Abstract:

Religious persons born in extraordinary ways are heroes who’ve been granted holiness and protection from God. Fatima, the daughter of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, was an extraordinary person who was conceived through an apple which God sent through Gabriel. Fatima is a strong heroine in Islam and is believed will help Muslim women on the Day of Judgment. The study takes the mawlid text titled “Mawlid -i Fatimatü’z-Zehra”, registered at the Süleymaniye Library as Manuscript Donations Number 05846 and located between pages 6b -10b , as its subject. This text is bound together with another manuscript in verse titled “Mi’râcü’n-Nebi”. Although largely similar to the text titled “Viladetnâme-i Hazret-i Fatima,” studied by Hakan Yekbaş and belonging to the mathnawi collection of Süleyman Memdûh, contains some differences in terms of the number and content of the couplets. The transliterated text of the manuscript is provided at the end of this study. The study aims to show the psychology of the Turkish nation and the creativity in its imagination by considering the symbol of the apple as a sacred and religious motif. The study discusses and evaluates this subject under the headings of text analysis methods, hermeneutic perspective and content, language-expression/structure, context/execution, and function based on the work “Mawlid -i Fatimatü’z-Zehra”. The study objectively addresses the subject based on certain Ahl al-Sunnah, Shiite, and Alevi sources. As a result, Fatima, who is accepted as the matron of the midwifery profession, and the Mother Fatima cult are seen to fulfill the function of healing and maintaining birth, with the study evaluating the work as a liminal text in terms of folklore.

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