Folkloric elements in travelogues 12-14. century (Travelogues of el-Girnâtî, Ibn Jubayr, Plano Carpini, Monte Crucis and Ibn Battûta)

Travelogues are works that reflect the material and spiritual values of societies through the eyes of travellers and provide information about their lives. Collecting the cultures of geographies far away from each other, travelogues are living witnesses of the period in which they were written. At the same time, they play an active role in preserving the oral and written products of their societies and transferring these products to the future. It is possible to have information about many events that happened in the past through travelogues. Travellers witnessed interesting events, folk literature products, beliefs, traditions, customs and history of societies and described them in their works. El-Gırnâtî, Ibn Jubayr, Plano Carpini, Monte Crucis and Ibn Battûta, who described the periods they lived in detail, are famous travellers who travelled to wide geographies. These travellers examined the geographies they visited in detail, noted what they saw and turned them into works. They recorded the cultures of the societies they encountered and created written sources that can be considered important in terms of folklore. Thus, travellers created an unbreakable link between the past and the future by describing the cultural interaction in the 12th-14th century in their works. In our study, folkloric elements in the travelogues of the above travellers living in the 12th-14th centuries were examined. Then, these elements are classified under main and sub-section headings according to the subjects of folklore. Keywords: Travelogue, folklore, culture.