Sabbatian Funerary Art as a Key to Sabbatian Folk Religion

Being a clandestine community, with double (internal: Judeo-messianic and external: Ottoman-Turkish-Islamic) identity the Sabbatians of all three persuasions (Yakubis, Karakash and Kapandjis) couldn’t really develop a too recognizable visual culture. Lacking not only the majoritarian instruments of public memory, but also the commodities of an open ethnic and religious groups, the Sabbatian art was restricted mostly to their graveyards, those lieux de mémoire par excellence. Having in mind that the self-imposed mimicry of the first generation of the “acceptors of turban” became the main identifier of their descendants, at first as a cornerstone of their faith and later as denominating factor of their fate; one actually has to appreciate the audacity of some of the common symbols used in Sabbatean funerary art. If read properly, these symbols can reveal us the lowest common denominator of Sabbatian religion. Scientific research of this community is too aware of the high theology of the group, especially of its founding fathers. However, when it comes to hopes and believes of common Sabbatian man and woman, we know even less than we care to. This paper is offering a reading of Sabbatians graveyards and main motifs and symbols used in the art perpetuated in them as an open book of Sabbatian folk religion.