Dastan ( fa, داستان ''dâstân'', meaning "story" or "tale") is an ornate form of

oral history Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people wh ...

from Central Asia, Iran, Turkey and Azerbaijan. A dastan is generally centered on one individual who protects his tribe or his people from an outside invader or enemy, although only occasionally can this figure be traced back to a historical person. This main character sets an example of how one should act, and the dastan becomes a teaching tool — for example the

Sufi Sufism ( ar, ''aṣ-ṣūfiyya''), also known as Tasawwuf ( ''at-taṣawwuf''), is a mystic body of religious practice, found mainly within Sunni Islam but also within Shia Islam, which is characterized by a focus on Islamic spirituality, ...

master and Turkic poet Ahmed Yesevi said "Let the scholars hear my wisdom, treating my words like a dastan". Alongside the wisdom, each dastan is rich with cultural history of interest to scholars. During the

Russian conquest of Central Asia The partially successful Territorial evolution of Russia, conquest of Central Asia by the Russian Empire took place in the second half of the nineteenth century. The land that became Russian Turkestan and later Soviet Central Asia is now divide ...

, many new dastans were created to protest the Russian occupation. It is possible that they came into contact and influenced each other. According to Turkish historian Hasan Bülent Paksoy, the Bolsheviks tried to destroy these symbols of culture by only publishing them in insufficiently large quantities and in a distorted form "in order to weaken the heroic impact". A notable dastan is ''

Korkut Ata The ''Book of Dede Korkut'' or ''Book of Korkut Ata'' ( az, Kitabi-Dədə Qorqud, ; tk, Kitaby Dädem Gorkut; tr, Dede Korkut Kitabı) is the most famous among the epic stories of the Oghuz Turks. The stories carry morals and values signific ...

'' of the

Oghuz Turks The Oghuz or Ghuzz Turks (Middle Turkic languages, Middle Turkic: ٱغُز, ''Oγuz'', ota, اوغوز, Oġuz) were a western Turkic people that spoke the Oghuz languages, Oghuz branch of the Turkic languages, Turkic language family. In th ...

— which may have been created as early as the beginning of the 13th century.{{cite journal, last=Meeker, first=Michael E., title=The Dede Korkut Ethic, journal=International Journal of Middle East Studies, volume=24, issue=3, date=August 1992, pages=395–417, doi=10.1017/S0020743800021954, quote=The ''Book of Dede Korkut'' is an early record of oral Turkic folktales in Anatolia, and as such, one of the mythic charters of Turkish nationalist ideology. The oldest versions of the ''Book of Dede Korkut'' consist of two manuscripts copied in the 16th century. The twelve stories that are recorded in these manuscripts are believed to be derived from a cycle of stories and songs circulating among Turkic peoples living in northeastern Anatolia and northwestern Azerbaijan. According to Lewis (1974), an older substratum of these oral traditions dates to conflicts between the ancient Oghuz and their Turkish rivals in Central Asia (the Pecheneks and the Kipchaks), but this substratum has been clothed in references to the 14th-century campaigns of the Akkoyunlu Confederation of Turkic tribes against the Georgians, the Abkhaz, and the Greeks in Trebizond. Such stories and songs would have emerged no earlier than the beginning of the 13th century, and the written versions that have reached us would have been composed no later than the beginning of the 15th century. By this time, the Turkic peoples in question had been in touch with Islamic civilization for several centuries, had come to call themselves “Turcoman” rather than “Oghuz,” had close associations with sedentary and urbanized societies, and were participating in Islamized regimes that included nomads, farmers, and townsmen. Some had abandoned their nomadic way of life altogether.

References

Central Asian culture Iranian folklore Oral history Persian words and phrases Turkic culture Turkish folklore

See also

References