Conceiving the Medieval Ottoman Music Culture Through Legendary Narratives

Most of the studies about the Medieval Ottoman Music Culture have been concentrated on the richtheoretical sources of the period, but the music researchers usually have not paid enough attention tothe “musical symbolism” that can be found in the “legendary narratives” of the Medieval Ottomanperiod. However, these sources that have parallelism with the theoretical sources of the period interms of sharing a wisdom based perception of “nature-God-humanity” through “Ahi, Bayrami, Vefaiand Kalenderi” belief systems, act as main sources to represent the “Khorasan-based wisdom” thathad a constructive power for the Ottoman culture through a very strong symbolism that can be easilyrelated with musical culture. These resources, together with some narratives, chronicles, literaturesources, religious texts and travellers’ notes also carry some important and critical knowledge aboutthe religious practices of the 14th-15thcentury Anatolia such as sema and semah applications. Theseexamples notify the importance of religious music and dance in the zikir practices of MedievalAnatolia and present the details of how the people were perceiving the cosmos through music anddance. Moreover based on these sources, it is possible to gain an insight about the transmission of thisperception of life until today, through the philosophic foundations like “Ahi” and “Abdal” cultures.In this paper, various sources of the 15th century will be examined including various legendarynarratives, narratives about the saints, literature sources, religious texts and travellers’ notes to detectthe “symbolic musical details” and “music originated belief details” in these writings.