On the Novel of Ayaz Ishakî’s Mulla Babay

Abstract

Ayaz İshakî was born on February 23, 1878 in Kazan. He attended Tatar Teacher Training School after training in madrasa. Ishakî, who started to write in this period, published many newspapers and magazines throughout his life, and also wrote plays, stories, novels, etc. He died in Ankara on July 22, 1954. Ishakî, who is a journalist, writer and politician, tended toward socialism for a while, but he changed his orientation because the developments were not as he desired. Tercüman newspaper, which he read in his youth, laid the foundations for his nationalist and liberal ideas. Ishakî emphasized Tatar/Turkish identity in his works and tried to benefit from the phenomenon of religion to protect the Tatars, acting with a pragmatist perception. Mulla Babay is written in Finland (1910) and published in Kazan (1912). In this novel, Halim, an intelligent Tatar young man who studied at the madrasa, was put in the center, and a critical approach towards the traditionalist understanding was displayed. In this work, the education life of Halim, who was born in a village near the Kazan, as the youngest son of a modest peasant family, started in the village madrasa and then continued in two different madrasas in the city. Through Halim’s madrasa education, the traditionalist tradition is tried to be shown to the readers. In this study, based on text analysis, the linguistic and stylistic features of the work will be discussed, thus contributing to a better understanding of both the work and the author.

Ethical committee approval is not required for this research.

The author declares no conflicts of interest in this study.

This research received no external funding.