Being Muslim at the Margins – MERIP

Excerpt

On January 6, 2008, newspapers in the province of Tunceli in eastern Turkey appeared festooned with the holiday wishes, “May your Gaghand be merry.” [1] Celebrated on the same day as Armenian Christmas and bearing the same name, Gaghand is an important, if almost forgotten event in the religious calendar of Tunceli, or Dersim, to use the area’s historical appellation. In the villages of Dersim, bearded men calling themselves Gaghand Baba (Father Christmas) pay visits to children and the elderly, offering them presents of sweets and pistachios. Historical accounts from the early twentieth century also mention a ritual administered by religious leaders the very same day and highly reminiscent of Holy Communion. [2]

The people of Dersim are not Christians, but Alevis, a catch-all term for a variety of ethno-religious minorities in Turkey whose core religious heritage is Islamic but whose beliefs and practices are highly varied and syncretistic. [3] In Dersim, Christian and other influences infuse a heterodox Islam of distant Shi‘i origin whose adherents do not normally pray in mosques, fast in Ramadan, accept the Qur’an as a source of jurisprudence or make the pilgrimage to Mecca. Like many Alevis, they do commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussein on the plains of Karbala’ in the month of Muharram, a reminder of the Shi‘i component of their tradition.

Quotes

Highlights

• On January 6, 2008, newspapers in the province of Tunceli in eastern Turkey appeared festooned with the holiday wishes, “May your Gaghand be merry.” [1] Celebrated on the same day as Armenian Christmas and bearing the same name, Gaghand is an important, if almost forgotten event in the religious calendar of Tunceli, or Dersim, to use the area’s historical appellation. In the villages of Dersim, bearded men calling themselves Gaghand Baba (Father Christmas) pay visits to children and the elderly, offering them presents of sweets and pistachios. Historical accounts from the early twentieth century also mention a ritual administered by religious leaders the very same day and highly reminiscent of Holy Communion. [2]

Sources