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Stone People, Tree People and Animal People in Turkic Asia and Eastern Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Thierry Zarcone
Thierry Zarcone*
Affiliation:
CNRS / EHESS

Abstract

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Some religious groups and trends of thought in the Turkic world, in Asia and Europe, have for several centuries nurtured an unusual vision of nature in which old animistic and shamanistic beliefs, and even nomads’ Buddhist beliefs, are combined with Arab philosophy stemming from Neo-Platonism and Muslim mysticism (Sufism). This vision, which in fact is not homogeneous since it exists in several variants, claims that all animate and inanimate creatures - humans, animals, plants and stones - are receptacles of the same ‘vital energy’ and are consequently intimately bound up with one another, and may even migrate towards each of their respective modes of being, animal, plant or mineral; hence the existence of stone people, tree people and animal people. This article aims to trace the origins of this vision of nature and look at its current influence, paying particular attention to the ‘ethics of the environment’ (çevre ahlakï) it has inspired in recent years in Turkey.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , August 2005 , pp. 35 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2005

References

Notes

1. Evliya Çelebi (1928), Seyahatnâme [Travels], Istanbul, pp. 740-2; E. E. Shapolyo (1964), Mezhepler ve Tarikatlar Tarihi[History of the movements and religious brotherhoods]), Istanbul, Türkiye Y., p. 283.

2. Paul Henri Stahl (1965), ‘La Dendrolâtrie chez les Turcs et les Tatars de la Dobroudja’, Revue des études du Sud-Est européen, III, 1-2, pp. 297-303.

3. The phrase is borrowed from Alexandre Koyré (1971), Mystiques, Spirituels, Alchimistes du XVIe siècle, Paris, Gallimard, p. 92.

4. Roberte Hamayon (1990), La Chasse à l’âme. Esquisse d’une théorie du chamanisme sibérien, Nanterre, Société d’Ethnologie, pp. 331-2.

5. Shakïr Ulkütashïr (1963), Türk ve Islam Geleneginde Agaç [Trees in Turkish and Muslim traditions], Ankara, Türk Etnografiya Ve Folklor Dernegi Y; Ahmet Yashar Ocak (1983), Bektashi Menakïbnamelerinde Islam Öncesi Inanç Motifleri [Patterns of Pre-Islamic beliefs in the Bektashi books of legends], Istanbul, Enderun Kitabevi, pp. 86-7, 91; Metin Özarslan (2003), ‘Türk Kültüründe Agaç ve Orman Kültü’ [The cult of trees and the forest in Turkish culture], Türkbilig, 5, p. 98.

6. Ocak, op. cit., p. 87.

7. Abdülkadir Inan (1966), ‘Türk Boylarïnda Dag, Agaç ve Pïnar Kültü’ [The cult of mountains, trees and springs among Turkish tribes], in Reshid Rahmeti Arat Için, Ankara, Türk Kültürü Arashtïrma Enstitüsü, p. 273.

8. Ülkütashïr, op. cit., p. 14.

9. Inan, op. cit., p. 276.

10. Islamized nomads who left central Asia, to the north of present-day Mongolia, and settled in Anatolia in the 11th century.

11. Le Livre de Dede Korkut. Récit de la geste oghuz, introduction and translation by Altan Gökalp, Paris, Gallimard, 1998, p. 42.

12. Ocak, op. cit., p. 92; Özarslan, op. cit., p. 100.

13. On this topic see T. Zarcone (2000), ‘Le “Brâme du saint”. De la prouesse du chamane au miracle du soufi’, in D. Aigle (ed.), Miracle et Karama. Hagiographies médiévales comparées, Paris, Éditions Brépols - EPHE, pp. 413-33, and Françoise Arnaud-Demir (2002), ‘Quand passent les grues cendrées… Sur une composante chamanique du cérémonial des Alévis-Bektachis’, Turcica, 34, pp. 39-67.

14. Jean-Paul Roux (1970), Les Traditions des nomades de la Turquie méridionale (Contribution à l’étude des représentations religieuses des sociétés turques d’après les enquêtes effectuées chez les Yörük et les Tahtacï), Paris, Institut Français d’Archéologie d’Istanbul, Librairie Adrien Maisonneuve, pp. 282-3.

15. A legend recorded by Rémy Dor (1982) in Chants du toit du monde, Paris, Maisonneuve & Larose, pp. 87-91.

16. Patrick Garrone (2000), ‘Contribution à une étude du bestiaire des croyances centrasiatiques’, Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies (DEA), Paris, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, pp. 80- 1 (unpublished).

17. Ali Rïza Yalgïn (1949), ‘Su, Agaç, Dag ve Tash’ [Water, tree, mountain and stone], Türk Folkloru Arashtïrmalarï, 1-4, October, pp. 60-1.

18. M. Fuat Köprülü (2001), ‘Abdal Musa’, Journal of the History of Sufism, Paris, Jean Maisonneuve, 3, pp. 325-47; Rahila Davut (2001), Uyghur Mazarliri [Uyghur Mausoleums], Ürümchi, Xinjiang Khalq Näsriyat, p. 176.

19. See the bibliography on this topic in T. Zarcone (2003), ‘Le Chamanisme islamisé après la disparition de l’URSS’, in Chamanismes, Paris, PUF, Collection Quadrige, pp. 147-58.

20. Pierre Hadot, in his introduction to the book (1971) Le Néoplatonisme. Actes du colloque international du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Royaumont, 9-13 juin 1969 (edited by C. J. De Vogel, H. Dörrie and E. Zum Brunn), Paris, CNRS.

21. P. Hadot (2004), Le Voile d’Isis. Essai sur l’histoire de l’idée de Nature, Paris, Gallimard, p. 71.

22. See for instance William C. Chittick (1992), ‘The Circle of Spiritual Ascent according to Al-Qûnawî’, in Parviz Morewedge (ed.), Neoplatonism and Islamic Thought, New York, SUNY Press, pp. 179-209.

23. For a bibliography on this topic see Abdullah Uçman (1993), ‘Devriyyeler Üzerine Rïza Tevfik’in Yayïmlanmamïsh Bir Makalesi’ [An unpublished article by Rïza Tevfik on the devriyye], Türklük Arashtïrmalarï Dergisi, 7, note 12, p. 541.

24. Translated into English from the Turkish to French translation in Catherine Pinquet (2002), ‘Remarques sur la poésie de Kaygusuz Abdal’, Turcica, 34.

25. From the French translation in T. Zarcone (1993), Mystiques, Philosophes et Franc-Maçons en islam, Paris, Jean Maisonneuve, p. 480.

26. R. Hamayon, La Chasse à l’âme, op. cit., pp. 563-5.

27. Ocak, op. cit., pp. 133-46.

28. Sofia Biserova, ‘Etnografski materiali za Selo Bisetsi’ [Ethnographic materials on [the village of] Bisetsi], p. 79, and Khristo Khristov, ‘Etnografski materiali za Selo Mbdrevo’ [Ethnographic materials on [the village of] Mbdrevo], p. 165, in Ivanichka Geogrieva (ed.) (1991), B’lgarskite Aliani Sbornik etnografski materiali [The Alides in Bulgaria. A collection of ethnographic materials], Sofia, Istoricheski Muzej - Gr. Isperikh.

29. It is true that there is also a hierarchical structure in Supernature, but it does not automatically place man or the universal Spirit at the centre of the world.

30. Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen (2000), ‘Tombeaux, Mosquées et Zâwiya: la polarité des lieux saints musulmans’, in A. Vauchez (ed.), Lieux sacrés, lieux de culte, sanctuaires. Approches terminologiques, méthodologiques, historiques et monographiques, Rome, École Française de Rome, p. 137.

31. See note 1.

32. Yalgïn, op. cit., pp. 59-60.

33. Lu Dong (2000), ‘Place des jardins dans la culture chinoise’, in Extrême-Orient, Extrême Occident, 22: L’Art des jardins dans les pays sinisés, Chine, Japon, Corée, Vietnam, Université de Vincennes, p. 13.

34. Dinh Trong Hiêu (2000), ‘Jardins du Vietnam: la nature entre représentations culturelles et pratiques culturales’, in L’Art des jardins dans les pays sinisés, op. cit., pp. 144-8.

35. The eponymous founder of the Bektashi brotherhood, a figure revered by the vast majority of Alevis.

36. T. Zarcone (1995), ‘Le Mausolée de Hâcï Bektâsh Velî en Anatolie centrale (Turquie)’, in H. Chambert-Loir and C. Guillot (eds), Le Culte des saints dans le monde musulman, Paris, École Française d’Extrême-Orient, pp. 309-19.

37. Kemal Selçuk (1999), ‘1999’da Geyikli Baba’, Bursa defteri, Bursa, September, pp. 74-7.

38. Jean-Paul Roux, Les Traditions des nomades de la Turquie méridionale, pp. 189-90, 197-201, 280. On the secret ritual that precedes tree-felling, see also Zeynel Gül (1998), ‘Anadolu Aleviligin Özünü Bozmadan Yashatan Toplum: Tahtacïlar’ [The Tahtacï, a community that maintains and continues the specificity of Anatolian Alevism], in Alevilik Arashtïrmalarï, Aachen, 1, 1, pp. 175-6.

39. Alevi Bektashilikte Çevre, Istanbul, Can Y.

40. In his Generelle Morphologie der Organismen, 1866.

41. Précis d’écologie, Paris, Dunod, 7th edn (2003), p. 1.

42. Ernest Haeckel (1895), Monism as Connecting Religion and Science, London. The original was published in German in 1892.

43. For further details, see Zarcone, Mystiques, Philosophes et Franc-Maçons en islam, op. cit., pp. 157-8.

44. The Turkish Islamic party has included protection of the environment in its various programmes since the 1990s.