Basat

Also Known As: Old Anatolian Turkish; usually read as bas, “to crush” or “to overpower”, and at, “horse”; also Basat son of Aruz, Aruz oğlu Basat; the lion-reared hero of the eighth tale of the Book of Dede Korkut
Region/Culture: Central Asia
Mythos: Turkish Mythology, Azerbaijani Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Heroes and Mortals
Mythical Attributes: Basat was suckled and reared by a lion after being dropped as a baby in a night flight, and he keeps a lion’s strength and a lion’s nerve when he goes alone against the one-eyed giant Tepegöz.
Role in Mythos: He is the Oghuz hero who blinds and beheads Tepegöz in the eighth tale of the Book of Dede Korkut, ending the daily tribute of men and sheep the giant took from his people.
Relation to Humans: Basat is a man who has to be taught that he is one, caught as a wild child among the horses and named by the sage Dede Korkut. He then pays the Oghuz back by killing the monster that was eating them two at a time.

The horse-herder had seen it more than once before he dared to report it. Something came out of the reed-bed at the edge of the pasture, walking upright with a swagger like a man’s. Then it fell on the horses the way a lion does, dragged one down and drank its blood. The herder took the story to the khan’s tent, and an old lord named Aruz Koja listened to it and went quiet. Some years before, the Oghuz had fled an enemy raid in the dark, and in the scramble his baby son had fallen from the baggage and been left behind. Perhaps, he said, this was the child.

It was. A lion had picked the baby up and nursed him. The nobles rode out, drove off the lion and brought the boy back to his father’s tent, where he was fed and made much of and did not stay. He kept slipping away to the lion’s den. They kept fetching him home. In the end they sent for Dede Korkut, the white-bearded sage who names every Oghuz hero, and he spoke to the boy plainly. You are a human being, he told him. Do not keep company with beasts. Come and ride fine horses with the other young men. Your elder brother is called Kıyan Seljuk. Your name shall be Basat.

That is the whole of his childhood, and it is all the description he ever gets. The tale never says what Basat looked like as a grown man. It gives the swagger out of the reeds, the smell of horse blood, and nothing after.

His story is the eighth of the twelve in the Book of Dede Korkut, the Oghuz Turkish cycle that survives in a manuscript at Dresden and a shorter one in the Vatican, written down around the fifteenth or sixteenth century from much older oral telling. It is really two stories laid side by side, and the second one starts at a spring. A shepherd of Aruz’s, Konur Koja Saru Choban, came on a flock of peri maidens at the Long Spring, threw his cloak over one and forced her. A year later she left him a shapeless, glistening lump and a warning that he had brought ruin on the Oghuz. When the lords rode by and kicked it, it grew. Aruz touched it with his spur and it split, and out came a boy with a man’s body and a single eye on the crown of his head.

Aruz took him home to raise beside Basat. So the lion’s foster son and the monster were, for a while, brothers at the same hearth.

It went badly. The one-eyed child drained his wet nurses dry, blood and life with the milk, and bit the noses and ears off the boys he played with. Aruz beat him and threw him out. His peri mother came then and put a ring on his finger, saying that no arrow would pierce him and no sword would cut him. He went up into the mountains and became Tepegöz, a robber and an eater of men. The best of the Oghuz rode against him and came back broken or did not come back. Basat’s brother Kıyan Seljuk died of it. Seven times the people tried to move away, and seven times he turned them round. At last Dede Korkut went to bargain. Tepegöz asked for sixty men a day and settled for two men and five hundred sheep, with two old cooks to prepare them.

Basat was away raiding while this happened. When he rode home, an old woman came to him in tears. She had given one son already and the lot had come round to her second. Basat gave her one of his prisoners to send instead, heard about his brother, and went up to the Salakhana rock against his parents’ pleading.

He found the giant lying with his back to the sun. The first arrow snapped on him. So did the second, and Tepegöz complained to his cooks that the flies were bad. The third broke and fell in front of his face, and he looked up, laughed, clapped his hands, tucked Basat into the leg of his boot and ordered him roasted for supper. Basat slit the boot with his dagger and climbed out. The cooks told him the one thing that mattered. Only the eye was flesh.

He laid the iron spit in the fire until it glowed, and drove it in. The scream rang off the mountains. Blind now, Tepegöz sat in the mouth of his cave with a foot on either side and felt each ram as it went out. Basat killed one, skinned it with the head and tail left on, and crawled inside. When the giant grabbed the horns and heaved, the fleece came away in his hands and the man went out between his legs.

Three more times Tepegöz tried. He offered the ring, and struck with a dagger as Basat slipped it on. He sent him into a domed treasure house and swore to bring it down on him, and Basat called on God and the dome split open. Then he named the only blade that could cut him, a sword that hung in the cave and swung up and down by itself. Basat tried his own sword against it and watched it sheared in two. He shot through the chain instead and caught the thing as it fell.

Only then did Tepegöz ask who he was. My father’s name is Mighty Tree, came the answer. My mother’s name is Raging Lion. I am Basat, son of Aruz. Then we are brothers, the giant said, spare me. Basat listed his dead, made him kneel like a camel, and took his head off with his own sword.

What Basat can do is plain enough. He has a lion’s strength and no fear at all, and he thinks fast in a tight place. He is not charmed, though. Three of his arrows broke like straw, and without the cooks’ advice he would have been supper. He wins with a hot spit, a sheepskin and a prayer, which is to say with what was lying around. And he came home too late to save his brother.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Basat in the Book of Dede Korkut?

Basat is the hero of the eighth of the twelve tales in the Book of Dede Korkut, the Oghuz Turkish story cycle. He is the son of the Oghuz lord Aruz Koja and the younger brother of Kıyan Seljuk. He is best known for blinding and beheading the one-eyed giant Tepegöz.

Was Basat really raised by a lion?

Yes, in the tale. Basat fell from the baggage as a baby when the Oghuz fled an enemy raid at night, and a lion picked him up and nursed him. He was found years later attacking horses near a reed-bed, brought home, and named Basat by the sage Dede Korkut, who told him he was a human being and should not live with beasts.

How did Basat kill Tepegöz?

Basat heated an iron spit in the fire and drove it into Tepegöz’s single eye, the only part of the giant that was flesh. He escaped the cave inside the skin of a ram, survived the giant’s tricks with a ring and a domed treasure house, and took down the sword that swung by itself in the cave. He then made Tepegöz kneel and cut off his head with that sword.

How are Basat and Tepegöz related?

Basat and Tepegöz were raised together as foster brothers. Aruz Koja, Basat’s father, took the one-eyed child of a shepherd and a peri into his own tent until the boy’s violence got him thrown out. When Tepegöz learns who Basat is, he pleads for mercy as a brother, and Basat refuses because Tepegöz killed his brother Kıyan Seljuk.

Is the story of Basat the same as Odysseus and the Cyclops?

The two stories share the same core. In both, a hero blinds a one-eyed man-eating giant with a heated point and escapes his cave among the sheep. Basat’s tale adds the lion upbringing, the peri mother’s ring, the treasure dome and the self-moving sword, and Basat kills the giant where Odysseus only escapes him.