Yedige Bi: 15th-Century Manuscript Digitized

Specialists from the National Center of Manuscripts and Rare Books have completed work on a 15th-century manuscript, Orda.kz reports.

The manuscript’s earliest known copies date back to the 19th century, transcribed by Chingis Ualikhanov, father of the prominent Kazakh scholar Shoqan Ualikhanov.

Shoqan later supplemented and edited the text himself. In 1842, it was rewritten in a unified form by Akhmet.

The epic is distinguished by archaic expressions and word usages that are not typical for Turkic languages, which testifies to its ancient origins,  the Ministry of Culture and Information said in a statement.

This observation was also made by the Turkologist Pyotr Melioransky, who in 1905 first published the work in St. Petersburg under the title The Legend of Yedige and Tokhtamysh.

Original Author: Raushan Korzhumbekova