Mardin’de Kadim Bir Bahar Bayramı: Hassit Merene (Yılanların Uyanışı)
An Ancient Spring Festival in Mardin: Hassit Merene (Awakening of the Snakes)

Summary/Abstract: Throughout human history, changes in nature and natural events have directly affected people. Although at first helplessness and ignorance in the face of the power of nature led to the need to worship the elements in nature, human beings, who began to understand nature over time, made sense of the events and changes in nature in their own way and looked for ways to benefit from it. He developed various ceremonies and rituals based on day-night change and seasonal transformations in accordance with nature’s calendar and discovered ways to live in peace with nature. It is possible to see traces of mythical elements based on the oldest belief systems in the basis of most of these. One of these is a seasonal festival called Hassit Merene (Awakening of the Snakes) - covering the first week of April - which has been held in Mardin for centuries. Merene is a word formed by combining the Persian word mâr (snake) and the suffix -ân (plural suffix) - although its original name is mârân, it is pronounced as merene in the local dialect - and means snakes. Hassit means woke up in the language. This festival, which is a reference to the snakes waking up from hibernation as the ground warms up in April, is a spring festival whose first day is celebrated in Mardin Castle. The festival is held for a week, with different names for each day and various folk practices and practices performed on these days. The snake has been a mythical and religious symbolic element with various meanings in many cultures since archaic times. The snake, which carries both poison and antidote, was also seen as a god, the source of magic, knowledge and immortality, in some ancient cultures. In myths, the snake, which is sometimes described as a dangerous entity that needs to be fought, and sometimes as a protector such as guarding the treasure, has become the symbol of fertility and rebirth as a being that lives underground and on earth. Hassit Merene/Awakening of the Snakes festivals also herald the arrival of spring in the region. It involves people who are confined to their homes under harsh winter conditions to go out with spring, have fun together in peace for a week, and celebrate the arrival of spring with various practices and practices.

• Details
• Contents