FUNCTIONS OF TRANSFIGURATION MOTIF IN THE VELAYETNAMES VELAYETNAMELERDE GEÇEN ŞEKİL DEĞİŞTİRME MOTİFİNİN FONKSİYONLARI

With the acceptance of ṣūfī thought movements in the Islamic world from the 9th century, hagiographies beganto be written in which the life stories and miraculous deeds of the ṣūfīs were narrated. The hagiographieswritten about the saints who belong to the Bektashi tradition are called “velāyetnāme". Velāyetnāmes arerich works in terms of the motif and motif diversity. “Transfiguration” is one of these motifs. Apart fromthe function of transfiguration / metamorphism, punishing and getting out of the difficult situation, it alsoappears with different functions in velāyetnāmes. İn this study Hacı Bektaş Veli, Hacim Sultan, OthmanBaba, Koyun Baba, Şücaeddin Velī, Abdal Mūsa, Kaygusuz Abdal, Seyyid Ali Sultan, Demir Baba, VeliBaba, Pirī Baba, Dediğī Sultan menāqıbnāmes which are known as Bektashi velāyetnāmes; Akhī Evranand Sheikh Abu al-Vafā menāqıbnāmes were examined. The shape-shifting motifs related to our subjectwere functionally classified and compared with their examples in other narrative genres. In the article,transfiguration / metamorphism motifs identified in Bektashi velāyetnāmes were divided into sub-headingsof transfiguration aimed at punishing, rewarding, overcoming a difficult situation, fulfilling a certainrequest, lessoning, protecting, proving guardianship, communicating, defeating the opponent, separatingthose who fight, covering the distances, helping those in need, warning those who envy the saint, deceiving,fulfilling a certain task and these motifs have been studied functionally. In this study, the different functionsof the shape-shifting motifs in the velāyetnāmes, along with the punishment and getting rid of the difficultsituation, will be revealed.Keywords: Motif, Velāyetnāme, Transfiguration, Metamorphosis.