Codex Cumanicus

The Codex Cumanicus is a linguistic manual of the Middle Ages, designed to help Catholic missionaries communicate with the Cumans, a nomadic Turkic people.

The codex was created in Crimea in 14th century and is considered one of the oldest attestations of the Crimean Tatar language, which is of great importance for the history of Kipchak and Oghuz dialects — as directly related to the Kipchaks (Polovtsy, Kumans) of the Black Sea steppes and particularly the Crimean peninsula.

The second part consists of Cuman-German dictionary, information about the Cuman grammar, and poems belonging to Petrarch.

In the same section there are words, phrases, sentences and about 50 riddles, as well as stories about the life and work of religious leaders.

Mercantile, political, and religious leaders, particularly in Hungary, sought effective communication with the Cumans as early as the mid-11th century.

As Italian city-states such as Republic of Genoa began to establish trade posts and colonies along the Black Sea coastline, the need for tools to learn the Cuman language sharply increased.

The "Cuman Riddles" (CC, 119–120; 143–148) are a crucial source for the study of early Turkic folklore.

Andreas Tietze referred to them as "the earliest variants of riddle types that constitute a common heritage of the Turkic nations."

Что касается места окончательного формирования сборника, то наиболее вероятной следует считать Кафу — As for the place of the final formation of the manual, Caffa should be considered the most probable <...> По диалектным особенностям кодекс считается старейшим памятником крымскотатарского языка, имеющим огромное значение для истории кыпчакских и огузских говоров... — According to the dialectal features, the code is considered the oldest monument of the Crimean Tatar language, which is of great importance for the history of the Kypchak and Oghuz dialects...