Abstract
TIME OF CHAOS IN ALEVΖBEKTASHI HAGIOGRAPHY TEXTS
Comparative mythological knowledge expresses that the universe was first chaos, that is, absolutized disorder, and then, based on the assumption that the cosmos, that is, order was allocated with the miracle of life, it was comprehended through modeling, classification, and explanation of origin. The mythologies that speak of the birth of the universe generally speak of chaos as unmanageable structural crises. Order and disorder can be felt not only on a macro scale but also on micro levels at every stage of life. It can be present at both the individual and social levels of life. It is striking that the cosmos, which gives form and shape to life and makes it stable and orderly, is replaced by chaos, which is disorganized, disorderly, discordant, and destroys our perception of time. We can characterize chaos, the opposite of an ordered universe, as the challenge of life against form. As equivalent equivalents of cosmos-chaos, we can show binary opposites such as self and other, day and night, light and darkness, spring and autumn, summer and winter, existence and non-existence, sea and land, good and evil, safe and unsafe, disunity and coherence. On the other hand, the works called menâkıbnâme are stories containing historical/menkabawî biographies of religious opinion leaders or historical/imaginary personalities. Although these works sometimes contain mythological elements, they contain valuable information in terms of understanding history, sociology, folk psychology and folklore. In these works, the existence of social/individual experiences of order and disorder is evident. The dervishes mentioned in the works travel from land to land in order to spread their ideas and rituals, they come across chaotic times that people face and try to find solutions for them and give meaning to life. In this sense, each of these dervishes can be considered as immortal carriers of symbolic meaning. In other words, these dervishes intervene in societies from a religious perspective to turn chaos into cosmos and harmonize life. When all these are analyzed, the sociology of the societies living in these times becomes visible in the axis of religious culture, daily life and life struggle.
Keywords
Alevî–Bektashi, time of chaos, cosmos, hagiography texts.