Everything about The Book Of Dede Korkut totally explained
The
Book of Dede Korkut, also spelled as
Dada Gorgud,
Dede Qorqut, or
Korkut ata (
Turkish: Dede Korkut Kitabı,
Azerbaijani:
Kitabi Dədə Qorqud,
Russian:
Китаби деде Коркуд), is the most famous epic story of the
Oghuz Turks (also known as Turkmens or Turcomans). The book's mythic narrative is part of the cultural heritage of
Turkey,
Azerbaijan and
Turkmenistan, as well as to a lesser degree
Kazakhstan and
Kyrgyzstan.
The epic is believed to date to the ninth century, although some scholars place it several centuries later, while scholars in Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan place it in the eighth century. A precise determination is impossible to come by due to the nomadic lifestyle of the early
Turkic people, where epics such as Dede Korkut were passing from generation to generation in an oral form. This is especially true of an epic book such as this, which is a product of a long series of narrators, any of whom could have made alterations and additions, right down to the two sixteenth-century scribes who authored the oldest extant manuscripts. The majority of scholars of ancient Turkic epics and folk tales, such as Russian-Soviet academician V.V.
Barthold and British scholar Geoffrey Lewis, believe that the Dede Korkut text "exhibits a number of features characteristic of
Azeri, the Turkish dialect of Azerbaijan".
The epic tales of Dede Korkut is one of the best known Turkic
dastans from among a total of well over 1,000 recorded epics among the
Mongolian and
Turkic language families by international scholars.
Origin and synopsis of the epic
Dede Korkut is a heroic
dastan (legend), also known as Oghuz-nameh among the Oghuz Turk people, which starts out in Central Asia, continues in Anatolia and Iran, and centers most of its action in the Azerbaijani Caucasus. According to Barthold, "it isn't possible to surmise that this dastan could have been written anywhere but in the Caucasus".
For the Turkic peoples, especially people who self-identify as Oghuz, it's the principal repository of ethnic identity, history, customs and the value systems of the Turkic peoples throughout history. It commemorates struggles for freedom at a time when the Oghuz Turks were a herding people, although "it is clear that the stories were put into their present form at a time when the Turks of Oghuz descent no longer thought of themselves as Oghuz." Now it's known that the term 'Oghuz' was gradually supplanted among the Turks themselves as Turkmen, 'Turcoman', from the mid tenth century on, a process which was completed by the beginning of the thirteenth century. The Turcomans were those Turks, mostly but not exclusively Oghuz, who had embraced Islam and begun to lead a more sedentary life than their forefathers. In the fourteenth century, a federation of Oghuz, or, as they were by this time termed, Turcoman tribesmen, who called themselves
Ak-koyunlu established a dynasty that ruled eastern Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iraq and western Iran. But even before that at least one of the stories (Chapter 8) of the Dede Korkut epic existed in writing, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, from an unpublished Arabic history, Dawadari's Durar al-Tijan, written in Egypt some time between 1309 and 1340.
Since the early eighteenth century, the Book of Dede Korkut has been translated into French, English, and Russian. However, it wasn't until it caught the attention of H.F. Von Diez, who published a partial German translation of Dede Korkut in 1815, based on a manuscript found in the Royal Library of Dresden, that Dede Korkut became widely known to the West. The only other manuscript of Dede Korkut was discovered in 1950 by Ettore Rossi in the
Vatican Library. Until Dede Korkut was transcribed on paper, the events depicted therein survived in the oral tradition, at least from the ninth and tenth centuries. The
Bamsi Beyrek chapter of Dede Korkut preserves almost verbatim the immensely popular Central Asian dastan
Alpamysh, dating from an even earlier time. The stories were written in prose, but peppered with poetic passages. Recent research by Turkish and Turkmen scholars revealed, that the Turkmen variant of the Book of Dede Korkut contains sixteen stories, which have been transcribed and published in 1998.
The twelve stories that comprise the bulk of the work were written down after the Turks converted to Islam, and the heroes are often portrayed as good Muslims while the villains are referred to as
infidels, but there are also many references to the Turks' pre-Islamic magic and
shamanism, and it's clear that the stories originated in a pre-Islamic past. The character Dede Korkut, for example "Grandfather Korkut", is a widely-renowned soothsayer and bard, and serves to link the stories together, and the thirteenth chapter of the book compiles sayings attributed to him. "In the dastans, Dede Korkut appears as the aksakal [literally'white-beard,' the respected elder], the advisor or sage, solving the difficulties faced by tribal members. ... Among the population, respected aksakals are wise and know how to solve problems; among ashiks [recitersof dastans] they're generally called dede [grandfather]. In the past, this term designated respected tribal elders, and now is used within families; in many localities of Azerbaijan, it replaces ata [ancestoror father]." The historian
Rashid al-Din (d. 1318) says that Dede Korkut was a real person and lived for 295 years; that he appeared in the time of the Oghuz ruler Inal Syr Yavkuy Khan, by whom he was sent as ambassador to the
Prophet; that he became
Muslim; that he gave advice to the Great Khan of the Oghuz, attended the election of the Great Khan, and gave names to children.
The tales tell of warriors and battles and are likely grounded in the conflicts between the Oghuz and the
Pechenegs and
Kipchaks. Many story elements are familiar to those versed in the Western literary tradition. For example, the story of a monster named "Goggle-eye" (Tepegöz) bears enough resemblance to the encounter with the
Cyclops in
Homer’s
Odyssey that it's believed to have been influenced by the Greek epic or to have one common ancient root. The book also describes in great detail the various sports activities of the ancient Turkic peoples: "Dede Korkut (A.D. 1000- 1300) clearly referred to certain physical activities and games. In Dede Korkut's description, the athletic skills of Turks, men and women, were described to be "first-rate," especially in horse-riding, archery, cirit [javelinthrow], wrestling and polo which are considered Turkish national sports."
Soviet treatment
The majority of the Turkic peoples and lands described in the Book of Dede Korkut were part of the
Soviet Union from 1920 until 1991, and thus most of the research and interest originated there. The attitude towards the Book of Dede Korkut and other dastans related to the Turkic peoples was initially neutral.
Turkish historian
Hasan Bülent Paksoy argues that after
Stalin solidified his grip on power in the USSR, and especially in the early
1950s, a taboo on
Turkology was firmly established. He observes that the first full-text Russian edition of the Book of Dede Korkut, by Azerbaijani academicians Hamid Arasli and M.G.Tahmasib and based on the Barthold translation of the 1920s, was published on a limited basis only in 1939 and again in 1950. He asserts, "Turk scholars and literati (who raised the same issues) were lost to the Stalinist 'liquidations' or to the 'ideological assault' waged on all dastans in 1950-52." According to Paksoy, this taboo of the early 1950s was also expressed in the "Trial of Alpamysh" (1952-1957), when "all dastans of Central Asia were officially condemned by the Soviet state apparatus".
Nevertheless, it should be noted that the publication of dastans didn't wholly cease during that period, as editions of
Alpamysh were published in 1957, 1958 and 1961, as they'd been in 1939, 1941, and 1949; the entry on dastans in the second edition of the
Great Soviet Encyclopedia (volume 13, 1952) doesn't contain any "condemnation" either. Despite the liberalization of the political climate after the
denunciation of Stalinism by
Nikita Khrushchev in February
1956, the same "Barthold" edition of the Book of Dede Korkut was re-published only in
1962 and in
1977. Problems persisted all the way to
perestroika, when the last full edition in
Azerbaijani language was sent for publication on July 11,
1985, but received permission for printing only on February 2,
1988.
UNESCO celebrations
In
1998, the Republic of
Azerbaijan and
UNESCO nominated, and in
2000 celebrated, the "One thousand three hundredth anniversary of the epic Azerbaijani legend Kitab-i Dede Qorqud". In
2000, the General Director of UNESCO remarked: "Epics - and I've in mind in particular that of the Turkish-speaking peoples attributed to Dede Korkut, perpetuated by oral tradition up to the fifteenth century before being written down...are vectors of the historical, geographical, political, social, linguistic and literary references of the peoples whose history they relate. Although many of these epics have already been noted down, the oral and gestural skills of the storytellers and griots who keep them alive should also be immortalized without delay. The matter is urgent."
Since
1956, UNESCO has commemorated historic events and the anniversaries of eminent personalities celebrated by Member States and Associate Members, in order to give them worldwide significance. Azerbaijan announced the Kitab-i Dede Qorqud as its first "Celebration of anniversaries" in
1998.
The National Bank of Azerbaijan issued special gold and silver coins in
1999 to commemorate the 1,300th anniversary of the epic.
Further Information
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