Praying trees
The swaying of the branches and leaves of certain species caused by the wind leads in certain areas of the Caucasus and the Turkish Black Sea region to the belief that trees are able to pray . Trees with predominantly rigid branches - such as the oak - are viewed as non-praying.
Turkey
When the inhabitants of today's city of Akçaabat in the Trabzon province still believed in gods of nature ( idols ), they worshiped oriental plane trees . Hence the city was previously called Platana or Pulathane . However, the official account only attributes these names to the large number of plane trees that exist.
Even today there is a great devotion of the rural population towards trees. Sometimes a tree is considered more valuable than a human life. The love for trees is illustrated by the following story (documented by Lermioğlu ) from the 1940s : In the village of Mersin in Akçaabat County, a hunter felled a tree after seeing that the villagers were paying homage to the tree they called “ collar ”. Thereupon the population reported the hunter with the words "The hunter hacked the saint" at the guard. Assuming that the hunter had killed someone dubbed “saint”, the police arrested him first, but released him after the misunderstanding was cleared up. It is believed that the belief in sacred trees has its origins in cult images of the Caucasus. The mentioned village population probably comes from the Colchis - a culture that continues in the middle of the Islamic Trabzon .
A similar culture can also be observed in the Hemşin District in Rize Province . Here it is partly tradition that no branches may be sawed off three days before and during religious festivals, as it is believed that the branches prayed.
See also
literature
- Özhan Öztürk : Karadeniz Ansiklopedik Sözlük , vol. 1 (of 2). Heyamola Yayıncılık, İstanbul 2005, ISBN 975-6121-00-9 , pp. 20-22.
Web links
- Ağaçların İbadet Etmesi from the Karadeniz Ansiklopedik Sözlük ( Memento from May 7, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) (Turkish)