The Family Tree of the Kaynana Zırıltısı

Even its name is a joke: “kaynana zırıltısı,” the mother-in-law’s rattle. Spun by hand, this small toy clatters out a rasping, even slightly grating sound, and it makes most visitors laugh before anything else. But the root of this noisy object points somewhere far older than the joke.

From a dervish’s horn to a child’s hand

In Geleş’s typology, the kaynana zırıltısı belongs to a group of toys given mechanical properties through nail and wire connections: “…one wheel or part setting another part into motion, into turning, holds the child’s interest by producing sound as it does.” We looked at this same group in our post What does an Eyüp toy give a child?; the kaynana zırıltısı is perhaps the most familiar example of the mechanism described there: what starts the motion is not the child’s hand, but the toy’s own inner workings. Geleş also names the kaynana zırıltısı directly as an example within this group: “This type of toy includes the kaynana zırıltısı; across different cultures (Indian, Italian, French) and in our own, it reflects, in the world of children, the horn (nefir) that wandering dervishes used to frighten off and drive away the animals they met in nature.” In other words, this toy’s ancestor was not an amusement but a functional noisemaking implement: a warning, a defensive sound, in a dervish’s hand. As it was spun, the clatter produced by a wooden tongue striking against a toothed wheel was scaled down over time by the same mechanical logic, turning from a serious tool into a toy in children’s hands.

Not ours alone

Another point Geleş’s research highlights is that this design is not unique to İstanbul: similar mechanisms turn up in Indian, Italian and French cultures too. That parallel suggests the toothed-wheel-and-wooden-tongue system was less a single invention that spread from one place than an independent design logic that produced similar mechanical solutions to similar needs (warning by sound, scaring, entertaining) across different geographies.

On the old market’s own list

The kaynana zırıltısı’s presence is not limited to one researcher’s observation; it also appears on Toymakers’ Lane’s own product list. This street, running along İskele Caddesi toward Eyüp Sultan’s tomb, was where toy shops stood in facing rows for centuries. According to Geleş: “Among the toys mentioned, those whose production continued up to the start of the 20th century included hoops, carts, ferris wheels, earthenware jugs, whistles, tambourines, small drums, pinwheels, balls, spinning tops, wire cabinets, chairs, mirrored cradles, clappers, kaynana zırıltısı, handled drums, roly-poly toys, mortars, butter churns, acrobat toys, grasshopper toys, sheep-and-lamb figures, Karagöz-Hacivat figures, and similar items.” In other words, the kaynana zırıltısı was not a one-off item even at the market’s busiest, but part of its standard repertoire.

Through the Şengöz family’s hands too

The kaynana zırıltısı also passed through the hands of the tradition’s last masters. In a 2004 interview with Hülya Yalçın, Halit Şengöz, listing the inventory of the shop he inherited from his father, names the kaynana zırıltısı among it: “Here we made more than just camels — wooden two-horse carriages, duck carts, mirrored cradles, clowns, Karagöz and Hacivat figures, side drums, drums, tambourines, trucks, rattles, cradles — we made and sold them all” (Hülya Yalçın, 2004; qtd. in Geleş, 2015). We carried this interview in full in our post on the Şengöz family’s century of work; its mention here shows the toy was not confined to a museum shelf, but was among the pieces the masters made day to day. Halit Bey’s father, Kadir Şengöz, had worked from original moulds in the same shop from 1918 onward; the kaynana zırıltısı is a piece that passed through both generations’ hands across that century-long chain.

A witness in the museum

The kaynana zırıltısı also holds a place in the 28-piece historic collection at the İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality (İBB) City Museum, registered in the inventory as a single example. That points to the toy having been part of Eyüp’s standard repertoire in the first half of the 20th century; it also appears among the first sixteen toy types produced in the 2005 revival project: one of the few toys named on both the old inventory and the revival list (Yalçınkaya, p. 294).

Still rattling

The same simple mechanism carried the same name from the market’s early-20th-century list, through the Şengöz family’s shop inventory, to the museum’s glass case. Today, the kaynana zırıltısı we make in our workshop works on the same simple but effective mechanism it did centuries ago: a hand turning, a sound being born. Its name may raise a smile, but its family tree runs back to a serious implement on a wandering dervish’s back: part of a wide family stretching from the streets of İstanbul to markets in India and Europe, and not really a joke at all.

Sources

• Geleş, Fadime. “İstanbul Çocuk Oyuncakçıları,” Antik Çağ’dan XXI. Yüzyıla Büyük İstanbul Tarihi, Vol. 4, İSAM + İBB Kültür A.Ş., 2015. https://istanbultarihi.ist/138-istanbul-cocuk-oyuncakcilari
• Yalçınkaya, Tosun (2006). “Eyüp Oyuncakçılığı ve Oyuncak Atölyesi,” Tarihi, Kültürü ve Sanatıyla X. Eyüpsultan Sempozyumu Tebliğleri, Eyüp Belediyesi, p. 290-295.
• Yalçın, Hülya. “Eyüp Oyuncakları Müzesi,” Tarihi, Kültürü ve Sanatıyla Eyüpsultan Sempozyumu VIII: Tebliğler, İstanbul, 2004, p. 69-70.