Rain Prayer (İstiska) Traditions in Çorum

The rain prayer held in Çorum in times of drought is also known locally as istiska (asking for water). The book 2006 Yılında Çorum’da Yaşayan Geleneksel Kutlamalar (Traditional Celebrations Living in Çorum in 2006), published by the Turkish Folklore Society of Hitit University, holds eleven recordings of the practice, taken from informants in spring 2006 in Boğazkale, Dodurga, Laçin, Ortaköy, Oğuzlar and villages of Merkez (the city centre). All of them are summarised below. Each account is the form given by the informant in the place where it was recorded; timing, length and detail differ between localities.

Common elements

The elements that recur across the records are: repentance, alms and the return of wrongfully taken property before the prayer; the reconciliation of people who are at odds; hymns, takbir and Qur’an recitation; a two-rak’ah rain prayer and a sermon; a sacrificial animal slaughtered and dishes such as pilaf or stew served to the participants; and palms held facing downward during the prayer, with garments worn inside out in some places. When rainfall has been sufficient the same gathering is held as a thanksgiving prayer (şükür duası); several records state this explicitly.

Boğazkale: the Nöbeti Baba Rain Prayer

According to the book, on the second Sunday of every May the Evci municipality holds the “Traditional Nöbeti Baba Rain Prayer, Reconciliation and Peace Events” in Boğazkale; in the year of recording it is called the 116th such event, or a custom kept “for 116 years”. It takes place led by an imam on Nöbeti Baba Hill at the summit of Mount Aygar. The programme begins with a minute’s silence for martyrs and the national anthem, followed by Qur’an recitation and religious talks by the mufti and imams; the source stresses there is no entertainment that day and that it takes place in a wholly spiritual atmosphere. After the noon prayer, cauldrons of pilaf topped with fried meat are served with ayran. One account in the record says Nöbeti Baba lived in the Seljuk period and was killed as a martyr while on watch on this hill; further on in the same record it is said that the period he lived is unknown, that he was a scholar, that he was reportedly killed while on watch and that his grave is in the tomb. People from surrounding villages, the districts of Sungurlu, Alaca and Boğazkale, and from Yozgat and Kırıkkale attend, and the record gives 3,000-4,000 participants from the district centres and surrounding villages; sacrificial meat and bulgur pilaf are served, which people call the zilyat celebration. In years of little rain a rain prayer is held, in years of heavy rain a thanksgiving prayer.

Dodurga

• District-wide: The record says a rain prayer is held in June-July, especially on Fridays. Men take part with an imam, women with a female religious teacher. It is described as proper to give alms before going out, to repent and to return anything taken unjustly; people who are at odds are reconciled and admitted to the prayer, and those who will not reconcile are sent back. On the first day people go to a shrine, singing hymns along the way. The prayer lasts three days; the tombs of Arap Dede, Kırklar, Ahmet Dede, Çakır Kırana and Gölbağı are among those visited. On the last day an animal is sacrificed at the Gölbağı tomb; pilaf and helva are also made, mostly cooked by men, and given to everyone. The record says women wear the local garment called çar during the prayer: a white one-piece garment embroidered with coloured thread, in which only the eyes, hands and toes show.
• Hüsam Dede Tekke village: The record says that in April-May people walk early in the morning to the Hüsam Dede Tomb; some elders fast before going. A sacrificial animal bought with money collected beforehand is brought to the prayer site. After the prayer men gather stones and soak them in the river; a prayer is written on the forehead of a horse’s head, which is soaked and buried in the river, and villagers believe that through this the rain will be abundant. If it rains too much, the buried horse’s head and the stones are taken back out. For the Hüsam Dede Tomb see Mehmet Dede and Hüsam Dede Tombs.

Laçin

The record says a rain prayer is held in June-July, especially on Fridays, and that villages show more interest in it. First money is collected for the sacrifice, and depending on the village’s size sheep, goats, cattle or water buffalo are bought and a village meal is prepared, in some villages keşkek made of cracked wheat. After the Friday prayer people line up from oldest to youngest, and those at odds are reconciled. Leaving the mosque, the congregation takes the old banner of the village tomb, if there is one; with the banner in front, the imam and people with good voices, they walk to the prayer site with takbir, salawat and hymns. After a two-rak’ah prayer the imam gives a sermon on unity, solidarity, prayer and the wrongness of holding a grudge. After repentance outer garments are taken off and put on inside out, hands are turned downward and the rain prayer is recited. After the prayer a meal is eaten, and food is taken to the sick and elderly who could not come. The record says that in Laçin and in some of its villages there is a custom of drawing a boundary: the imam and hafızes recite the Qur’an and mark out the boundaries of the land for which rain is asked.

Beydili village (Merkez): Ağpınar Cleaning and Rain Prayer

In the record, the “Ağpınar Cleaning and Rain Prayer” day is held at Beydili in May or June. At about eight in the morning young men clean the Ağpınar spring with shovels; the cleaning takes about two hours, and only those who will clean come to the spring. During the cleaning a sacrificial animal bought jointly by the villagers is slaughtered; it is prepared in the school garden, men prepare the meat and women cook the dishes (stew of the sacrificial meat, bulgur with chicken, helva, salad, ayran, flatbread). After the noon prayer the villagers gather in the school garden, male guests from surrounding villages (sometimes ten or fifteen villages, says the record) are hosted, and each village’s imam prays separately. The congregation holds its hands downward and some wear jackets and caps inside out. The record also tells a story about the spring: a wealthy landlord who seized the village water had a daughter who fell in love with the village shepherd; the two ran away and threw themselves into the spring, and their bodies were never found. By belief, the “Dede” (a holy elder) inside the spring drew them in; it is believed the dede is at the spot where the water boils upward in the middle of the spring, and that spot is avoided during cleaning. The informants say brides’ heads were once washed at Ağpınar, and that for twenty to thirty years people have gone to the bathhouse instead.

Ortaköy

In the record, rain prayer is held every April-May. Before it people repent, return wrongfully taken property, give alms to the poor and perform a two-rak’ah istiska prayer in the open. The preacher does not climb the pulpit; he gives the sermon standing, leaning on a sword, arrow or stick. People go out for istiska three days in a row, wearing old, patched but clean clothes and walking to the prayer site. They circle the shrine three or seven times with takbir. Children, domestic animals and their young are taken along; children are kept apart from their mothers and animals from their young for a while, the children cry and the young animals bleat. The congregation collects money, buys a bull and sacrifices it, and pilaf is made from the meat.

Oğuzlar

The record describes a three-day rain prayer held in Oğuzlar in March-April. The decision is announced to the congregation and it is declared that three days of fasting must be kept. On the first day, after the morning prayer, people go with takbir and tahlil to a place called Körükkıran and from there together to the Karadonlu Can Baba Tomb; Yasin is recited, part of the congregation gathers chickpea-sized stones, a hundred each, from the surroundings and washes them, the washed stones are recited over with verses by appointed people (the aim is for the number of stones recited to reach seventy thousand), a Sultan-Nariye recitation is made 4,444 times, and the recited stones are emptied into a well dug beside the Oğuz Stream while the Qur’an is read. On the second day people gather at the neighbourhood mosques and again hold an istiska prayer at the Karadonlu Can Baba Tomb; they then head for Kızıltepe, northeast of the town, visiting places and tombs on the way, reconciling people who are at odds, and eating at the Fındıkkıran locality the sacrificial animals slaughtered that morning. On the third day a prayer procession walks from the Karadonlu Can Baba tomb southwest toward Tekke Dağı; at Gökçukur the highland villagers’ hospitality, a sacrifice and the istiska prayer take place, with everyone putting jackets on inside out and turning their hands over to join the prayer of the religious official. The procession goes to the place called Erler Yüksekliği, described as the highest point in Oğuzlar, where prayers are said and the Qur’an is read; prayer is performed at the prayer ground at Tekkelik and at Hacet Tepesi, where a sermon specific to the rain prayer is read, and after the prayer a dish of sacrificial meat and chickpeas is eaten, and on the way back prayers are read at the Oğuzlar cemetery and people part after asking each other’s forgiveness at the Karadonlu Can Baba Tomb. The record also relays, per the informant, that in years without rain a horse was sacrificed at the Mehmet Dede Lodge.

Merkez

In the record, istiska is held in Çorum in April or May in dry seasons and lasts three days. On the first day people gather with five neighbouring villages, everyone asks others’ forgiveness, those at odds reconcile, and village imams pray; afterwards the men collect forty thousand porous, sponge-like stones, share them equally among the villages, read verses of the Qur’an over them and soak them in the river. On the second day sermons and advice are given in the mosques and the crowd goes to a different shrine to pray and sing hymns; the source gives the words of a hymn (not reproduced here). Before the prayer jackets and clothes are worn inside out, caps are turned around, and the raised hands point their fingers downward. On the third day each village sacrifices an animal among themselves; the meal called hayır aşı is given to the poor with prayers and eaten together. The record says the third-day practice is a thanksgiving prayer, performed whether or not it rains; lambs separated from their mothers are made to bleat and nursing children are made to cry to convey that “the earth asks for water like young ones deprived of milk”.

Palabıyık, Çalıca and Kiranlık villages

• Palabıyık village: In the record, the rain prayer in Palabıyık, described as “attached to Çorum centre” (the book’s heading reads Çorum/Cemilbey/Palabıyık Köyü), is held every year in the period from 15 May to 15 June or the end of June. When rain has not fallen for a long time and drought sets in, the villagers gather and go to the Garip Baba Tomb at the entrance of the village, where the village imam recites the Qur’an and prayers are said. Sacrificial animals are then slaughtered in front of the tomb, the village women cook the meal, and everyone eats together.
• Çalıca village: In the record, the rain prayer in Çalıca is held every year between April and May, usually on the open ground near the village tomb known as the “Dedenin Türbesi” (the Tomb of the Dede, a holy elder). According to the informant, an imam and preacher, the tomb matters greatly to the villagers, and rain that falls after the prayer is believed to fall for the sake of the holy man buried there. A suitable day and place are set, and money is collected from the villagers until that day to buy a sacrificial animal. On the day the whole village goes to the prayer site led by the imam; the men perform a two-rak’ah prayer and the imam gives a sermon and addresses the congregation. At the end of the sermon everyone stands and opens their hands with the palms facing the ground; women and men gather separately and answer the imam’s prayer with “amen”. The meat of the sacrificed animal is cooked at the prayer site, together with pilaf, soup and helva. When it is announced that the food is ready, villagers come with their own dishes to collect it; tables are laid at the site, men and women eat separately, and then everyone disperses.
• Kiranlık village: In the record, the rain prayer in Kiranlık, described as “attached to Çorum centre”, is held in dry periods of the year, between May and June. It is held either at festivities organised on a set day of the year by associations founded in the big cities, or jointly with neighbouring villages; recently it has also been held in the mosque. According to the record, April and May are the months when the crops shoot up, form ears and fill their grain, and rain is needed most at that time. In the village the shrines of holy figures are considered sacred and nothing there is touched; in a story told by the informant, a villager who took wood from around a shrine and burned it began to lose his sheep, and they recovered once he put the rest of the wood back. Another practice of the prayer is stone gathering: a hundred stones are collected, suras are recited over each one (three İhlâs and one Fatiha, says the record), and the stones are gathered in a bag and buried in running water in or near the village; the record says this is done to evoke the falling of rain. Before this a prayer is performed; the supplication is made standing and always led by religious teachers, and during it the congregation turns its hands first toward the sky and then toward the ground. After the prayer an animal is sacrificed around the shrine; the meat is given to the poor and the rest is eaten by those who took part.

Notes

The book records the practices in the words of informants; it does not discuss the origin or religious interpretation of some elements in the records (reciting over stones, the horse’s head, boundary drawing, inside-out clothing). All eleven rain-prayer records in the book are summarised on this page; the Palabıyık, Çalıca and Kiranlık records were collected in April and May 2006. For the book’s At Kesme (horse slaughter) record see Koç Katımı and At Kesme Ceremonies in Çorum. For the tombs visited in the records see Karadonlu Can Baba Tomb and Mehmet Dede and Hüsam Dede Tombs.

Sources

• M. Öcal Oğuz and Tuğçe Işıkhan (eds.), 2006 Yılında Çorum’da Yaşayan Geleneksel Kutlamalar, Hitit Üniversitesi Fen Edebiyat Fakültesi Türk Halkbilimi Topluluğu Yayınları: 6, Ankara 2006, pp. 31-49 (rain prayer recordings). https://hacibayram.edu.tr/api/files/1/Hac%C4%B1bayram%20AHBV/thbmer(tr-TR)/GELENEKSEL%20KUTLAMALAR.pdf