Legends of Old Bari: The Mystery of the "Turk's Head"

The legend of the Turkish emir who on the night of the Epiphany challenged the spirit of a popular Bari tradition

Like all places with a thousand-year history, even old Bari hides a spine-chilling legend

Evidence of this is represented by the sculpture of a Saracen wearing a turban, located in a street in old Bari. According to this ancient legend, between 847 and 871, the old town of Bari was the scene of a story linked to the presence of the Saracens in Puglia and to a monstrous figure from the popular tradition of Bari at the time. We are talking about Strada Quercia N. 10, a street number in Bari Vecchia which, according to legend, seems to have been the scene of a clash between the emir of Bari Muffarag (a Saracen warrior who took control of the city) and an evil Befana (a skeleton wearing a black tunic and wielding a scythe) who appeared every night between January 5th and 6th in the alleys of the old town to mark with a cross the houses of those who would die within the year, as well as behead with a blow of her scythe anyone who crossed her gaze, exactly at the same time as another Befana , the good one we all know, distributed sweets to children.

The story goes that the Turkish warrior and commander, eager to demonstrate his strength to the people of Bari to gain their trust and convert them to Islam, decided to test the truth of the popular tradition of Bari by wandering the streets of old Bari to challenge the wicked Befana who, shortly thereafter, would sow terror. An encounter that first led the warrior to disbelief and then to death, with his head severed and stuck in the lintel of a house, the one at Strada Quercia No. 10. This gave rise to the saying "the Turk who, in order not to lose face, lost his head" and who, unwittingly, also decreed the liberation of the city from the Saracen commander, hated by the people of Bari.

Several years after the event, legend has it that the evil spirit of the emir continued to wander the area and make his presence felt in the house where his beheading took place, so much so that the people of Bari were forced to demolish the house where the tragic clash took place in the hope of banishing the spirit of the Turk forever.

Now the “Turk's Head” has found its place in a strange sculpture whose sudden materialization remains shrouded in mystery (it seems that one day a woman recognized the warrior as he was about to reclaim the space on the architrave); a high relief that still today recalls, precisely, the story of this legend and the curious popular tradition of Bari .