Mankurts are unthinking slaves in Chinghiz Aitmatov's novel The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years.
After the novel, in the Soviet Union the word came to refer to people who have lost touch with their ethnic homeland, who have forgotten their kinship.
According to Aitmatov's fictional[2] legend, mankurts were prisoners of war who were turned into non-autonomous docile servants by exposing camel skin wrapped around their heads to the heat of the sun.
These skins dried tight, causing brain damage and figurative zombification.
[4] In the figurative sense, the word "mankurt" refers to people who have lost touch with their ethnic homeland, who have forgotten their kinship.