| household kills an animal, or has a share in killing one. This account is aimed to do no more than give some idea of the ceremonies to readers who happen not to know the rituals of Islam. There is far more detail which might be described. For the first time within memory, villagers from Sakaltutan went to Mecca in the autumn of 1949. It only became possible for Turks to do so in 1948, since before that the government had refused permission and foreign exchange. The return of the three Haci to Sakaltutan was the occasion of much rejoicing and hospitality in the village. Those who went were the richest of the villagers, Haci Ali (DT1), Haci Ahmet (SA 2) and Haci Mehmet (T1). the villagers not only perform correctly the ceremonies of Islam, they know a good deal about the theology, the lore and the traditions of their religion. On one occasion I mentioned the hadith, and was at once given a dull and correct account of the orthodox explanation of it. They knew details of the rules of Islamic inheritance, and the coming of Jesus, and about the day of Judgement, the four holy books of Islam, and other such religious matters. |
| 3. | Religious Education |
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| In the villages, the imam is seldom known as ¸¸imam“, he is referred to as ¸¸hoca“, teacher. Before the introduction of government schools, he was responsible not only for leading the ritual life of the village, but also for teaching the children. |
| XIV.3 | 218 |
| The school was attached to the Mosque, and learning to read meant, primarily, learning to read the Koran. The word for to read, ¸¸okumak“, means not only to read written characters, it also means to recite the Koran on any occasion when such recitation is necessary. The recitations during namaz, the call to prayer, the performing of Koranic spells, the ritual recitations at weddings and funerals are all okumak, quite apart from whether the person reciting is reading from a book from a book or not. Since there is no other word for reading, this leads on occasion to confusion. The idea of reading for amusement, and not from religious motives, aroused surprise, even a little disapproval. |
| The imam though no longer the village schoolmaster is still the source of religious instruction. The imam in office when i first went to Sakaltutan was not a good one. He endeavoured to conceal his ignorance of the Koran and of Islam in general behind a facade of bluster and pomposity, but he was no liked, and was often neglectful of his duties. He used to go off to Gn village, where his wife and his father lived, far more often than the villagers thought he should. Yet even he during the winter months ran for a short period a religious school for the village children who were not attending the state school. They would be taught a such lessons how to do namaz, passages from the Koran in Arabic for recitation and the elementary principles of the religion. The imam also instructs the adults. This first imam used to read out on Fridays a passage form a book, in Turkish, of explanation and exhortation. More important, the imam goes every day in winter to different oda to talk with the group sitting there. He will often on such occasion answer questions or tell stories of a religious character. Even when he is not present the conversation of ten turns on religion, and the older members, or those with a reputation for religious learning, will expound doctrine or relate stories. A great deal of the wide spread knowledge of Islam, and also some of the misapprehensions which one comes across stem form these spontaneous discussions. The imams themselves are not as a rule men of much education. |
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| XIV.3 219 |
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| None of them can understand the Arabic which they so assiduously learn to recite. Before the Republican revolution, there were schools for these village imams, presumably attached to or part of the ¸¸medreseler“, the theological collages which Ataturk abolished. These schools have recently reopened, no longer, of course, attached to the medrese, and a number of village boys are sent to them to learn to be imams. They are not taught to understand Arabic, but they are, of course, instructed in the meaning of the rituals and recitations, and in the basic doctrines of Islam. The more successful of these boys may become imams in the town Mosques. In the old days, this seems to have been one of the main routes, if not the only one, for the villager into town society. Both in their official capacity as imams, and through direct contact with their |
| kinsmen and neighbours these trained boys are a source of religious knowledge in the villages. |
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| Besides them, any person of education visiting the village may be questioned on religious subjects. Twice during my stay, the village was visited by an imam of higher status. One of these lived in S1 village, and had held some official position in a Mosque in Kayseri. He was regarded with very great reverence in the villages. On the occasion of his visit, to consult me about his son’s malaria, he conducted the Friday ceremony, and delivered two long harangues, one before the service, and one after reading form the Koran. He covered the five pillars of Islam, went through the whole gamut of moral duties to neighbours and kin, the greatness of the Prophet, the punishments of sinners, and the need for piety and regularity in ritual observance. The other visiting imam who took the Friday service did much the same, but at less length and with a less impressive manner. Such an august and reverend visitor, even though he came only from the next village, was an obvious person to question on religious matters. But the villagers tend to identify education and religious learning, and quite often political party chiefs, or government officials were questioned or at least brought into discussion of religious matters. |
| XIV.3 | 220 |
| Recently the village children have learnt the new latin script, and now there are on sale cheap little books, setting out phonetically in the new script the accepted pronunciation of the religious formulae, together with the Arabic, and a translation into modern Turkish. These little books also contain a simple statement o f the main principles of Islam. I have several times seen children in the village studying one of them. |
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| Most of these sources of instruction in religious matters are not open to the women. They never take part in masculine discussions, never attend the Mosque on Fridays, (1) and, of course they are not allowed to meet educated visitors to the village. Small girls do attend the lessons on religious matters given by the village imam, but for the most part girls and women learn from each other and perhaps to a certain extent from their close male kinsmen. Among the women there is no discussion of religious topics, no telling of religious stories, no knowledge of anything but the essential ritual, and the bar minimum of doctrine. In fact, the religion of the women is a separate subject. |
| I shall say something about it below. |
| 3. | Religious Practice |
| In spite of the keen interest of the men in their religion, and the extent of knowledge about it, both doctrinal ignorance and practical neglect of religious duties are common enough. It is possible that I overestimated the amount of discussion of religious matters in the men’s odalar, because the discussion which I heard were automatically aroused by, or at least adjusted to, my presence; nevertheless, it is significant that I was more often questioned about Christianity than about English social institutions and behaviour. There was a certain amount of discrepancy between account of religious matters which I was given at different times by different people, e.g., about the end of the world – in some versions, Jesus is to come and rule on earth for forty days, in others, Moses. The most surprising doctrinal ignorance concerns the Night of Power, the twenty-seventh night of Ramazan. |
| XIV.4 | 221 |
| No one in the village mentioned it to me, and when I asked about it no one seemed interested, and there were even statements that it is the last, not the twenty-seventh night of the month. It must be remembered that the level of knowledge to which I referred in the last paragraph does not apply to all, but only to a few of the more learned villages. The extent to which the acknowledges religious duties are performed can best be discussed in terms of the three principle sets of specifically religious injunctions which effect daily life, rules of hygiene, the performing of namaz, and the keeping of the fast of Ramazan. The ritual washing which immediately precedes any religious observance is not a part of hygiene in my present sense, because it is only done on specifically religious occasions and may be counted as part of the ritual of namaz. The other ritual ablutions, though failure to perform them debars one from religious observance of any kind, are rather conditions of a state in which one should always if possible keep oneself. Thus, in spite of the prudish attitude which prevents ready investigation, it seems to be the case that every child is immediately on taught to perform the appropriate ritual ablution (tahrat) immediately on defecation, and similarly both sexes after any sexual activity, including menstruation for a woman or emission for a man, carry out an over all ablution (“gusül”) at the earliest opportunity. |
| Ritual ablution is not the only form of hygiene which Islam requires. Nails should be kept short, and the elderly men even shave their heads, saying it is a religious duty. In these matters the rules are on the whole fairly strictly kept, but systematic observation of the extent of and the reasons for lapses is not possible. The performance of namaz and the attendance at he Mosque are, on the other hand, public actions which are readily observable. Attendance at the Friday ceremony varies greatly with the seasons, so equally does the regularity of namaz. The villagers say that to do namaz with day to day irregularity is XIV.4 222 A sin. Either a man should do it regularly five times a day, making up with extra ones if he missed one, or else he should not do it at all. In practice, this means that if a man is too busy, and misses one or two consecutive prayer times, he will give up all together for a while. A man who is not doing regular namaz will go to the Mosque of Friday at mid-day, but will leave after the reading form the Koran, and the two special namaz which are done under the leadership of the imam. The company then should do a further ten namaz on their own, and it is these which people not doing regular namaz omit. One can thus easily notice who is and who is not doing regular namaz. It is equally simple to observe who is and who is not keeping the fast during Ramazan. Those shoe are not keeping it can be seen eating, drinking or smoking although the villagers accuse each other, more or less jokingly, of secret eating and drinking, I found people quite ready to admit when they were not keeping the fast. In fact it would be very difficult to do much surreptitious eating, and in any case, the motive for keeping the fast is fear of God rather than of public disapproval. It was not possible to gather statistics of performance in these rituals, but my impressions have been carefully tested, and I think are fairly accurate. Among the men, piety is single. Knowledge of lore and doctrine, and practice o f namaz and fasting vary together. It is rare to find a man meticulous about he performance of his ritual duties and ignorant of the theoretical side of his religion. The practice of namaz and attendance at Mosque vary seasonally. Also, piety usually increases with age, and is more marked among the richer families of higher status. |