From Oral to Litracy : The Path of Bektashi Myths from Sacred to Secular

The works that collect the narratives about the leading saints of Sufism in various regions of the Islamic geography in the13th century and present them in the form of a saint’s life and miracles, and which were called hagiography, began to be written in various languages such as Arabic, Persian or Turkish. These works, which have become the subject of study in many disciplines from literatüre to folklore studies, from history to theology, are generally defined as literary genres, and the miracles of saints included in them are named and classified as folkloric-literary motifs. However, there has not been a discussion about what kind of transformation the myth when it leaves the domain of the ite which is in the field of the sacred and belief, and enters the domain of writing. It has not been analyzed what kind of effects operating in the literary field have on these narratives. The study, which centers on such a problematization, examines a critical review on the written documents called Bektashi hagiographies.