o - Aceh Books website

876 YORUK
Fisher, Humphrey J. Ahmadiyyah: A Study of Contemporary Islam on the West African
Coast. Lagos: Oxford University Press, 1963.
Gbadamosi, T.G.O. The Growth of Islam Among the Yoruba 1841-1908. Atlantic Highlands,
N.J.: Humanities Press, 1978.
Lloyd, P. C. "The Yoruba of Nigeria." In Peoples of Africa, edited by James L.
Gibbs, Jr., New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965.
Ojo, G. J. Afolabi. Yoruba Culture: A Geographical Analysis. London: University of
London Press, 1966.
Article
Peel, J.D.Y. "Religious Change in Yorubaland." Africa 37:3 (1967): 292-306.
Robert M. Wren
YORUK The Yoruk of Turkey are a distinct ethnic-tribal grouping, found
widely throughout Turkey but primarily along the Aegean and Mediterranean
coastlines. Unlike many groups with a unique cultural heritage in the Middle
East, the Yoruk are not linguistically distinct from most of the rural populations
among whom they live. They speak the Western Turkish dialect standard in
Anatolia (see Turkic-speaking Peoples).
Similarly, religion does not set them apart from the majority of Turkey's
population as the Yoruk are Sunni of the Hanafi school of law. What distinguishes
the Yoruk is their recognition of a common history in the form of membership
in, or descent from, an assortment of Turkic tribes which are presumed to have
moved to Anatolia from Iran or Central Asia in the eleventh century.
Historically, the Yoruk are mountain nomadic pastoralists moving, for the
most part, from winter pastures (kishlak) along the coastal plains to high summer
pastures (yayla) in the Taurus range. As early as the reign of Bayazid I, there
are accounts of Yoruk tribes in Macedonia, Thrace and elsewhere in the Balkans.
Following the conquest of Cyprus by Selim II, Yoruk groups moved to that
island, where they may be found today as settled villagers. Most historians
regard the Yoruk as closely related to Turkmen tribes who came in large numbers
after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, but it is also likely that indigenous nomadic
pastoral populations along the coast became Turkified during the early period
of Islamic rule in Anatolia. In any event, the Yoruk are distinct culturally, in
folklore and traditional distribution, from the Turkmen tribes of Anatolia.
The term "Yoruk" is often thought to be derived from yurumek, "to walk."
The Yoruk themselves do not make this the case, but regardless of the merits
of the etymology, it is a fitting image for a nomadic people moving with their
flocks of sheep and goats.
During the Ottoman period, Yoruk tribes were important politically since they
were recognized by the government for purposes of taxation, the raising of
military levies and local administration. Tribal leaders, for example, supplied
52,000 troops in the eighteenth century. Today Yoruk people continue to speak
of tribes, and most of the 88 listed in 1898 as then living in Aydin and Smyrna