What is the Legend of Shahmaran?

The upper part of her body is a beautiful woman, and the lower part of her body is a snake-shaped mythological creature found in the tales of eastern culture. He is the king of snakes. According to the legend, it is thought that he lived around Tarsus.

He has a story that we heard fondly from our elders as a child. Şahmeran is a creature with goodness in its essence. It lives underground with its snakes. All snakes obey him. A young man named Cemşab is left at the bottom of the well in order not to share the honey they found due to the greed of his friends. Cemşab, who is alone here and cannot go up, sees a hole on the side of the well. Enlarging the hole, he observes the part where the light leaks from the hole and sees the Shahmaran there. Then he digs as much as he can and meets Şahmeran in this way. Şahmeran loves Cemşab very much. During Cemşab's stay with Şahmeran, Şahmeran gives him information about medical science that no human being has ever had. Cemşab does his best to learn this information. According to a rumor, Cemşab is actually the well-known Lokman Hekim.

After a long time, Cemşab gets bored and wants to go home. Şahmeran asks him not to go; but Cemşab is determined to let him go. While leaving, Şahmeran takes the word from Cemşab that he should not tell anyone that he saw him. After Cemşab returns home, he does not tell anyone that he saw the Shahmaran. But the ruler of the time gets sick and the only cure for his illness is in the body of Shahmaran. The vizier, who intends to heal the king by cutting his meat and feeding it to the king, searches everywhere for the king. He controls all the people in the country one by one. It has its own method in this regard. He pulls all the people into the hammam and watches people taking a bath from a corner. Although Cemşab is determined not to reveal the location of Şahmeran, the vizier also invites Cemşab to the bath. Hiding in a corner, he watches Cemşab. Seeing that Cemşab's body, who was undressing to bathe there, was covered with scales, the vizier suddenly appeared. Knowing that the body of the person who sees the basilisk will be covered with scales, the vizier makes Cemşab speak by force. Thereupon, Cemşab reluctantly has to tell the place of Şahmeran. In this way, the vizier, who learned the location of the Shahmaran, succeeds in capturing the Shahmaran.

Caught Şahmeran realizes how upset Cemşab is. He realizes that he didn't do it on purpose. Şahmeran will die helpless, but he wants to meet with Cemşab before he dies. When they killed him, Cemşaba tells him to boil his meat, make the vizier drink its water, and feed the meat to the ruler. Cemşab does exactly what Şahmera said. He makes the vizier drink his water. The vizier dies on the spot. He feeds his meat to the ruler, the ruler recovers from his illness.

The legend of the Shahmaran is a lesson to people about doing good and finding evil, and it has been told for generations.

According to the legend, Shahmera's snakes still do not know that Shahmera is dead. If the snakes find out that the Basilisk is dead, they will raid the whole city and take their revenge. But in the legend, Şahmeran is peaceful and benevolent. It is said that he resorted to some tricks so that his snakes would not harm people and not realize that he was dead.