The Similarities Between Almambet and Kül Çoro in the Manas Epic and the Tunyukuk and Küli Çor in the History

Abstract

Manas Epic contains a thousand-year epic tradition, history, culture and world view of the Turkic world in itself. Therefore, the Manas Epic can be a source for investigating the cultural phenomena, archaeological finds of the Kyrgyz people and Old Turkic tribes. Almambet and Kül Çoro in the Manas Epic has been compared with Tunyukuk and Küli Çor which are the statesmen who made a great contribution to the establishment of the Turkish Khanate. It has been found that there are gradual similarities in the between of these. For example, the names of Küli Çor who lived in history and Kül Çoro in the Manas Epic are the same, and both of them are clerics for the son of the ruler. Therefore, it is claimed that the historical person Küli Çor preserved the traces in the personality of the Kül Çoro in the Manas Epic. The reason for this is related to the history of the Old Turkish between the IX-Xth centuries. As it is known, in 840, the Kyrgyzs ruled Central Asia and the holy Ötüken by eliminating the Uighurs. However, due to the small number of the population, China's two-sided politics and the shift of other Turkish tribes towards the West, the Kyrgyz did not dominate Mongolia and had to leave these holy lands to the Kara Kytais in the 920s. They expressed their aims which they could not realize in history in oral literature, in Manas Epic. They took Köktürk Khanate as an example. Because the Köktürk Khaganate was a state that united the Turkish tribes under one roof, reached the summit in economic and military terms, and most importantly took China under its rule.