The Persianization of Köroğlu: Banditry and Royalty in Three Versions of the Köroğlu "Destan"

The story of Köroğlu, one of the most widespread of the Turkic "destans", is shared not only by nearly all Turkic peoples, but also by some Iranian and other non-Turkic neighboring communities. In general the versions can be separated into two major groups, the western and the eastern, with the Caspian Sea as an approximate boundary between them. It is generally agreed that the earliest versions are all from the south Caucasus, especially Azerbaijan, and that the "destan" traveled mainly eastward from there. The earliest dated recorded version, the "Kuroḡli-nāma", was written in Persian in the vicinity of Tabriz in the 1840s at the request of Alexander Chodźko, a Polish scholar and diplomat. The manuscript of this Azerbaijani version is one of three versions that are discussed in this paper, the other two being a Turkmen version and a Tajik version. In tracing the transformation of Köroğlu's occupation from robber in the western versions to ruler in the eastern versions, it is suggested that there has been considerable influence from the Persian epic tradition.