SummAry
We are offering to the readers the upcoming volume 83 which is devoted to «Genealogical legends»—one of the oldest genres of Kazakh folk literature, that have reached nowadays in its original form, and retained its exceptional artistic features and characteristics.
As it is mentioned above, this volume is the 4th volume devoted to this genre.
Genealogical legends tell in artistic form about the history of the Kazakhs, who are currently the State-forming ethnic group— these are the works which describe the images of great ancestors who devoted their lives to national unity—Oguz Khan, Genghis Khan, Alash Khan. Thanks to them, such Turkic tribes as Oghuz, mogul, Nogai, Tatar have formed during the centuries, and later became the progenitors of the «Kazakh» nation with their national motto «Alash». Legends and stories about the division of Kazakh people into three Juzes, the origin of the names of tribes, clans and their divisions, which are not included into three Kazakh Juzes, but are related to the formation of the Kazakh nation—such as Tore, Sahab, Kozha and others—all these historical events were vividly and artistically described in the genealogical legends.
The first handwritten samples of genealogical legends have appeared in the XVI-XVII centuries in Turkic, Persian and medie val Chagatai languages, and in the XIX-early XX centuries they were issued and published in the first Kazakh books, newspapers and magazines. Genealogical legends were also published in the writings of medieval scholars as well as later writers— Abulgazi Bahadur Khan, Kadyrgali Zhalairi, Chokan Valikhanov, mashhur-Zhusip Kopeev, Kurbangali Khalidi, Shakarim Kudaiberdiev, mirzhakup Dulatov, m. Tynyshbayev and others. Since the second half of the XVIII century and till the October revolution in 1917, russian scientists who studied Kazakhstan, such as Petr Simon Pallas, N.P.rychkov, A.I.Levshin, V.V.radlov, N.G.Potanin and others published in their works lots of information on Kazakh genealogical legends collected among the Kazakh population, including stories about the origin of ethnonyms «Kazakh», «Kirghiz-Kazakh», «Alash», «Three Juz» and the origin of the names of Kazakh clans and tribes.
It should be noted that these genealogical legends are reflec ted in the general Kazakh legends as well as the legends of specific juzes and clans. It is common fact that in various genealogical stories devoted to the historical moments of formation of the Kazakh nation, the similarity of the plots is observed—that indicates the common roots of the Kazakh nation.
The basic plot of these stories is based on the well known events, and often they tell about how the boy was found by the people of another clan during the enemy’s attacks and raised by them, and when he grew up, he married a girl from this clan, and became the leader of the clan, or, how one of the clans faced the external threat, and the young unknown djigit from this clan shouting the battle word with the name of the ancestors, started fighting and defeated the enemy, and after that this battle word became the battle word of the whole clan.
In the rare collections of scientific and cultural institutions of our country, the stories about the history of all three Kazakh juz were not preserved completely. It happens so that some of the major Kazakh clans have very little legends, however, some small clans have many legends. Therefore, observing the established principles of preparation of scientific publication, in the process of preparation of the texts of the legends, the preference was given to those which focus on artistic expression, but not the importance of the juz, clan or the extent of fame of the ancestor.
The volume includes the historical background about the origin of the names «Kazakh», «Alash», «Alty Alash», and then come the legends of three Kazakh juzes, tribes and clans. Then the legends systematized in the following order: legends of the Senior Juz, then middle Juz and Junior Juz. It should be noted that many storytellers of genealogical legends, of course, could not have
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the full knowledge of the history of the tribe which belonged to a different Juz and therefore in their stories they paid more attention to the genealogies of their native tribe. unfortunately, in some legends the storytellers of genealogical stories, not only distort the names of the clans and their groups, as well as the historical names of the leaders, but deliberately distort and lower the dignity of other clans that is not acceptable for the scientific explanation. These facts can be reasonably attributed to the weak points of the Kazakh society, ethnic nature, the mentality of the people.
The texts of genealogical legends included in this volume are presented without any amendments, in strict accordance with the originals of manuscripts, as it is required in the publication of the series «Babalar sozi».
The volume includes almost all genealogical legends which preserved in the manuscript collections of the National Library of rK, CSL of rK, Institute of Literature and Art named for m.O.Auezov, mES of rK, as well as the texts previously published in various editions.
In the process of scientific preparation of the texts of genealogical legends the textual study was done, the dates are presented, the details of the places of collection (records), the special features of their variability are taken into account; and in some cases, all available options are mentioned. All texts included into the volume, have preserved features of the style and spelling, and the texts written in Arabic and Latin scripts have been transcribed into Cyrillic.
According to the principles of scientific preparation of this series, the included texts are numbered and supplied with annexes.
Scientific annexes of the volume consist of the following: information about collectors (records) of the texts, their publishers, editions; scientific comments to the published texts, dictionary, index of geographical names, comments on historical and religious persons, mentioned in the texts, names of the Kazakh clans and tribes, information about the storytellers and collectors, list of references and summaries in russian and English languages.
The total volume is 28 pp. 