Dastan

'story, tale')[1][2] is an ornate form of oral history, an epic, from Central Asia, Iran, Turkey and Azerbaijan.

A dastan is generally centered on one individual who protects his tribe or his people from an outside invader or enemy, although only occasionally can this figure be traced back to a historical person.

According to Turkish historian Hasan Bülent Paksoy, the Bolsheviks tried to destroy these symbols of culture by only publishing them in insufficiently large quantities and in a distorted form "in order to weaken the heroic impact".

[5] A notable dastan is Korkut Ata of the Oghuz Turks — which may have been created as early as the beginning of the 13th century.

[6] In Karakalpak and other Turkic cultures, there are two kinds of dastan: the baqsï sings lyrical epics containing stories about love and adventure (which Karl Reichl compares to medieval Western romance), accompanied by the dutar; zhyrau sing heroic epics, accompanied by the kobyz.