Early in the 1960s, in a quiet quarter of Istanbul, I was taking an evening stroll with my Turkish host when our attention was caught by what seemed to be a kind of local Punch-and-Judy show. A small crowd was gathered around a movable booth, laughing at the sound of curious sharp voiced dialogue; but the chattering figures in front of them were not solid marionettes in the western style. The audience was watching two translucent, rich-hued images on a white screen, lit from behind, that fronted the upper part of the booth. The two images were bearded clown, capering in bright, old-fashioned Turkish costumes. My companion explained that these were the shadow-puppet figures of Karagoz and Hadjivat, and that this was a traditional Turkish entertainment, centuries old. Once an important amusement for sultans as well as for the people, it was name after the principal clown, Karagoaz. In fact, it had been much more than a jolly bit of child's play; for royalty and commoners alike, it was an important outlet for political and social satire. My friend translated some of the banter, which was surprisingly scabrous. There were children in the crowd, laughing at the rude jokes with the same enthusiasm as the adults, and no one seemed to mind. We watched for a few minutes, but I spoke no Turkish and we did not stay.
The adventures of Karagoz and Hadjivat
The adventures of Karagoz and Hadjivat, which have delighted Turkish audiences at least since the seventeenth century, represented a unique Islamic development of shadow puppetry that began in the orient, on the island of Java, and traveled to Turkey via Egypt. Early Arab performances were simple plotless spectacles that amused their audiences in much the same way that Lunmiere's first cinematic images of waves and other natural scenes entertained Europeans. (A twelfth-century poem describes such scenes as:
…two armies - one on land, on sea another -
multitudes of men, clad, for their bravery, in iron
mail and fenced about with points of sword and spear
…in the stream the fisher casts his net and draws
for fish…ravening monsters wreck the sips at sea…
in the wilds some animals hunt others…)
There were theological grumblings from certain muftis about the legitimacy of shadow theater. The representation of living things was forbidden by Islamic law because it challenged Allah's exclusive power to create. From the mosques there were complaints that the entertainment caused audiences to neglect their religious duties. But Turkish painting of human figures dated well back into pre-Islamic times. (Some of these remarkable early pictures are exhibited today in the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul.) In the beginning, Turkish shadow thereafter also portrayed dances and fighting among animals. But in the Middle Ages a human dimension appeared, with plots involving lovers, matchmakers, a witty dwarf, and two characters, Adjib and Garib, who foreshadowed Karagoz and Hadjivat in the later Turkish plays.
The influence of classical mime entered the tradition through the commedia dell'arte of Istanbul's large Italian community; and Jewish puppeteers, refuges from Spanish oppression, added their own element of conjuring tricks. But the roots of Karagoz
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