Book of Dede Korkut
| by folk | |
| Country |
 Turkey Azerbaijan Turkmenistan
|
|---|---|
| Language | Oghuz Turkish |
| Subject(s) | The stories carry morals and values significant to the social lifestyle of the nomadic Turks. |
| Genre(s) | Epic poetry |
The Book of Dede Korkut (Turkish: Dede Korkut or Korkut Ata, Azerbaijani: Dədə Qorqud, Turkmen: Gorkut Ata) is the most famous among the epic stories of the Oghuz Turks. The stories carry morals and values significant to the social lifestyle of the nomadic Turkic peoples and their pre-Islamic beliefs. The book's mythic narrative is part of the cultural heritage of Turkic countries, including Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and to a lesser degree Kyrgyzstan.
The epic tales of Dede Korkut are some of the best known Turkic dastans from among a total of well over 1,000 recorded epics among the Mongolian and Turkic language families.
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 is not possible to surmise that this dastan could have been written anywhere but in the Caucasus".
For the Turkic peoples, especially people who identify themselves as Oghuz, it is 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." From the mid-10th century on, the term 'Oghuz' was gradually supplanted among the Turks themselves by 'Turcoman' (Turkmen); this process was completed by the beginning of the 13th 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 14th 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.
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Wikipedia