Medieval folk beliefs in the context of Mevlevi's Menakibnames and Mevlana's works

Mevlevî hagiographys, which have an important place in studies on folk beliefs, are extremely important works in terms of both the content of folk beliefs and the historical presentation of the period in which they were written. Folk beliefs are values that bear traces of a society's cultural and religious past, nourished by its historical depths. For this reason, there are religious remnants such as ancient Turkish beliefs, Shamanism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Judaism and Christianity in the infrastructure of Turkish folk beliefs. Even after the Turks adopted Islam, they continued to maintain the effects of these religious beliefs in every aspect of their lives, and some of them had an Islamic appearance. The motifs left from these old beliefs, which were kept alive by hiding behind Islam, started to be accepted as a part of Islam after a while. The characteristics attributed to the leading figures of the society, which were the focal point of the pre-Islamic belief elements, were revived around the saint during the Islamic period. As a matter of fact, the hagiographys, which are the written form of all these belief motifs, are among the most important sources for the determination of folk beliefs. In this study, by using Feridun bin Ahmed-i Sipehsalar's Risale-i Sipehsalar, Ahmed Eflâkî's Menâkıbü'l Ârifîn as a source work, pre-Islamic old Turkish beliefs, the Qur'an, hadith, the Torah and the Bible. Medieval folk beliefs were tried to be determined by determining the belief motifs originating from Turkish epic products. Keywords: Folk, Belief, Menakibname, Mevlevi, Guardian.