The Book of Dede* Korkut is a collection of twelve stories set in the heroic age of the Oghuz Turks. The oldest monuments of written Turkish are the inscriptions found in Siberia and mongolia, the earliest dating from the eighth cen­tury AD. In these, ‘Oghuz’ and ‘Turks’ appear as the names of two distinct communities, sometimes at war with each other, sometimes in an alliance in which the ‘Turks’ are the dominant partner. Later, however, the Oghuz are referred to as a Turkish tribe (for example, by Mahmud Kashghari, the eleventh-century lexicographer); this is because the name ‘Turk’, originally applied to the most powerful segment of the people, was sub­sequently applied to the whole people.

Mughal-Library