughter (Özpolat and Erbil Reference Özpolat and Erbil2006, 273–289), Ali Haki used the name of his beloved, Hürü (Doğan Reference Doğan2020, 113).

These of course should not be seen as authorship in the modern sense, although contemporary copyright problems often rely on such a misunderstanding (Doğanay Reference Doğanay2018). We must understand that our modern notions of originality and authenticity, which are themselves elaborate constructs, do not have a place here. The fact that the Alevi deyiş live as performance means that the pen name is constantly renewed and reconstructed by each performer. This opens the door to an endless intertextuality. It also reveals one function of the mahlas: the mahlas is where the act of transmission is coded as an act of responsibility. Speaking the name of a past singer–poet is a responsibility, precisely because of the definition of the deyiş as sacred speech. The act of transmission creates a sacred historical link with the person who is deemed as the original performer, the “archetype performer” so to speak. The performer and listener embody the sacredness of the deyiş because they embody the sacredness of the past singer–poet. The mahlas is thus the primary locus of embodiment. It is the dynamic link to a sacred past.

We suggest Deleuze and Guattari’s metaphor of the rhizome to understand how the Alevi deyiş are shaped and diversified. In contrast to a tree, the rhizome does not have a center. It is non-linear, non-hierarchical. The deyiş are connected in threads that go off in different directions, determined not by their distance from a center, but by their difference from one another. They “operate by variation, expansion, conquest, capture, offshoot” (Deleuze and Guattari Reference Deleuze and Guattari1987, 21). The perpetual circulation of the Alevi deyiş allows them to act in constant relationship with each other. For this reason, in each performance, sometimes a syllable, word or line of the deyiş that enters the world of intertextuality undergoes change or transformation, revealing the rhizomic mobility in the network of horizontal relations in the deyiş universe. The rhizomic transmission of poems and music replaces hierarchical vertical relations. The most important example of this is the variation in the mahlas.

For the traditional listener or performer, the deyiş does not lose its sacrality when it is attributed to somebody else. This is because, as the primary locus of embodiment, the mahlas is also a locus of intertextuality. In referring to past performers, whether imagined as original or not, the mahlas signifies community. The embodiment of the mahlas by each performer who re-creates the deyiş is also an act of community creation. The mahlas is sacred lineage in action.

Transmission in action: the case of Âşık Veysel

The sound recordings of Âşık Veysel (1894–1973), the best-known folk poet of the Republican era, provide an interesting example of the continuous vitality of the Alevi deyiş (Âşık Veysel Reference Veysel and Şenel2017). They were apparently made in his own home some time before his death in 1973. In these recordings, Veysel plays and sings poems from the main sources of Alevi thought and poetry, such as Kaygusuz Abdal, Seyit Nesimi, Pir Sultan Abdal, and Teslim Abdal. This is interesting in that it does not fit the common narratives about Veysel’s life and art. Accordingly, in the early 1930s Veysel played and sang the deyiş of the master singer–poets before him on 78 revolutions per minute (rpm) records. In the following years, he performed entirely his own words and music. Yet the home recordings from Veysel’s final years show that Veysel performed the Alevi deyiş with a vivid memory. Veysel, a blind poet, did not learn the deyiş he performed from a book or recording. So how did Veysel, who had been playing and singing his own works for many years, keep these classic Alevi deyiş in memory? Veysel himself tells us that he heard and learned these deyiş at various Alevi–Bektashi cems or muhabbets from other âşıks or master performers (Öz Reference Öz and Şenel2022, 87–91). He continued to perform them in various environments and keep this repertoire alive in his memory.

Veysel’s case demonstrates that the Alevi deyiş live by oral transmission and form the repertoires of poets in a deeply intertextual environment. The deyiş are kept alive by individual and collective memory. Acquiring such a repertoire requires listening and internalizing for a long time. This highlights the relationship of the Alevi deyiş to memory in daily life, as well as the role of rituals in learning the Alevi deyiş. Maja Bjelica (Reference Bjelica2020, 377) discusses the practice of listening as a fundamental aspect of Alevi religious life, which is supported by the regular participation of Alevis in musical activities. In other words, the Alevi deyiş are performed not only in the ritual environment, but also in other social contexts, as in Veysel’s audio recordings, where there are always listeners present. Evidently, Veysel was a strong singer–poet who composed his own works, as well as a good listener who had strong command of the Alevi deyiş repertoire. The communicative environment of Veysel brought together different aspects of the singer–poet as original creator, performer, and listener.

The entry of late fourteenth–early fifteenth-century poet Kaygusuz Abdal into the repertoire of Âşık Veysel indicates a very long line of transmission that we do not have access to. Yet this journey of the poetry of Kaygusuz Abdal creates an affinity between them. It indicates a repeating transfer of ritual knowledge, artistic knowledge, sacrality, and responsibility. Yet there is more to surprise us here. Veysel, who had largely excluded Alevi references from his own poems, masterfully performs a repertoire based on classical poems containing the founding elements of Alevi discourse. These audio recordings thus present us with a Veysel who is profoundly different from his public persona as a founding figure of Turkish national folk music and a fierce proponent of the Republican regime. It shows us that Veysel’s status as a public figure and artist was dependent on the relegation of his “Aleviness” to the private realm. Yet Veysel’s adherence to the national policy on Turkish identity, a policy that carried Sunni identity as its tacit element, was not strong enough to break his chain of transmission from the sacred Alevi past embodied in the deyiş.

From Ali Ufuki to the present: the journey of two deyiş attributed to Kaygusuz Abdal and Pir Sultan Abdal

Polish-born Ottoman palace musician and interpreter Ali Ufuki (Ufki)/Wojciech Bobowski (1610–1675) compiled two musical notation collections that are invaluable sources for the Ottoman–Turkish music tradition that was generally transmitted orally until the mid-nineteenth century (Haug Reference Haug, Greve, Özdemir and Motika2020b, 157). In these mecmua, Ali Ufuki collected examples of a poetry/music culture that lived in the palace/urban environment of the period. One feature of the manuscripts of Ali Ufuki, who probably compiled works from the Bektashi Janissaries in and around the Ottoman palace, is that they present a wide repertoire of singer–poets, including Kaygusuz Abdal, Pir Sultan Abdal, Karacaoğlan, Kuloğlu, Kul Budala, and Katibi.

Past versions of the countless deyiş/nefes in the modern-day Alevi musical repertoire can shed light on how the Alevi deyiş have lived throughout the centuries (Özdemir Reference Özdemir, Weineck and Zimmermann2018a, 176). Two deyiş in Ali Ufuki’s mecmua exemplify what we have discussed so far. The first is the famous şathiye (humorous Sufi poem) attributed to Kaygusuz Abdal, which begins with the verse “Bir kaz aldım ben karıdan” (I bought a goose from a woman). The şathiye in Turkish are Sufi and Alevi poems that express esoteric truths with absurd imagery (Oktay-Uslu, Reference Oktay-Uslu2019). The poem in question is not found in the oldest manuscripts of Kaygusuz Abdal’s Divan (Oktay-Uslu, Reference Oktay-Uslu2017). Yet it has come down to us as one of his most famous poems, probably due to its continuous oral recitation from at least the time of Ali Ufuki. The best-known modern rendition of the poem is found in Abdülbaki Gölpınarlı’s Kaygusuz Abdal, Hatayi, Kul Himmet (Gölpınarlı Reference Gölpınarlı1953, 52–54).

A comparison of the two renditions is revealing. The two poems have very little in common, although they can still be considered the same poem. There is not one stanza that is identical. The final repeating line of each stanza in Gölpınarlı’s rendition is not to be found in Ali Ufuki; the mahlas is not the same. What makes these the same poem is the central allegory of the goose that does not cook. The goose represents the nefs (the carnal self) that fails to be tamed no matter how much effort the spiritual wayfarer has put in. This unique and absurd allegory holds the poem together in the face of endless variation. We are giving the final stanza here for comparison:

In the Gölpınarlı edition, Kaygusuz Abdal is telling himself to let go of his position as master, or to pick up his stuff and keep traveling as a wandering dervish, because he failed to tame his base self. In Ali Ufuki’s mecmua, a reference to zulüm (cruelty, oppression) is introduced. In the literal sense, the zulüm here is the agony of continuously trying to boil the goose and failing at it. While this could be taken to mean one’s own cruelty towards their base self, it is also possible for it to refer to political oppression. If the latter is true, then we are face to face with a political discourse that is not found in Kaygusuz Abdal’s Divan, but that is nonetheless integral to later Alevi poetry. This would then be a Kaygusuz who has been adapted or re-created to fit the political environment of the seventeenth century. While the discourse on taming the base self is of Sufi origin, the reference to oppression is properly Alevi. Both discourses have remained alive until our day.

A second example from Ali Ufuki’s mecmua is a poem attributed to Pir Sultan Abdal that has the repeating rhyme of -a muhtaç eylemiş (has rendered beholden to). The same deyiş can be found in a modern collection of deyiş attributed to Shah Hatayi (also known as Shah İsmail), as well as a recent collection of deyiş sung by Mamo Geyik Dede (2022) (also known as Mamî Algudanê in Kurdish, 1935–2012), where the poem is attributed to seventeenth-century poet Virani. We thus have a case in which the same poem is performed and collected with three different pen names. A comparison of the three poems shows that due to the rhyme that repeats at the end of each stanza, the final lines of each stanza remain identical in all versions. Variation occurs in the lines that follow the internal rhyme of the stanza. The final stanzas of each version exemplify this:

These examples show the dynamism and variation that come with oral transmission. Especially for the first poem attributed to Kaygusuz Abdal, but possibly for both, we could ask whether these should be considered the same poem, or whether the one in Ali Ufuki’s mecmua is a nazire (parallel poem). This possibility is also underlined by Haug (Reference Haug, Greve, Özdemir and Motika2020b, 166). This is a methodological impasse, because our modern and literate understanding of difference would not fit the emic perspectives of the poems’ audience. In the second example from Ali Ufuki, the versions of the poem speak to each other around the central theme of one’s God-given lot, in addition to similarities in rhyme and vocabulary. This creates an additional level of intertextuality, that extends beyond different poems to different versions of the same poem. Such changes in the wording and music of the poems due to oral transmission were an important marker of the deyiş tradition.

The modern interpretations of Kaygusuz Abdal

From a musical perspective, it is very difficult to find data regarding the change in the historical musical performance of the poem attributed to Kaygusuz Abdal. There is not enough information for this in Ali Ufuki. However, four different interpretations of the poem edited by Gölpınarlı were recorded in 1976, 1996, 2014, and 2017. These provide rich enough data to ask questions about how the Alevi deyiş circulates through the popular music industry and what role it plays in the formation of different musical identities.

Esin Afşar, who was part of the Anatolian pop movement that started in the 1960s and included arrangements of folk songs in Western music forms, published the poem attributed to Kaygusuz Abdal with the music of Engin Atamer under the name “Kaz” (Goose) in 45 rpm format in 1976 (Afşar Reference Afşar1976). Afşar, who sang many Alevi deyiş throughout her career, although she is not an Alevi herself, performed the song in the form of Western folk music with guitar, percussion, and male backing vocals in this recording, and in some parts sang it recitatively in an epic and narrative style.

Âşık İsmail İpek, who became known with the 45 rpm records that he made since the late 1960s, performed the poem attributed to Kaygusuz Abdal under the name “Kaz Kaynamaz” (The Goose Doesn’t Boil) on the album “Muradın Almayan Kullar” (Servants of God who do not receive their divine wish), published in 1996 (İpek Reference İpek1996). İpek, an Alevi singer–poet, played and sang bağlama throughout his career and performed the deyiş of some master Alevi singer–poets in addition to his own deyiş. In this recording, İpek went a little further from his own playing and singing style and performed with a musical expression that is more similar to the style of Eastern Anatolian minstrels, in which non-metric and metric forms are interlocked. In this performance, a character narrating the poem is occasionally heard.

Hüseyin Turan, one of the popular musicians of Alevi origin, became known for the popular folk music albums he published since the end of the 1990s. Turan composed and published music for the same poem under the name “Kaynamaz” (Does not boil) on his album “Süveyda,”Footnote ¹² published in 2014 (Turan Reference Turan2014). In the recording performed by Turan with a playful attitude, instruments such as electric bağlama and electric guitar, as well as sounds like sitar and tabla reminiscent of Indian music, can be heard. In this recording, the content of the poem is transformed into a cheerful story.

Hüsnü Arkan, who sang our last example, is known for the compositions he sang in his solo albums since the 1990s and in Ezginin Günlüğü, one of the popular protest music groups in which he worked as a soloist for a while. Arkan, who is not of Alevi origin, composed and published the same poem under the name “Kaygusuz Abdal” in his album “Yalnız Değiliz” (We Are Not Alone), published in 2013 (Arkan Reference Arkan2013). The recording, in which partial bağlama tones are heard, is like a combination of the four songs we gave as examples above. Clarinet, guitar, percussion, and backing vocals remind us of Esin Afşar’s folk music sound, but at the same time, the joyful mood of Hüseyin Turan’s interpretation is heard here too.

Kaygusuz Abdal’s pen name was used in all four recordings. In all of these recordings, there is a tendency to perform the content of the poem with a descriptive musical expression. In general, a pleasant mood was preferred in all four of them. This leads us to an important question regarding the musical diversity of the Alevi deyiş. Putting aside the Alevi or non-Alevi origins of their performers, is it possible to call all of these recordings Alevi deyiş, even when their musicalities differ significantly from historical precedents? In our opinion, all of these records are Alevi deyiş, precisely because they carry the diversity and dynamism of the Alevi deyiş tradition as a constitutive element. These performances, which reveal the desire to be progressive and reach a wide audience, reflect a contemporary engagement and devotion to the Alevi belief system that is mediated by the deyiş of singer–poets such as Pir Sultan Abdal or Kaygusuz Abdal (Koerbin Reference Koerbin2011, 208).

The intensive circulation and transmission of the Alevi deyiş through all kinds of media, from ritual to daily life, among Alevis and outside, leads to their constant diversification. This opens up an expanding universe of intertextuality, which renders it futile to seek the original or authentic version of an Alevi deyiş. Clearly, modern and contemporary performances of Alevi music do not carry historical nostalgia towards musical sound, that is, there is no attempt to re-create any deyiş, for example, with the sound of the sixteenth century (Koerbin Reference Koerbin2011, 208). This reinforces our earlier claim that the deyiş as an entity is held together by the words of the poem, and when these themselves diversify, it is held together by certain elements of the poem that denote continuity, such as metaphor or rhyme. The Alevi deyiş thus continue to exist in an endless state of becoming.