Menkıbeler sözlü ve yazılı olarak; anlatma geleneği içerisinde yahut eserler vasıtasıyla asırlar boyu kuşaktan kuşağa iletilen, tıpkı diğer türler gibi halk muhayyilesinde gelişmiş, onun kültürünü yansıtmada başlangıçtan beri taşıyıcı unsur olmuştur. Halkın dini inancını, inanmalarını içerisinde barındırmış, bu da ona farklı ve kutsal sayılan bir statü kazandırmıştır; zira onun bünyesinde taşıdığı kahramanlar yaşamış ve vefatlarından sonra dahi halkın kutsal sayıp değer verdiği kişiler olmuştur. Sosyolojik işlevi açısından da önem arz eden söz konusu mahsuller, toplumdaki aksaklıkları veya bozuklukları, genel olarak veli adını verdiğimiz şahısların gösterdiği bir takım kerametler ile toplumun kutsalları aracılığıyla, insanları etki altına almak suretiyle düzeltmekte; onların yer yer bulunan kabirleri ve bu kabirler etrafında teşekkül eden anlatıları ise, kutsalların ve ahlaki bir takım değerlerin unutulmasını engellemekte, yeni nesillere dini ve örfi değerlerin aktarımını sağlayarak toplum üzerinde kontrol mekanizması kurmaktadır. Gezilen, görülen yahut duyulan mekânların resmedildiği zengin kültür hazineleri ise seyyahlar vasıtasıyla kaleme alınan seyahatnâme adlı eserlerdir. Çalışmamamıza kaynaklık edecek olan Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi edebi mahsullerin birçoğunu barındıran, menkıbe açısından da menâkıbnâme sayılabilecek kadar kapsamlı, çok geniş bir coğrafyayı içine alan bir kaynaktır. Bu makalede, Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi'nde tespit edip inceleme şansı bulduğumuz menkıbeler, Anadolu sahası özelinde, Ahmet Yaşar Ocak'ın menâkıbnâmeler ile ilgili motif tasnifinden hareketle irdelenecektir

Menkıbe (religious anecdotes), inherited from generation to generation within oral literary tradition, just like other literary productions, bloomed in public imagination and became a dominant element in reflecting the culture. It contained people's religious beliefs and faith; and thus, attained a sacred status. This is due to the fact that the heroes were real life figures and conserved their high esteem even after their deaths. Having sociological functions, the literary products in question correct the disruption and disorder within a society with the help of wonders demonstrated by 'veli' (the patrons). In addition, the narratives forming around their tombs distributed in separate places prevent sacred and moral set of values to be forgotten and ensure a kind of control mechanism over the society by transferring religious and traditional values to new generation. On the other hand, travelogues are the rich cultural treasures, written by travelers, depicting the visual and spatial qualities of places visited. Evliya Celebi Seyahatnamesi (Travelogues) forms the main source of this paper in that its content covers a vast area to be also considered as religious anecdote. In this article, the anecdotes, specific to Anatolia region, detected and reviewed in Evliya Celebi Travelogue will be analyzed in detail with reference to Ahmet Yasar Ocak's classification of motifs Having a significant place in Turkish oral cultural history, the anecdotes (menkibe) are seen as sacred texts, and supreme qualities are attributed to the described people as well as to the narrators so that they came to be known as saints, protectors etc. The narratives of those people were not only shaped within the Islamic period, but also enriched with the other belief systems - such as Shamanism and Tengrism - the first religions of the Turks. The researchers have examined the presence of a small structure bringing out the miracles; and, accordingly they published several works on the functions and contributions of these structures on the text. In this study, the motif classification of religious anecdotes extracted from Evliya Celebi Seyahatname is conducted. In the Introduction part of the article, the concepts of "travelogue, anecdote and motif" were briefly highlighted. In the body part, the motifs from the 107 anecdotes in Evliya Çelebi travelogues were categorized under sixteen headings and thirty-three subheadings. In addition, I added Ahmet Yaşar Ocak's motif classification method though most of them are not in the text. The humans always wanted to explore more of the natural beauties, geographical beauties and historical places surrounding their residence; and wondered about the languages, life styles, family structure, customs and traditions, and the regime of people living in other places. The sense of wonder pushed people to wander around the earth, and the need to tell about the places revealed a kind of new literary text - travelogues.Travelogues are one of the important sources of literature in terms of their scope. Many genres can be observed in the travelogues written in the manner of a collector, and the religious anecdotes (menkıbe) are among these genres. The motif, on the other hand, is the building block supporting and reviving the text and preventing it to be forgotten. With specific to anecdotes, it is one of the most important elements which ensure people's belief and faith, their reaching to upper consciousness level, passing moral values to younger generation - through the saintly people with supernatural powers. After these definitions, we can do the motif classification of anecdotes in Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnamesi as follows: The motifs of miracle related to saint's body: The things which are dangerous for normal people become common for saintly figures. • The occurrence of extraordinary events during childbirth • Ability to traverse great distances in an instant • Ability to fly • Ability to survive without eating, drinking, and sleeping • Not affected by deadly and destructive things • Having no sexual desires • Knowing the time and place of their death beforehand • The occurrence of extraordinary circumstances during and after death The motifs of miracles on natural materials: The main four elements in the nature - water, earth, fire, and air - mediate for the miracles. • Changing the shape, size, and length of materials • Making fruitless tress grow fruits • Managing natural forces and events as they wish • Spouting rock from earth or water from rock • Walking on the river, lake, or sea • Hearing and making others hear the dhikr of non-living things • Using non-living things in their service The motifs of miracles related to animals: The animals act as the helper of miracles in situations such as punishing the non-believers or helping those in need. • Subordinating wild animals The motifs of miracles taking place on secret things: One of the most important characteristics of a saint is, without doubt, prophesying and mind reading, which ordinary people are unable to do. • Mind reading • Seeing and showing the events taking place in other parts of the world • Reporting from the past • Prophesying The motifs of miracles on sacred, superhuman, and hidden powers: The saints see and talk to prophets of the God in a state of trance (being awake in spiritual realm) • Seeing prophets and having training from them • Seeing Hızır (Providential Help) and Deceased Dervishes The motifs of miracles in biological nature: Healing and raising someone from the dead. Changing gender although it is an anti-sunni feature. • Reviving the bones • Changing gender • Healing The motifs of miracles for the faithful: The miracles are in the form of moral and material support for those accepting the saint's holiness. • Raising others to holiness • Bringing fertility • Saving people from dangers and harms • Recovering people from disasters • Fighting the dragon and saving the people The motifs of miracles for those not accepting the holiness of the saint: The miracles generally occur for the Muslim people. Only in one case a non-believing Jewish is mentioned. • Prevailing fellow saints with the help of miracles, making him a disciple • Transforming the stick to a dragon • Pestering the enemies with disasters Prayer and/or curse motif: It is in the form of sending aid to believers, and trouble to non-believers. Dream motif: The motifs of showing miracles in spiritual realm and reporting unknown incidents are shown intertwined in the text. The motif of dying after his secrets are revealed: When his holiness is revealed, he changes location or dies for the fear that he can be defeated by his ego. The motif of reporting the unknown incidents: Making non-belivers believe or strenghtining the faith of belivers is seenn only in the latter form in Evliya Çelebi.The motifs of being born and dying together: The twin brothers who generally raised to holliness together die at the same time. The motif of changing shapes: The saint protects himself and others from the evil and sins. The motifs of speaking to supernatural beings: A saint talks with the human form of plague, prays with it, and talks about the spiritual world. The focus of the present study is Evliya Çelebi as one of the most important traveler of world history and his travelogue, who presented the architecture, life style, customs and traditions, literary productions of his destinations. If this masterpiece is examined in detail, it will be observed that the writer had also a great taste for literature. From this viewpoint, while its content has many genres from story to myth, anecdotes to memorandum and presents its immense treasure to us, we had substantial data not only related to anecdotes as the focus of this study, but also related to other literary genres. I classified a broad range of motifs and examined 41 motifs from 107 anecdotes under 13 headings. Some new Sunni and anti-Sunni motifs, which have not been classified before, were discovered. These motifs were presented as followups to Ahmet Yaşar Ocak's classification so as not to disturb its order. It is argued that the motifs found in the text will encourage further studies and act as a sample for similar endeavors. Though we must consider only a small part of this great volume as the socio-cultural corpus of a large geography, this masterpiece waits to be academically examined in a similar way travelers pursue.