Yanyatan Ali, whose real name was Ali Belli, was an Alevi-Bektashi minstrel (âşık) and zakir who lived in the village of Diphacı near Merzifon. He was born in 1923, died in 1990 and was buried in his village. He belonged to the minstrels who carried the thought and character of the Kul Hüseyin branch; his house became a meeting place for the minstrels, dervishes and zakirs of the district, he took care to collect and keep alive the deyiş (sacred songs) of the minstrels around him, and besides playing the bağlama he also made the instrument. He was the master of Alıcıklı Hicabî Derviş (Satılmış Yıldız), and it was he who gave him his pen name. Nearly everything we know of him comes from Ali Cem Akbulut's book on the minstrels of the Kul Hüseyin branch and from the entry in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü that draws on it.

Life

Ali Belli was born in 1923 in the village of Diphacı, in the district of Merzifon. The village is also known in older records as Tekke Karyesi (the Lodge Village). The forefathers of his family are said to have come from Khorasan. Some time later he moved with his family to a place outside the village called "Kellecininhan". He went to do his military service at about the age of twenty and, on his return, lived for a while longer by farming. That he learned both the old Ottoman script and the new Latin one must have made it easier for him to read and collect the deyiş in the district's cönk (manuscript song collections). In the mid-1970s he settled again in Diphacı; he died in 1990 and was buried in his village.

Connection with Amasya

Diphacı is where Yanyatan Ali was born and where he lies buried; his whole life passed in and around it. The village is one of the Alevi-Bektashi settlements of the area whose lowlands, those of Merzifon, Suluova and Gümüşhacıköy, go locally by the shared name "Gaziler Ovacığı". Beginning with Kul Hüseyin, this region has produced many minstrels; Dervişoğlu Mehmet, who died in the First World War, came from the same village. Yanyatan Ali is one of the links that carried this tradition through the second half of the twentieth century and handed it on to the next generation. Other minstrels from Diphacı and its neighbourhood are mentioned in the survey of the minstrel tradition in Amasya.

Minstrelsy and Circle

Yanyatan Ali embraced the thought of Kul Fakir (Ali Oymak, d. 1938) of the village of Kıreymir near Merzifon and followed the path of the minstrels of the Kul Hüseyin branch. In his day he formed close friendships with many minstrels and dervishes such as Halil Ağa, Sersem Köle and Sefil Mehmet and sat with them in the same gatherings. His house was a place of fellowship that constantly received guests. He attached importance to the office of zakir, the one who sings deyiş to the saz at the cem ceremonies, and besides the deyiş of the masters he also sang his own. Collecting the deyiş of the minstrels around him and sharing them with people was a distinctive side of his work; collector-zakirs of this kind have played a large part in the survival of the district's deyiş to the present day. He also made the bağlamas he played.

The best known of the minstrels Yanyatan Ali trained is Alıcıklı Hicabî Derviş. Hicabî received his training from his master Yanyatan and from the cem and fellowship gatherings he attended at his side, and by travelling with his master through all the villages of Merzifon he came to know most of the district's minstrels. To Hicabî, who for a time, out of the tendency towards self-concealment found among the minstrels of the Kul Hüseyin branch, used names such as Sefil and Zefil Abdal, Yanyatan Ali suggested two poet's names, Hicabî and Hicranî; Hicabî adopted the first. This detail shows that Yanyatan was a master respected enough in the district to bestow pen names. Readers' notes on a deyiş collection website suggest that his name is still honoured in his village and its surroundings as a "pir" and dervish; these, however, are not documented facts.

Poetry

Copyright note: Yanyatan Ali died in 1990, so his deyiş are protected by copyright until the end of 2060, seventy years after his death; this is why the site does not give each of them a page. The quatrain below is quoted only to introduce him.

In Yanyatan Ali's works mystical and moral values such as love of God, love of the Ahl al-Bayt (the Prophet's family) and love of humankind come to the fore. Two deyiş have been published under his name on a deyiş collection website. The first, with the refrain "Arzu hâlim kabul eyle(n) erenler" (Accept my plea, O saints), is a supplication addressed to the Prophet Muhammad, Ali, Fatima, Hüseyin Gazi, Salman the Persian and Imam Jafar; in the last quatrain it closes the plea with the phrase "Horasan şahı" (King of Khorasan), which in Alevi-Bektashi poetry mostly refers to Hacı Bektaş Veli. The second, with the refrain "Ayırma Yarab bizi evladın Ali'den" (O Lord, do not part us from the descendants of Ali), is a prayer asking, by the thousand and one names of God, by the martyrs and saints, by Imam Zayn al-Abidin, the Twelve Imams and the hundred and twenty-four thousand prophets, never to be separated from the line of Ali. The pen-name quatrain of the second deyiş reads as follows in the spelling of the collection website:

Cümle şehitlerin puştu penahı
Guduret haznesi elinde dahi
Didarından ayırma YANYATANI dahi
Ayırma Yarab bizi evladın Ali'den

Calling on the one who is the support and refuge of all the martyrs and who holds the treasury of divine power in his hand, the minstrel asks God not to part His servant Yanyatan from the sight of that face, and not to part them from the descendants of Ali. Familiar expressions of tekke poetry such as "puşt u penâh" (support and refuge) and "the treasury of power" reflect the language of the supplicatory deyiş recited at the cem. Both deyiş are in syllabic metre with half-rhyme, but in the form in which they have been transmitted the syllable counts are faulty in places; this may also be a trace of oral transmission and of the collector's spelling.

State of the Sources

Whatever is known of Yanyatan Ali's life comes from a single book, Ali Cem Akbulut's Âşık Kul Hüseyin ve Kul Hüseyin Kolu Âşıkları, published in 2015; Orhan Fatih Kuşdemir, who wrote the entry in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, took his information from this book. The book itself was out of our reach, so we rely on that entry. His relationship with Hicabî rests on İbrahim Gösterir's 2017 monograph on Hicabî and is likewise known through the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü. The quoted deyiş is taken from a deyiş collection website that does not name its source; since it is not known from which cönk or sound recording the text comes, its spelling has been kept exactly and the places that appear corrupt have been left untouched. Akbulut's book probably contains further deyiş by Yanyatan. Owing to his period, his name does not appear in Hüsameddin's Amasya Tarihi or in the other older sources.

Chronology

1923: Ali Belli is born in the village of Diphacı near Merzifon.

Mid-1970s: Settles again in the village of Diphacı.

1990: Dies; buried in the village of Diphacı.

2015: His life is published in Ali Cem Akbulut's book on the minstrels of the Kul Hüseyin branch.

Bibliography

Academic studies

  • Şerife Özer – Mustafa Topal, "Âşıklık Geleneği ve Geleneğin Çerağlarından Amasyalı Âşık Özlemî", Motif Akademi Halkbilimi Dergisi, 14(34), 2021, pp. 654-655 (Gaziler Ovacığı and the district's minstrels). https://doi.org/10.12981/mahder.869864

Books

  • Orhan Fatih Kuşdemir, "Yanyatan, Ali Belli", Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, 25.03.2019 (updated 12.12.2020). https://teis.yesevi.edu.tr/madde-detay/yanyatan-ali-belli
  • Ali Cem Akbulut, Âşık Kul Hüseyin ve Kul Hüseyin Kolu Âşıkları, Ankara: Dumat Matbaası, 2015 (cited through Kuşdemir 2019).
  • Altuğ Ortakcı, "(Alıcıklı) Hicabî/Hicabî Derviş, Satılmış Yıldız", Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, 12.01.2019 (updated 05.12.2020). https://teis.yesevi.edu.tr/madde-detay/alicikli-hicabi-hicabi-dervis-satilmis
  • İbrahim Gösterir, Alıcıklı Âşık Hicabî (Yaşamı-Sanatı-Şiirleri), Ankara: Kültür Ajans Yayınları, 2017, pp. 17-19 (cited through Ortakcı 2019).

Other sources

Online sources