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All the details on our new great experiment: a series of podcasts on “The book of Dede Korkut”. An adventure made of 8 episodes that will keep you company during the summer, making you savor the magic and the deeds of the Oghuz Turks.

Esperiment

We are proud to announce that a new series will start from this Saturday, something absolutely new for us and everything to experience. We were reading “The book of Dede Korkut”, a collection of 12 stories that are at the heart of the epic tradition of the Turkish peoples, and we took the liberty of flying with fantasy. We had just finished the disappointing Game of Thrones season finale and started looking at these fairy tales with increasing interest.

The desire to innovate once again the contents of the site and your complicity did the rest: this Saturday we will start recording the first episode of the series. The episodes will be 8: an introduction and 6 stories, one of which divided into 2 parts. We have chosen not to focus immediately on doing them all but if you are interested in the future we will be happy to continue. Our idea would be to go out every Saturday, starting in 2 days and ending on July 27th, we hope not to have unexpected events. If you will like this “format” in the future, several books are planned, including: “The Thousand and One Nights”, “The journeys of Ibn Battuta” and those of Ibn Fadlan which crossed Eastern Europe during the Middle Ages.

Constant evolution

When we first thought about this project we had a thousand doubts and a thousand ideas on how to make it happen. Precisely for this reason we have chosen to leave as freely as possible, trying to follow your suggestions every time and thus improving day after day. We would really like the show to follow an evolution because it would mean having brought your attention and your heart very far, in search of the magic of these places.

It would be a dream come true and it would give us even more energy to do better, taking you to lands and times where myth merges with reality, transforming the story into magic.

The universe of Dede Korkut

Once you get here you are wondering who this Dede Korkut is and why his book is so important; lawful question that deserves an answer. The “Book of Dede Korkut” is one of the oldest collections of tales concerning Turkish peoples and culture, having its origins even in the early fifteenth century. The historical period is not accidental and is linked to the progressive sedentarization of the Turkish-speaking populations, with the consequent adoption of writing. Many of the stories are derived from other much older myths of this culture but, due to their oral transmission, they have been partially lost, going to merge with the new customs and traditions adopted by the Turks.

A very banal example is for example Islam, originally not present in many of these stories but added with the first written drafts of the work. Another element of great interest are the uses and customs of these peoples who, in this book, are told with extreme naturalness and precision, transforming it into something interesting also from an ethnographic point of view. Most of the events are set in the Caucasus mountains, however, the narration of Dede Korkut envelops the entire Turkish world, going as far as Central Asia and Anatolia. We are eager to get started.