Aşık İsrafil Uzunkaya was born in 1957 in Eşmepınar (Purut) village, Çıldır district, Ardahan. The tradition of minstrelsy still maintains its existence today in Northeastern Anatolia Region. In this region, especially Çıldır has witnessed the emergence of many minstrels up to now, as it has a unique tradition and school of its own. During field research, we observed that Aşık İsrafil was also interested in the theoretical information we conveyed through various examples, the tradition of minstrelsy, knowledge of genre and form, and what we explained about the wider Turkish geography. All these facts contributed to the maturation of the minstrel's thoughts regarding story classification, and he classified his stories accordingly. These are the story of Aşık Şenlik's daughter Gülenaz Hanım, written upon the request of Ramazan Korkmaz, and the stories that emerged during our conversations, such as Erdoğan and Almagül, Kanlı Beşik (Bloody Cradle), Gülşah and Alişan. So far, Aşık İsrafil has classified 10 stories. In this study, we mainly aim to examine the current situation of minstrel style story-telling classification in terms of both content and structure, based on Aşık İsrafil's storytelling examples.
Aşık İsrafil, Story Classification, Tradition, İntroduction, Story-Telling Tradition