Rüsvaî, whose real name is Ali Cem Akbulut, is a folk poet and researcher of minstrel literature from the village of Harız (today Gümüştepe) near Merzifon. He was born in Merzifon in 1978. In his first poems he used the pen name Esedî, later settling on the pen name Rüsvaî. He grew up amid cem conversations and the gatherings of zakirs, and has written poems in syllabic metre in the manner of the nefes and deyiş (Alevi-Bektashi sacred songs); some of his poems have been set to music and sung by well-known performers. His profession is primary school teaching. His place in literary history rests above all on his work as a collector: he gathered from cönk (manuscript song collections), mecmua (miscellanies) and old sound recordings the forgotten minstrels of the "Gaziler Ovacığı" district centred on Merzifon and published them for the first time, prepared a book on Kul Hüseyin and the minstrels of his branch, and together with Bekir Karadeniz published an extensive anthology of Alevi-Bektashi poets. A considerable part of the pages on this site devoted to the minstrels of Gaziler Ovacığı rests, directly or at second hand, on his work.

Life

Ali Cem Akbulut was born in Merzifon on 19 May 1978; his date of birth was entered in the civil register as 28 November 1979. He comes from a farming family and is a son of Gümüştepe, formerly the village of Harız. He spent the first years of primary school in his village and later continued his primary and secondary education in the district of Eleşkirt in Ağrı and in the district of Osmancık in Çorum. His interest in minstrel literature and his collecting work began in his high-school years in Osmancık; to search the sources he taught himself Ottoman Turkish. In 1994 he settled with his family in Merzifon; he graduated from Merzifon High School in 1995 and from the Department of Primary School Teaching of the Erzincan Faculty of Education in 2001. His first post was a village in the district of Eğil in Diyarbakır, and he also did his military service as a teacher-soldier in the same village. In 2004 he was appointed to his home town of Merzifon, and in 2018-2019, when the entry on him was written, he was still working as a primary school teacher in Merzifon.

Connection with Amasya

Merzifon is the town where Akbulut was born and has done most of his teaching, and it is also where his research begins. He grew up as the child of a family from the village of Harız. Harız is the village of Kul Hasan, of Sıdkî Baba, who came from Hacıbektaş and settled there in 1894, and of his son Ali Bâkî Gül; the cem and fellowship milieu in which Akbulut grew up is a continuation of this line. The weight of his work falls on Gaziler Ovacığı, the name under which the plains of Merzifon, Suluova and Gümüşhacıköy are known together locally. The material he collected travelling village by village through the Amasya and Çorum region is an important source for the biographies and deyiş texts of the district's minstrels known today. Some of the names he brought to light also appear in the article on the minstrel tradition in Amasya.

Collecting and Works

Akbulut's collecting took on a regular form when he went to Erzincan for university in 1997. From that year he began to build a private archive and library centred on folk literature, combing the second-hand booksellers of the cities he visited for local publications and minstrels' works, and collecting in the surrounding villages. During his years of service in Diyarbakır he also transcribed part of his earlier material. After returning to his home region he travelled village by village through the Amasya and Çorum area and gained access to a large number of manuscript cönk and mecmua and to sound recordings of old zakirs. Bektaş Bolat, whom he met around 2006, had a great influence on his life; in these years he speeded up the work of transcribing the Ottoman manuscripts he had found into Latin letters.

Believing that the earlier anthologies of Alevi-Bektashi poets and poetry gave room mainly to poets from Istanbul and its surroundings, and that the local minstrels of Anatolia scarcely appeared in them, he set out in 2006 with Bekir Karadeniz to prepare an anthology that would make room for local minstrels as well. Gazilerovacığı Âşıkları, the first fruit of his surveys of the district, was published in 2010 and brought to light many local poets who had been forgotten or never known. In 2015 there appeared Âşık Kul Hüseyin ve Kul Hüseyin Kolu Âşıkları, which studies Kul Hüseyin, whom he regards as the "spiritual architect" of the region's minstrels, and the minstrels who followed his path, together with Gazilerovacığı Âşıklarından Biçare ve Dervişoğlu, which collects the poems of two minstrels of Gaziler Ovacığı. The eight-volume anthology Alevi-Bektaşi Şairleri, prepared with Karadeniz, runs to some 6,000 pages. He has presented papers in his field at various symposia and published research articles in the journals Serçeşme and Güncel Sanat. His research has earned him folklore awards.

Akbulut's collections are also the source of many pages on this site. The life story and deyiş of Kul Hasan of Harız, the life and deyiş of Dervişoğlu Mehmet of Diphacı, the life of Yanyatan Ali and the lists of the minstrels of Gaziler Ovacığı are known from his books, either directly or through the collections and reference works that cite them.

Poetry

Copyright note: Ali Cem Akbulut is alive and holds the rights to his poems, so we do not publish them on separate pages. The sources at our disposal quote none of his poems either, and this page therefore carries no example.

Akbulut began writing poems in syllabic metre at about the age of sixteen, partly under the influence of his research into minstrel literature. His father's interest in folk literature and his upbringing in a region that produced minstrels led him in his youth to learn the poems of the minstrels and the folk songs; his attendance at the ayin-i cem and at the fellowship gatherings where the zakirs were present was decisive in shaping his literary personality. Over time he consolidated his knowledge of poetry and developed his own style, abandoning the pen name Esedî he had used in his early period and adopting the pen name Rüsvaî. Rüsvâ means "disgraced, reproached"; in Sufi poetry it is the epithet of the lover who loses his standing in the eyes of the world for the sake of love, and it fits the tradition of humble pen names among Alevi-Bektashi minstrels.

He has written his poems in the manner of the nefes and deyiş, in syllabic metre. Moral, religious and human values, and the things that weaken society and the individual, are his main subjects; love, affection and virtue carry weight in his poetry. He has won first, second and third places in the poetry competitions he entered. After 1997 his poems appeared regularly for a time in a column entitled "Ozanların Dilinden" (From the Tongues of the Poets) in Bedesten, the local cultural magazine of Merzifon, and he went on writing for the magazine during his years of service in Diyarbakır. Some of his poems have been set to music and sung by performers such as Erdal Erzincan and İnci Çiğdem Kaya.

State of the Sources

The fullest account of Akbulut is the entry Orhan Fatih Kuşdemir wrote for the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, and most of what is given here comes from it; Kuşdemir prepared it from the information in Akbulut's books and from an interview and correspondence with him in 2018. In this respect part of the information is the poet's own account. Some dates within the entry do not agree: the year of publication of the anthology Alevi-Bektaşi Şairleri is given as 2016 in the text and as 2014 in the bibliography and the list of works. The place of publication of Gazilerovacığı Âşıkları is likewise given as Bursa in the entry, while some sources citing the book show Istanbul. No information could be found on whether his poems have been collected in a book. Since he is a living person, only published information concerning his literary personality has been included here.

Chronology

19 May 1978: Born in Merzifon (28 November 1979 in the civil register).

1994: Settles with his family in Merzifon; in these years begins to write poems in syllabic metre.

1995: Graduates from Merzifon High School.

1997: Enters the Erzincan Faculty of Education; begins to build his private archive.

2001: Graduates; begins teaching at a primary school in Diyarbakır.

2004: Appointed to Merzifon.

2006: Begins preparing the anthology of Alevi-Bektashi poets with Bekir Karadeniz.

2010: Gazilerovacığı Âşıkları is published.

2015: Âşık Kul Hüseyin ve Kul Hüseyin Kolu Âşıkları and Gazilerovacığı Âşıklarından Biçare ve Dervişoğlu are published.

2019: The entry Esedî/Rüsvaî is published in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü.

Bibliography

Books

  • Orhan Fatih Kuşdemir, "Esedî/Rüsvaî, Ali Cem Akbulut", Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, 25.03.2019 (updated 06.12.2020). https://teis.yesevi.edu.tr/madde-detay/esedi-rusvai-ali-cem-akbulut
  • Ali Cem Akbulut, Gazilerovacığı Âşıkları, Bursa: KaraMavi Yayınları, 2010 (according to the list of works in Kuşdemir 2019).
  • Ali Cem Akbulut, Bekir Karadeniz, Alevi-Bektaşi Şairleri, 8 vols., Bursa: KaraMavi Yayınları, 2014 (according to the list of works in Kuşdemir 2019).
  • Ali Cem Akbulut, Âşık Kul Hüseyin ve Kul Hüseyin Kolu Âşıkları, Ankara: Dumat Matbaası, 2015 (according to the list of works in Kuşdemir 2019).
  • Ali Cem Akbulut, Gazilerovacığı Âşıklarından Biçare ve Dervişoğlu, Ankara: Dumat Matbaası, 2015 (according to the list of works in Kuşdemir 2019).
  • Orhan Fatih Kuşdemir, "Yanyatan, Ali Belli", Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, 25.03.2019 (entry based on Akbulut 2015). https://teis.yesevi.edu.tr/madde-detay/yanyatan-ali-belli

Online sources