“The Book of Dede Gorgud” (Kitabi-Dada Qorqud)
“The Book of Dede Gorgud” (Kitabi-Dada Qorqud) is a heroic epic poem of the Oghuz – a Turkic tribal group who were the ancestors of the Azerbaijanis, Turks, Turkmens and the Gagauz. In terms of its historical and cultural significance, this saga is a grand testament to the culture of the Turkic world of ancient and medieval times. This majestic epic, exuberant in its love for humanity and its environment is comparable to the world’s early epic poems: “Gilgamesh” (Bilgamesh), “The Mahabharata”, “The Iliad”, “The Nart Sagas” and others.
The first manuscript of “The Book of Dede Gorgud”, dated to the 16th century and consisting of 12 stories (songs), was found in a Dresden library by German orientalist H.F. von Diez, who published a translation in 1815 of the “Tapagoz” (Goggle-eye) episode, which has similarities with the Greek Polyphemus (Cyclops). Later, the Italian orientalist E. Rossi found another copy of the saga in the Vatican’s library; this was also dated to the 16th century and had six stories-cum-songs. Both copies are written in the Oghuz Turkic language, in Arabic script. The epic, found at the beginning of the 19th century, soon attracted attention from the world’s scholars. It has been translated into Russian, German, English, Persian, Georgian, Latvian, Serb, Hungarian and other languages (for English-speaking readers it is still possible to find Geoffrey Lewis’s translation, called ‘The Book of Dede Korkut’ – ed.)
Geoffrey Lewis's classic translation retains the odd and oddly appealing style of the stories, with their mixture of the colloquial, the poetic and the dignified, and magnificently conveys the way in which they bring to life a wild society and its inhabitants. This edition also includes an introduction, a map and explanatory notes.
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