Dede Korkut

Also Known As: also Dede Qorqud, Dədə Qorqud, Korkyt Ata, Qorqyt Ata; the name is usually read as “Grandfather Korkut”, dede and ata both meaning grandfather or forefather
Region/Culture: Central Asia
Mythos: Turkish Mythology, Azerbaijani Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Heroes and Mortals
Mythical Attributes: He carries no weapon and works entirely through speech, naming young warriors, prophesying, negotiating with monsters and closing every story with a blessing.
Role in Mythos: He is the memory and conscience of the Oghuz, the elder who turns what the heroes do into the account of it that survives them.
Relation to Humans: He is himself a mortal man, and the tales treat him as the one person every khan will listen to, sent ahead when a marriage must be arranged or a cannibal bargained with. In the Kazakh tellings he becomes the first musician, and the instrument he invents is still played in his name.

The old man always arrives after the fighting is over. Somebody has killed something, or buried somebody, or come back from a place nobody expected them to leave alive, and then there is the scrape of horsehair on gut in the smoke of the tent and a grey-bearded man is sitting among them with a kopuz across his knee, turning the last three days into words that will outlast everyone breathing. That is the whole of his work. In the twelve tales that carry his name, Dede Korkut never draws a blade. He comes in afterwards and decides what the story was.

The Oghuz were Turkic herders whose grazing lands ran from the Syr Darya west into the Caucasus and Anatolia, and the book their descendants kept is called, in the sixteenth-century Dresden manuscript, the Book of my Grandfather Korkut in the language of the tribe of the Oghuz. A German scholar named Heinrich Friedrich von Diez found that copy in the Dresden royal library in 1815, and for most of two centuries it and a shorter Vatican copy of six tales were all anyone had. Since 2017 more have surfaced, including one from a private collection in Gonbad-e Kavus in northern Iran. The tales themselves are older than the paper. Most of them are placed in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and a few episodes look older still.

He belongs to the court of Bayindir Khan without ever being one of its warriors, and the tales are careful about what he does there. He gives young men their names, which in this world is not a formality but the moment a boy stops being a boy. He is sent as an envoy when something has to be asked for and refusal would mean war. He interprets dreams. He tells the Oghuz what is coming, and they generally believe him, which in a society organised around men who are certain they are right is the most remarkable thing about him.

The naming is the best of it. In the first tale a boy of fifteen stands in the arena at Bayindir Khan’s festival while a bull the size of a small building comes at him, and the boy braces his fist against its forehead and holds it there, walking backwards through the dust until the animal’s own weight defeats it. The men are still shouting when the old man comes through them, puts his hand on the boy and gives him the name Boghach, which means the bull-man, and a blessing to go with it. The name sticks. That is his power in one gesture.

The other kind of errand is harder. When Tepegoz came, the one-eyed giant born of a shepherd and a fairy woman, the Oghuz found they could not kill him and could not feed him either, since he was eating them at a rate no camp could sustain. It was Dede Korkut they sent up to talk to him. He came back having bargained the giant down to two men and five hundred sheep a day, with two old cooks, Yunlu Koca and Yapagili Koca, assigned to prepare the meals. It is a grotesque arrangement and everyone in the tale knows it. It also bought the Oghuz the years they needed until Basat was grown enough to finish the thing with an arrow.

Further east, along the Syr Darya in what is now southern Kazakhstan, the same man is remembered differently, and the difference is where the myth gets its teeth. There he is Korkyt Ata, a shaman and musician of the eighth or ninth century, and as a young man he dreams that he will die at forty. So he rides out on his camel Zhelmaya to the four corners of the world looking for a way around it, and in every corner he finds men with spades already at work, and every time he asks whose grave it is they tell him: Korkyt’s. He stops running. He kills the camel he has ridden across the world, stretches its hide over a hollowed piece of wood, strings it with its own hair, and the first kyl-kobyz is made out of the animal that carried him away from death. Then he takes it out onto the river on a spread carpet and plays.

The playing works. That is the part worth sitting with. As long as the bow keeps moving, death cannot get near him, so he plays through the days and through the nights and through more nights, on the water, alone. He falls asleep. A snake comes across the carpet and bites him, and the old man dies on the Syr Darya at last, though the tellings insist the melody went on sounding after he had stopped.

His gifts follow from what he is rather than from anything granted to him. He can name, and a name from him is binding. He can see far enough ahead to be worth consulting, and speak well enough to be sent where a warrior would only make things worse. The kobyz in his hands imitates a wolf’s howl and the note of a swan, and thirteen traditional compositions still carried in his name descend from that claim. His limits follow just as plainly. He has no weapon and no army, and his authority lasts exactly as long as men are willing to hear him out. He could bargain with Tepegoz but he could not kill him. He could hold death off with a bow across strings, but only while he was awake.

Turkish, Azerbaijani, Kazakh and Turkmen tradition all claim him, and in 2018 UNESCO inscribed the shared heritage of Dede Qorqud, Korkyt Ata and Dede Korkut on its Representative List at the joint nomination of Türkiye, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, twelve legends and thirteen tunes recognised as one thing. A mausoleum and memorial complex stands for him near Kyzylorda, on the river where the snake found him.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Dede Korkut?

Dede Korkut is the wise elder, bard and soothsayer of the Oghuz Turks, whose name is attached to the Book of Dede Korkut, a cycle of twelve heroic tales preserved in a sixteenth-century Dresden manuscript. He appears in every story as adviser, dream-interpreter and namer of young warriors rather than as a fighter. Turkish, Azerbaijani, Kazakh and Turkmen traditions all claim him.

What does Dede Korkut do in the stories?

He names young men after their first great deed, advises the khans, interprets dreams, acts as envoy in negotiations that would otherwise end in war, and closes each tale with a blessing. He carries a stringed instrument called the kopuz and performs the stories as an ozan, or minstrel. He never fights.

Why is Dede Korkut associated with the kobyz?

In the Kazakh legend of Korkyt Ata, he makes the first kyl-kobyz from the hide and hair of his camel Zhelmaya after abandoning his search for a way to escape death. He then plays it continuously to keep death away from him. Thirteen traditional musical compositions are still transmitted in his name.

How did Dede Korkut die?

The Kazakh tellings say he died on the Syr Darya river. He had been floating on a spread carpet, playing the kobyz without stopping because death could not reach him while the music continued, and when he finally fell asleep a snake bit him. His mausoleum and memorial complex stand near Kyzylorda in southern Kazakhstan.

Is the Book of Dede Korkut a real historical text?

Yes. The fullest copy is the sixteenth-century Dresden manuscript, found in the Dresden royal library by Heinrich Friedrich von Diez in 1815, with a shorter six-tale copy in the Vatican and further manuscripts surfacing since 2017. The tales themselves are generally dated to the tenth and eleventh centuries, with some episodes thought to be older.