Holy War, Tribal War, and Raiding in Kirghiz Culture, 1846-1916

FAIN: FA-52615-06

Daniel G. Prior
Miami University (Columbus, OH 43210-1349)

Two rare examples of Kirghiz epic-style praise-poems from 1910 express starkly "revisionist" views on the Kirghiz' most popular epic heroes (Manas and others) and the nomads with whom they had considerable cultural memory in common, the Kazakhs. As part of a larger research agenda for examining conflict among the Kirghiz between 1846 and 1916, the present project seeks to answer the question of when and how oral epic poetry provided a genre framework for Kirghiz elites to express concepts of ethnic and religious difference within the matrix of Central Asian Muslim peoples of the Russian Empire.

Associated Products

The Šabdan Baatir Codex: Epic and the Writing of Northern Kirghiz History (Book)
Title: The Šabdan Baatir Codex: Epic and the Writing of Northern Kirghiz History
Author: Daniel Prior
Abstract: In The Šabdan Baatir Codex, Daniel Prior presents the first scholarly edition, translation, and interpretation of a unique manuscript of early twentieth-century Kirghiz poetry in Arabic script. Dedicated to the chief Šabdan Baatir, the Codex claims the attention of scholars by its illuminating position in a network of oral and written genres that encompassed epic poetry and genealogy, panegyric and steppe oral historiography; that echoed oral composition-in-performance and aspired to print publishing. The Codex’s fresh articulation of concepts of Kirghiz self-identification may be described as incipiently national. The Codex thus bridges the interval, often glossed over in cultural histories, between a supposedly archaic state of oral epic tradition and the “afterlife” of epics in modern ethno-nationalist projects.
Year: 2013
Publisher: Brill
Type: Single author monograph
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 978-90-04-2304
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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