The Sabdan Baatır Codex: Epic and the Writing of Northern Kirghiz History

By Dan Prior

In The Sabdan Baatır Codex, Daniel Prior presents the first complete edition, translation, and interpretation of a unique manuscript of early twentieth-century Kirghiz poetry, which includes detailed accounts of nineteenth-century warfare. Dedicated to the chief Sabdan Baatır, the Codex occupies an illuminating position in a network of oral and written genres that encompassed epic poetry and genealogy, panegyric and steppe oral historiography; that echoed oral performance and aspired to print publishing. The Codex's fresh articulation of concepts of Kirghiz self-identification was incipiently national, yet remained couched in traditional forms. 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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9004230408
• ISBN13: 9789004230408
• Release Date: November 2012
• Publisher: Brill
• Length: 484 Pages
• Weight: 1.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 9.4"