Mystical and religious motifs in the poems of AşIk Sümmani

With the elements including sociological, philosophycal, ethic and aesthetic elements, minstrel literature has a rich structure. Tradition of musıcal poetry of minstrells shares same history with Turkic history. Myths has an important place in turkic literature. Oral culture has more importance then the written culture. There are two types of minstrels. One of them has islâmic mysticism culture in their style of being minstrel and the other type has no islâmic mysticism appearance in their style. While the ones with mystic appearance is being called ''devoty of god'' and the other type is called ''folk minstrels.'' Summani is one of the most important mystic minstrell of 19. Century. The reason he became one of the most important mystic minstrells of his era is the depth and variety in his poems. The structure of his poems has educational, historical, mystical and moral sides. Also in this study it can be seen that there is no contradiction in living an islâmic mystic life and playing instruments in the traditional style of minstrels. In this research the mystic and religious motives in Minstrel Summani's will be inspected in different perspectives such as; the wordy meanings of concepts, the literatural meanings or the usage styles of classic mystic works. This concepts are being used in more then one of poems metaphoricly, while this concepts are being inspected in popular poems will also be shown. In the begining, the topic of Summani's poems were about his love to another person but as the time went by, this love has transformed into divine love and its heavily reflected on his poems and this caused his poems to have more mystic depthness. Like in the love stories of Kerem-Aslı and Ferhat-Şirin Summani's love finally transformed into a divine love. The aim of this thesis includes, intruducing Summani to people of today, uncovering the mystical and religious elements in his poems, making emphasis on his sûfi identity and inspîring todays minstrels with his poetic depthness. In the making of this research the importance is given to staying in scientific framework and following academic methods. Thanks to Prof. Dr. Vahit Göktaş, Asst. Dr. Sezai Bekdemir, all the academic and staff of Bozok University and finally my wife for all the support she gave throughout this research.