KÖROĞLU, also Göroḡly, name of an early-17th-century folk hero and poet, whose stories are mainly known among the Turkic peoples. But they have also passed into the folk literature of the Armenians, Georgians, Kurds and Bulghars, and circulate in the Iranian provinces of Azerbaijan and Khorasan. There are at least 17 versions of the Köroǧlu/Göroḡly tradition, and storytellers occasionally explain the variations as different ways of remembering the same person. The Köroǧlu/Göroḡly epic spread among Turkic and non-Turkic peoples through bards (ʿāšeq, baḵši) whose bilingualism facilitated the diffusion of differing poetic accounts in northern Khorasan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and southern Uzbekistan.
(Multiple Authors)
Originally Published: December 6, 2016
Last Updated: December 6, 2016
