Abstract
Riddle, mâni and lullabies are oral cultural products that have survived up to the present day and have been preserved under the umbrella of anonymity in thousands of years of Turkish culture. These products, which have many social and artistic functions, reflect the common cultural values of the societies they belong to. Leaving their motherland and spreading to various geographies of the world, Turks also carried their material and spiritual cultural elements to the new places to which they migrated. In this geography known as the Turkish world, all material and spiritual elements of Turkish culture and the set of values that belong to these elements are preserved and kept alive. This common set of values, which can be traced in a wide area extending from Turkistan to the interior parts of Europe, from Siberia to the Persian Gulf, has taken a unique form in every geography, but in fact it has not undergone any changes. In other words, riddle, mâni and lullabies; The Turkish world, which includes many elements such as the worldview of the Turks, intelligence and reasoning power, aesthetic taste and perception, are the common products of folk literature. At the same time, these products, which are also one of the most common and rich types of oral culture, are known by various names in the Turkish world. The most important way to reveal the new forms of riddle, mâni and lullabies in different geographies and the interpretations in these geographies are compilations. Thanks to the field studies, many lost or unknown elements of the Turkish world come to light. One of the most important geographies for the Turkish world is Iran. Iran, where is estimated to have at least thirty million Turks, stands out as a country that hosts the most Turkish population after Turkey. Despite the crowded Turkish population in the country, few studies have been made on Iran Turkishness and Iran field of Turkish folk literature in Turkey. Among the Iranian Turkish communities, one of the communities that keep the nomadic or semi-nomadic Turkish culture alive today is the Shahsavan Turks. No study has been conducted so far, based on direct field re-search, on the oral culture products of Shahsavan Turks in Turkey. The main mass of Shahsavan Turks are constituted by those who migrated to this region from the Anatolian area at the beginning of the XVI century. As a natural result of the nomadic lifestyle, Shahsavan Turks have a developed oral culture treasury. In this study, firstly, Shahsavan Turks are introduced with summary info and afterwards, general information about oral cultural products such as riddle, mâni and lullabies which are the common features of Turkish world are shared. After general information about riddle, mâni and lullaby genres was given, the term equivalents of these genres in Shahsavan variant (taptapbaca/tapbaca, bayatı/buyatı, mahnı, laylay) were explained by taking into consideration the Azerbaijan field. As a result of field studies, examples of riddle, mâni and lullaby compiled from Shahsavan Turks were examined in terms of structure and subject, and the Turkey Turkish equivalents of these examples were presented in the study. In the conclusion part, a general evaluation of Shahsavan riddle, mâni and lullabies is carried out and attention is drawn to the richness of the oral culture tradition in Shahsavan Turks.