Tahtacı

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Takhtaji folklore from Kazdağ, Balıkesir

The Tahtacı (in German Tachtadschi or Tachtadschy ) are Turkish-speaking Alevi Turkmens living in Turkey who descend from the oghus- Turkish tribes.

description

The Tahtacı are originally an endogamous , non-settled in yurts and isolated, Alevi mountain people, named after their centuries of occupation as forest or woodworkers.

Differentiation from the Yörük

There is little support in the relevant specialist literature for the assertion of the English-language online encyclopedia Wikipedia that the Tahtacı are a side line of the Yörük . Theodore Bent already made a clear distinction between the "nomads" of the Anatolian south coast and the Taurus Mountains , called Yörük by the Turks, into two distinct races, the forest-dwelling "Takhtagee Yourouks" (Tahtacı in ours Senses) and the pastoral business of "Pastoral Yourouks" (Yörük in our sense), whose origins he described as being as far apart as those of the Bulgarians and Greeks of the Balkan Peninsula. If he nevertheless used expressions such as “the other branch of Yourouks” to separate Tahtacı and Yörük from one another, he was probably following the language he used as Turkish. After examining the physical characteristics of the Tahtacı, Felix von Luschan came to the conclusion that they were probably descendants of the pre-Greek population of Asia Minor, which corresponds to the Armenians . He saw the skull indices of 13 living and 2 deceased male Tahtacı, determined by his own measurements, as an important feature, which he described as surprisingly homogeneous and related to the archaeological ultra-brachycephalic and eminently hypsicephalic findings of pre-Greek times, which for a large part Of Asia Minor are characteristic. In contrast to earlier scholars - geographers and anthropologists - Jean-Paul Roux assumed a connection between the Tahtacı and pre-Islamic Central Asian Turkic peoples. Due to cultural-historical aspects - customs, traditions and traditions of the Tahtacı - Krisztina Kehl also considers the descent of the Tahtacı from an early Anatolian population to be “untenable”. Kehl relies primarily on the investigations of the Alevi author Yörüken, who collected the oral traditions of the Tahtacı about their origin, migration and composition, according to which the Tahtacı are said to have immigrated from Baghdad over the Çukurova to Anatolia over three hundred years ago . However, Kehl also emphasizes that there are no reliable findings on the origin and history of the Tahtacı, that the oral traditions can also be colored in the service of the legitimation of the hegemonic position of individual families and that the criteria for self-identification of this group are not sufficiently clarified. According to Reinhard, the Tahtacı do not call themselves Turkmen, but should be regarded as Turks. Andrews, on the other hand, states that the Tahtacı see themselves as Turkmens, although the Alevi loggers in some areas (e.g. in the Balıkesir province) call themselves Çetmi (for Çepni ) rather than Tahtacı.

Settlement areas

Settlement areas of the Tahtacı
Illustration by Tachtadschy in "Journeys in Lycia, Milyas and Kibyratis"

They live mainly in the Balıkesir and Çanakkale provinces . They also live in other provinces in Turkey. For the most part, their settlement areas are on the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts . They live in the following villages:

Villages in Antalya Province :

  • Elmalı : Akçainiş
  • Finike : Alacadağ , Arifköy , Gökbük
  • Kumluca : Beşikçi , Hızırkahya , Toptaş
  • Manavgat : Dolbazlar , Sağırin

Villages in Balıkesir Province :

  • Balıkesir : Türkali
  • Burhaniye : Pelitköy , Tahtacı , Taşçılar
  • Edremit : Arıtaşı , Çamcı , Doyran , Hacıhasanlar , Kavlaklar , Kızılçukur , Mehmetalan , Poyratlı , Tahtakuşlar , Yassıçalı
  • Kepsut : Mehmetler
  • Savaştepe : Kongurca

Villages in Canakkale Province :

  • Çanakkale : Akçeşme , Aykınoba , Çiftlikdere , Damyeri , Daşbaşı , Değirmendere , Denizgöründü , Elmacık , Gürecik , Kayadere , Kemerdere , Yenimahalle
  • Ayvacık : Bahçedere , Çakalini , Çiftlik , Durdağı , Güzelköy , Kokulutaş , Kıztaşı , Uzunalan
  • Bayramiç : Güven , Karıncalı
  • Ezine : Derbentbaşı , Eğridere , Koşuburun

Villages in Denizli Province :

  • Honaz : Dereçiftlik , Güzelköy

Villages in İzmir Province :

  • Bergama : Demircidere , giltepe , Kapıkaya , Yerlitahtacı

Villages in Manisa Province :

Villages in Mersin Province :

literature

  • Altan Gokalp: Ta kh ta dj i. In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Vol. 10, Brill, Leiden 2000, pp. 125f
  • Krisztina Kehl: The Tahtacı. Preliminary report on an ethno-religious group of traditional woodworkers in Anatolia . In: Ethnicity and Society - Problems of Ethnic Boundaries in Societies of the Near East and Middle East , Free University Berlin, Occasional Papers. Das Arabische Buch, Berlin 1988, pp. 1–70, ISBN 3-923446-30-6 ,
  • Y. Ziya Yörükhan: Anadolu'da Aleviler ve Tahtacılar , ISBN 975-17-1987-9

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Felix von Luschan : Wandering peoples of Asia Minor. In: Negotiations of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory , Berlin 1886, pp. 170f
  2. Krisztina Kehl, 1988, p. 6
  3. Theodore Bent: The Yourouks of Asia Minor . In: The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 20, 1891, pp. 269-276, here pp. 269f
  4. ^ Theodore Bent 1891, p. 270
  5. Krisztina Kehl, 1988, p. 9, with reference to Jean-Paul Roux: Les traditions des nomades de la Turquie meridionale . Paris 1970
  6. Krisztina Kehl, 1988, pp. 9-11
  7. Krisztina Kehl, 1988, pp. 7, 11f
  8. Krisztina Kehl 1988, p. 11f, with reference to Ziya Yörüken: Tahtacılar . In: Ilahiyet Fakanschesi Mecmuası, 12, Istanbul 1929, p. 68
  9. Krisztina Kehl, 1988, p. 11
  10. Krisztina Kehl, 1988, p. 12
  11. Krisztina Kehl, 1988, p. 14f
  12. ^ Kurt Reinhard : Turkish Music. ( Publications of the Museum für Völkerkunde, Volume IV, 1) Berlin 1962, p. 28
  13. Peter Alford Andrews (ed.): Ethnic Groups in the Republic of Turkey. Wiesbaden 1989, p. 69