And similar in both traditions are the stories of how the...

And similar in both traditions are the stories of how the boys climbed on their grandfather Prophet’s back, and how he fondled them. Thus, Hasan and Husain appear, in early Turkish songs, in various, and generally well known images, but to emphasize their very special role, Yunus Emre calls them ‘the two earrings of the divine Throne’ (4).

The imagery becomes even more colorful in the following centuries when the Shi’i character of the Bektashi order increased and made itself felt in ritual and poetical expression. Husain b. ‘Ali is ‘the secret of God’, the ‘light of the eyes of Mustafa’ (thus Seher Abdal, 16th cent.), and his contemporary, Hayrettin, calls him, in a beautiful marthiya, ‘the sacrifice of the festival of the greater jihad’. Has not his neck, which the Prophet used to kiss, become the place where the dagger fell?

The inhabitants of heaven and earth shed black tears today. And have become confused like your hair, O Husain. Dawn sheds its blood out of…