Epic
Kurroglou
Koroğlu
Anonymous · 1600
Synopsis
The lord Həsən xan has his master of the stables, Ali kişi, blinded. Father and son flee with two horses, Qırat and Durat; the young man receives the gift of poetry at the spring of Qoşa bulaq, avenges his father and builds a fortress in the mountains, Çənlibel, above the caravan routes. Surrounded by companions such as Eyvaz, he takes from the rich to give to the poor, and his adventures, battles and amorous abductions, are told in prose interspersed with songs that he improvises.
Context
The epic is sung in Azerbaijani and in Anatolian Turkish, in Turkmen and in Uzbek, but also in Georgian, Armenian and Kurdish, and even among the Tajiks and the Kazakhs; in several eastern versions, the hero is called Guroğlu, “son of the tomb”. Most link the figure to a Celali revolt at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and an Ottoman traveller already knew its tales around 1650. Alexander Chodźko published a version of it in London in 1842, which a French woman novelist adapted as early as 1843; Üzeyir Hacıbəyov made an opera of it, premiered in 1938.
Who it is for
To be read in episodes, bearing in mind that from one language to another the versions do not order the hero's adventures in the same way.
Prizes and reception
One of the most widespread epics of the Turkic and Iranian world, known even in romantic Europe through adaptations.
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