Each civilization make own culture and cultural productions that have sign of identification of that culture. Islamic civilization and its genuine culture is settled this identity in obey of god's commands and Moslems are innovated some beautiful productions that symbol of this delivery. Prayer rug is one of these productions. It is necessary to Moslems to pray five times in a day. Among Turkmen people, it is necessary to exist one ore some prayer rug in bride's trousseau. This inquiry is tried to introduce kinds of prayer rugs and their patterns and symbols.

The oral traditions of Turkmens are rooted in its long history, on the one hand, and in the intellectual taste of these hard-working people of this region, on the other hand. These traditions haven been produced through the efforts of innumerable generations. They were not created only by poets or writers, but mainly by innumerable unknown people during a long period of time. Of course, most of them were filtered and refined, and those which were accepted by the society were preserved, and rest of them were thrown away and forgotten. The traditions that were handed down to us are very rich and deep, and are very firm and stable in texture. They need to be recorded at the right time and be studied scientifically.This article is the report of a field research in Turkmen Sahra of Iran. The areas studied are limited to Agh Ghala City, and to Aghalteen and Gorgan Boy rural districts, in Golestan Province. This study, after pointing to and stressing the importance and necessary of studying Turkmen oral traditions, tries to work out some effective and scientific methods for recording and registering, collection, classification, documentation, and academic study of these traditions. In fact, oral traditions are considered as live cultural elements which still have particular function in the life if common people. One of the main goals of this article is to gather documents on oral traditions and preserve the traditions which are going into decline. In the succeeding sections of the article, a full explanation regarding the definition and scope of the study, the necessity of documenting oral traditions, and the different kinds of them will be introduced.In general, oral traditions have a special place in Turkmen culture. Different narrative traditions (i.e. folk tales, stories, epics, fables, myths, superstitions, and narratives) and non-narrative traditions (e,g. songs, proverbs, enigmas, folk poems, hymns, long-standing practice, mournful songs, metaphors and similes) show a meaningful and conspicuous presence in each and every part of the people's life. These inssues are fully explained in the other parts of the article. In this is research comparative method, fieldwork (anthropological intensive method), and participant observation have been employed. Above all, interview with well-informed people, the aged and elders regarding different ceremonies, festivals, weddings, night gatherings and parties have been wasily conducted because of the researcher's belonging to the same culture and language and through his familiarity with them. In addition, different written library sources were also used.

After pointing out the importance and the essentiality of studying music in anthropological researches, some characteristics and features of Turkmen music is highlighted and in the succeeding sections a brief explanation about lāle and hudi vocal music, āytarek-gontarek and sārija qāvin vocal plays, various kinds of music therapy in Turkmen society such as porxāni, zekr and playing pipe and dotar by sick persons suffering certain diseases like measles. Music amid Turkmen, in addition to general characteristics that can be found in other societies and ethnic groups, has certain distinctive features, which can be related with a civilization of great antiquity, the sort of feelings and emotions people acquire through being brought up in this particular culture, geographical quality of their habitation, the surrounding nature, historical events, social factors, unfavorable and favorable memories.Generally in the Turkmen culture music has an eminent standing and shows a significant and meaningful existence, directly and indirectly, in different ceremonies and in diverse forms of instrumental, vocal and vocal-instrumental.In this research comparative method and fieldwork have been employed, note-taking from texts and books together with direct, regular observation, participatory observation and interviews were also put into practice. For this purpose various parties and receptions, in which music in its different forms was essential, was contributed to and people informed and involved in these receptions were interviewed.

Iran is a country with many tribes which have an important role in the national unity and security. For the national unity, there needs to be a good relation among tribes and the central government. The Iranian Turkmen who are living in the northeast of Iran have differences with other Iranians on the particulars of ethnicity, linguistic and social structure, but these differences could not emerge as an obstacle on the route of their interactions with other Iranians, if there is no intervention of foreigners that intensifies confrontations. This paper studies the political behaviour of Turkmen people in different periods of their history, and also considers the factors of convergence and divergence between them as well as with other Iranian people, especially those factors which affect national unity and territorial integrity.

Because of the lack of activities and hard condition of life, there are many immigrants from rural area to the city especially to the Capital. They migrate with their family. In recent years some Turkmen with their family migrated to the big cities especially to Tehran. There exist some Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Thread for people who migrate. In this research which based on one of the qualitative research method- SWOT- we focus on Strength, Weakness, and Opportunity of the Turkmen family in Shahrake Ekbatan. Data have been collected by observation, participant observation and semi structure interview with 9 men and Turkmen women. All the data have been analyzed by thematic analysis. Based on data we concluded that there are some opportunities in family and relation with other Turkmen and at the same time there encounter with some problem in their activities.

In this paper, equestrian competitions among the Turkmen of the Turkmen-Sahara region, which are considered a cultural-sports phenomenon for them, and the hidden meanings that these competitions and betting around these competitions have for the people of this tribe have been studied. Clifford Geertz's hermeneutic interpretation method has been used to study this cultural phenomenon. Geertz mentions two methods of surface description and deep description in ethnography. Accordingly, the work of the ethnographer is not only to provide a report on cultural phenomena, and this part is only a superficial interpretation, but the main work of the ethnographer is that in addition to this ethnographic report, he should provide a deeper description of these phenomena and their meanings for that people, which is a personal interpretation. He is an ethnographer who mentions it under the title of hermeneutic interpretation. In this article, after explaining the concept of hermeneutics, Geertz's interpretive approach is discussed. In the following, relying on Geertz's interpretive approach, first an ethnographic report of this competition and its margins is presented, and then in the second stage, a deeper description of this phenomenon is given from the authors' point of view. The observations and interpretations of the authors indicate that keeping a horse for Turkmens today does not only mean their relationship with horses and riding, but also indicates financial wealth and social status for them. In addition, betting does not only have a material dimension for people, but also shows their expertise and skill in knowing horses and their power of prediction, which can bring them a social position among horse and horse lovers. In addition, these people learn honesty and integrity by keeping their promises in betting without documents and receipts.

This study is based upon a field work in the Turkmen Sahara region. It explores one of the indigenous healing methods called Ishani taken by the Turkmen women. There are different methods of healing among Turkmen such as Porkhani, Damartotan, but Ishani is one of the most amazing cultural phenomena grown in the Turkmen culture. The root of this healing method is based upon the central Asian culture. The present paper presents the character of women healers as the method itself. Indigenous healing method is a combination of different techniques which are presented through a ritual ceremony. Such treatments have been always existed as the traditional ways of healing methods. Human being and his diseases and the treatment discovery have always integrated all over the world. The information of indigenous knowledge is one of the sources of indigenous healing. To explore, discover, and document the indigenous knowledge helps to reveal the hidden parts of the culture as well as the indigenous healings. The healer has been regarded as a Master by patient. For the native patients, the function of the healer is not only treating him, but also the process of healing is relating to the beliefs of people. This paper is concentrated on Ishani which is mostly influenced by Islam, so it is different from other healing methods specifically from Porkhani that is focused on shamanism and is streamed from the central Asian tribe.

This article after defining, describing and presenting a brief history of Music therapy, concentrating on how to manipulate music in healing and recovering from illnesses.In this study effectiveness of music on Human Senses will be discussed in three levels regarding general and specific aspects; First: Predomination of feelings and senses. Second: presence of feelings and senses Third: superior foreknowledge which has prolific aspects of Psychotherapy.Then it proceeds with introducing common realms of music therapy around Iran including ethics based on Afro-Culture, ethics effected by Middle-East culture (Shamanism) and Iranian –based ethics.The essential part of the study is based on field study of Porkhani among Turkmen People which covers a historical background. Moreover we focused on the mythology of this ritual in various sources and anthropological study of this ritual among Turkmen People and definitely the performance of this ceremony done by "Rajab Porkhan" as the last survivor of these rituals.Describing Porkhani Stages in details, required tools and instruments, the kinds of patients attending for cure and methods of performance are dealt with functions of music in this ritual. Doing this research, by referring to various theories especially functionalism the author had used deep field study, participatory observation along with interviews.

The Epic of Koroghlu belongs to the Turkmen people and is one of the works that have traces of ancient mythology in it. Epic works have an unbreakable link with mythology, so the analysis of mythological themes in these works helps to understand them better. At the heart of epics are myths, and this is due to the belief and culture of a people in a special ritual. In the present article, the mythological themes in the Turkmen Koroghlu epic are studied by using descriptive-analytical method. The findings of the research show that the reflection of ancient mythological themes, including the strange birth of the hero (coming out of the grave), the presence of a guide or wise old man, the battle with the dragon (dragon slaying), crossing water with a horse, the presence of a winged horse called Gyrat, and the presence of fairies and magic, in the epic is remarkable.

The present study is an applied research using quantitative method. In the first step, the intended factors of marketing mix, production-export consortium and branding of Turkman carpet were studied in existing literature, and then, the quantitative method of questionnaire was used for collecting needed data and extracting basic factors.The questionnaire was prepared by the researcher. After gathering the questionnaires, the collected data were put in the SPSS software and were analyzed through various methods of inferential statistics. For measuring the significance of each component of the questionnaire, the five-point Likert scale, which has ordinal scales, was used to measure the factors and convert them to quantitative data, with giving each factor a number from 1 to 5. The data of the research was collected in a period from October of 2010 to September 2011, and the research was conducted in Golestan province.The population was constituted of five groups: 1. experts, who became expert in managing, scientific and research affairs related to carpet through working in this field; 2. exporters, who sell hand-woven carpets wholesale; 3. importers, who import Iranian hand-woven carpets from Iran into the target countries; 4. retailers, who sell the carpet to the consumers; and 5. weavers, consisting of all real or legal people who produce carpets in workshops or at homes, in cities or villages.For selecting the sample subjects from the first four groups, simple random sampling method was used; and the sample subjects of the fifth groups were selected through the Morgan table and simple random sampling. Therefore, 406 subjects were selected as samples with a balanced and appropriate proportion. By following up the project and informing about the research's goals, all questionnaires were filled out and delivered to the researcher.The Chronbach's coefficient alpha was 93%, and for prioritizing the variables, the Friedman test, and for supporting or rejecting the hypotheses, the binomial test was used. The conclusions show that all hypotheses were significant in export of Turkman hand-woven carpets. Among the hypotheses, the great potential of the province in producing hand-woven carpets was a strong point, and lack of attention to marketing mix, absence of a production- export consortium, and lack of attention to branding were of weak points, which need the especial attention of the provincial and export companies' managers and planners.At the end, besides presenting detailed conclusions and findings, the mentioned issues were summarized, and applicable suggestions were offered to the managers and experts, and also future similar researches.