“Kemine” Short Stories Told in Turkestan

Abstract

The original name of what is known as Kemine eommonly in the area of Turkestan, espeeially in Turkoman oral literatüre, and to a lesser extent in the Kirghiz, Kazakh and Uzbek oral literatures is Memmetveli [Mehmet Veli]. The information about Kemine is more in the form of oral sayings rather than historical facts. It has been surmised that he was bom in 1770s and died in 1840s around the age of 70. It has been said that he had religious education under the guidance of a mollah for 6-7 years after his primary education. As a poet, he used "Molla Veli" and "Kemine" as his pen names. It has been said that the reason vvhy he used the pen name "Kemine" is due to its meanings of "ili will", "inferiority" and "extreme modesty". He has been accepted and appreciated by the Turks living in the area of Turkestan because of his poverty, sense of humor and artistic qualities. He has been stili popular in the Turkestan oral culture as a poet and espeeially as "a popular anacdote character". In this article, after a brief and general revision of Kemine's poems collected through oral tradition, the issue of his becoming "a popular aneedote character" among people has been focused on. The perspeetives of Turkish research ers on Kemine and majör characteristics of the aneedotes have been analyzed in parallel with the aneedotes given in the appendix of this article. Another appendix to this article is the Turkey Turkish translation of 62 Turkoman Turkish aneedotes from a study (Ahundov 1940) which has not been very eommonly used in literatüre related to Kemine.