With a large part of Alevi traditions in today’s Dersim/Tunceli hardly being practiced anymore, most contemporary singers of the region are deeply influenced by the beliefs and aesthetics of the “path of god”. This talk aims to briefly describe former rituals, their (musical) actors, such as pirs/dedes, dervishes and koceks, together with the wide range […]

The study of manuscripts from Alevi communities has undergone a remarkable upswing over the last decades. Increasingly, we learn more about the predominantly religious knowledge that was preserved in writing. The variety of manuscripts known so far is broad: They encompass, among others, notebooks, ritual manuals, poem anthologies, treatises, narratives, epics, certificates, and family trees. […]