Doğu’dan Batı’ya Bir Anlatı Yolculuğu: Karayca Yazılmış Bir Yedi Bilge Hikâyesi
A Narrative Journey from East to West: A Tale of the Seven Sages Written in Karaim Turkish

Summary/Abstract: According to a widely accepted view, the Seven Sages tales, which originate from the Sindbâd-nâmes, constitute a shared narrative tradition represented in various cultures around the world in both verse and prose forms under different titles. This article introduces, for the first time, an original version of a Seven Sages tale written in Crimean Karaim and transcribed in Hebrew script to the academic world. The examined text is a representative of the Historia Septem Sapientum, a sub-version of the main Western group narrative known as The Seven Sages of Rome. In this study, various scholarly opinions on the origins and historical development of the Seven Sages tradition are discussed, and the position of the version written in Karaim Turkish within this tradition is identified. The tale, which is found to have a helical (recursive) narrative structure, is analysed comparatively in terms of its frame story and embedded tales in relation to other versions of the Seven Sages narratives. Furthermore, the symbolic significance of the number seven, as well as the motif of the sage, are examined. The linguistic and cultural elements in the Karaim Turkish version not only contribute to the lexicon of the language but also help uncover reflections of the collective memory of the Karaim community. In this study, document analysis was used as the data collection technique, and descriptive content analysis was employed as the main methodological approach. The findings aim to reveal the tale’s position within the broader narrative tradition as well as its particular cultural significance for the Karaim community.

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