Karagöz and Hacivat

The two characters

In every play the humour comes from the gap between the two men. Karagöz speaks for ordinary people: he cannot read, blurts out what he thinks and trusts his own cunning. Hacivat stands for the educated class, speaks the ornate Ottoman Turkish of letters and poetry, and keeps trying to improve his friend. Karagöz usually wins their arguments through native wit, yet each of his schemes for easy money collapses. Around them crowd other figures drawn from the peoples of the empire, and the Turkish dramaturge Kırlı describes Hacivat as all refined manners while Karagöz belongs to the body and its appetites.

Origins and history

When the plays began is not known. One account traces them to Java, where shadow puppetry was already performed in the eleventh century and may have come to Ottoman lands with traders. A court performance is recorded in Egypt for Sultan Selim I, after he took the country in 1517. The seventeenth-century writer Evliya Çelebi, however, placed shows in the palace as far back as the reign of Bayezid I, more than a century earlier. In the sixteenth century the Grand Mufti Ebussuud el-İmadi gave a ruling that allowed the plays. A legend holds that the two men were real workers on a mosque in Bursa.

Puppets and screen

The figures are cut from hide, usually horse, buffalo or calf skin, though camel skin was prized because it does not warp. The material is worked until light passes through it and then painted, so the shapes glow in colour on the cloth. A puppet stands roughly 35 to 40 centimetres tall, oiled for a translucent finish, with arms, legs, waist and neck joined by waxed thread and rods at the back. Puppeteers once had their own guilds. The lamp behind the screen is called the şem'a, or candle, even when it burns oil; the screen itself is the ayna, meaning mirror. The audience never sees the puppeteer's hands.

Shape of a play

A performance moves through four parts. The mukaddime opens it: Hacivat sings a semai, says a prayer and looks for his friend, calling out 'Yar bana bir eğlence', which asks for some amusement. Karagöz then enters from the opposite side. The muhavere, a stretch of talk between the pair, follows, and then comes the fasil, the main plot, which may bring in dancers, djinns, ships, riders on horseback or dragons. The bitiş ends the piece with one more quarrel: Hacivat complains that all has been ruined and the curtain brought down, and Karagöz answers that he hopes his faults will be forgiven.

Today and change

Radio and cinema pushed the play aside in Turkey, though it held on in Greece, where Karagiozis is still a familiar figure on television. Turkey asked UNESCO to recognise the art, and in 2009 Karagöz joined the Representative List. The characters have since travelled into other media: a Turkish film in 2006, a humour magazine published between 1908 and 1955, and, in 2018, an outfit for Hacivat in the video game Fortnite. In Tunisia the plays were banned under the French protectorate for mocking colonial rule, yet they remain part of national folklore. In Romania the word caraghios still means comic.

How Karagöz and Hacivat is kept

Small companies keep the play alive. One puppeteer, called hayalî, Karagözcü or hayalbaz, speaks, sings and mimics for every role, switching dialect as each figure appears. An apprentice, the sandıkkâr, unpacks the booth, hands over the puppets in order and packs up again. A singer, the yardak, may perform in the prelude and is sometimes joined by a dairezen on a tambourine. The show begins when the lamp is lit. Introductions, dialogue, a main plot and a closing argument follow, and the humour turns coarse or gentle depending on who is in the audience.

When and where

In Turkey the plays belong to Ramadan. Crowds came out after the day's fast to eat, drink and watch them in the coffee houses. In Greece they are staged at any time of year. Beyond that there is no fixed date; the earliest firm record is a court performance in 1517, and one writer claimed shows two centuries before that.

The form is strongest in Turkey and took root in Greece, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt, Syria, and Adjara, an autonomous republic of Georgia. Greek audiences call the hero Karagiozis; Bosnian audiences call him Karađoz. It also reached Tunisia, where it was later banned, and Romania, where it left the word caraghios.

What Karagöz and Hacivat means

For the people who watch them, the two figures stand for two sides of a shared life: the plain speech of the street against the polish of the educated, appetite against manners, wit against learning. Neither is simply right. Hacivat's attempts to improve Karagöz come to nothing, and Karagöz's cleverness never makes him rich. Audiences also read the plays as a mirror of the empire's many peoples, and later as a place where politics and everyday complaints could be laughed at aloud.

Days Karagöz and Hacivat is marked

Questions people ask about Karagöz and Hacivat

See also

Eid al-FitrThe feast that ends Ramadan, opened with morning prayers, sweets and visits homeKol NidreAn Aramaic declaration of vow annulment that opens the Yom Kippur evening service in Jewish synagogues.Ramadan in TurkeyA holy month of fasting, prayer, and community meals, observed across Turkey with unique local customs.Tisha B'AvA solemn fast day in July or August to mourn the destruction of the Jerusalem Temples and other Jewish tragedies.

Good reading and sources

• Encyclopaedia BritannicaArticle
• KaragözUNESCO, Heritage listing
• KaragözUNESCO, Article

• Karagöz and Hacivat on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-05.