MINSTREL LITERATURE

Minstrel is a kind of poet seen in the Turkish Folk Literature since the beginning of 11th Century. It is believed that minstrel takes his quality of poet by drinking the “love wine” served by the sage in his dream and by seeing the “image of his lover”. The minstrel candidate generally sees a lover or a saz (a folkloric musical instrument) in his dream. The ornament of the dream is a dervish with white beard and sometimes one sometimes three full glasses. The glass can be usually seen as a bowl in the dream. The liquids in the bowls presented to the poets are called love full. It takes the name wine with the effect of Persian Literature. These are named as; apprenticeship, quality of sage and love wine.

Our minstrels are usually educated by an expert minstrel. They learn both the expert idioms and procedure and methods about the art performance from him. After adequately comprehending the ways in which the experts perform their art at the minstrel meetings and coffeehouses frequented by wandering minstrels, the poets who have become experts take apprentices for themselves and this tradition continues in this way.

The minstrel shows his knowledge, emotion and ability in the quarrel he makes. The aim in the quarrels is to compete and win. At least two minstrels come face to face at the quarrels. The quarrel begins with a respected person in the meeting or an expert poet telling a rhyme. The quarrel ends with the defeat of the minstrel who cannot find an appropriate quatrain to the rhyme.

Story telling forms one of the main elements of Minstrel Literature. Most of the saz poets who are faithful to the tradition tell stories in the minstrel meetings. Some of the expert minstrels tell folk stories that are created by the experts and on the other hand they tell the stories they have created. Çıldırlı Aşık Şenlik, Sabit Müdami are minstrels who have contributed to the tradition from this aspect.

The representatives of this tradition, who are called Şaman by Tonguzlar, Bo or Bugue by Mongols and Baryatlar, Oyun by Yakutlar, Ozan by Oğuzlar, have expressed the life style, thoughts and feelings, points of view of the society to the events by their poems.

Yunus Emre, Pir Sultan Abdal, Köroğlu, Dadaloğlu, Karacaoğlan, Erzurumlu Emrah, Ercişli Emrah, Dertli, Aşık Veysel have been the most important representatives of this tradition.

The tradition of minstrel is still being kept alive in the Anatolian geography today.