Ural-batyr
[1][2] Based on the Turkic and Iranic folk song traditions, the poem narrates about the heroic deeds of Ural-batyr.
[3][a] Ural evinces from his very infancy all the features of a legendary hero, such as unflinching courage, honesty, kindheartedness, empathy, and great physical strength.
Unlike his cunning and treacherous brother Shulgan (see Sulgan-tash), Ural is an eager enemy of the evil and of Death which personifies it.
On his way, he meets with various people and legendary creatures and is often deferred by long adventures; in all cases, his actions serve to save lives or quell the evil.
Riding his winged stallion Akbuthat (or Akbuz At 'White-Grey Horse'),[4] he saves young men and women prepared for sacrifice by the tyrannical Shah Katil from imminent death, tames a wild bull, destroys an immense number of devs (дейеү), marries the legendary Humai (from Persian همای Humay), a swan-maid, and finally smites the chief dev[what language is this?]
(from Persian دیو div) Azraka, whose dead body is said to have formed Mount Yaman-tau in the South Urals.
Ural perishes in his final grapple with the devs, as he is forced to drink up a whole lake where they had hidden from him, but he leaves his sons to continue his initiative.
In 1910, Mukhamedsha Burangulov recorded an epic from two kuraist ('musician') and sesens ('poet'), Gabit Argynbaev (≈ 1850–1921) from the аul ('village') of Idris and Khamit Almukhametov (1861–1923) from the village of Malyi Itkul (volost Itkulskaya of the Orenburg province).
A fairy tale of the same name in prose was recorded in 1956 by Ismagil Rakhmatullin in the village of Imangul in the Uchalinsky district of Bashkorostan by researcher Akhnaf Kharisov (published by him in the same year).
The version, conventionally referred to as an "etiological myth", was recorded in 1984 from Shamsia Safargalina in the village of Gabbas, Zianchurinsky district of Bashkortostan.
In 1968, the epic "Ural-Batyr" was published in the Bashkir language in the journal "Agidel" in 1968 with abbreviations (prepared by B. Bikbai and A. Kharisov).
In 1975, it was published in the first volume of the collection Heroic Epic of the Peoples of the USSR in the series Library of World Literature (translation by A. Kh.
The prose arrangement of the epic was performed by the writer Aidar Khusainov; the poetic translation into Russian was done by the poet Gazim Shafikov.
The reasons for the uncritical publication of the epic lie in the Soviet practice of distorting monuments of folk art, in the persecution of Bashkir scholars (Mukhametsha Burangulov was twice arrested and was in prison).
[editorializing] After ршы returning from prison M. Burangulov fought for the right to be creative and defended the works of Bashkir folklore.
Scientists continue to study the epic "Ural-Batyr" in-depth at the intersection of archeology, ethnography, linguistic folkloristics.
The performance Ural-Batyr was staged at the Bashkir Academic Drama Theater named after M. Gafuri, the popular science film In Search of Akbuzat was created, and the tourist project "The Golden Ring of Bashkortostan: the roads of the epic 'Ural-Batyr'" was developed.
In 2010, by order of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, the director and screenwriter A. Lukichev shot the animated film Ural-Batyr based on the Bashkir epic (14.01 min., Moscow).
The elderly couple Yanbirde and Yanbike, along with their sons Shulgen and Ural, settle on a small patch of land surrounded on all sides by the sea.
In the kingdom of Katil, Ural meets unfortunate people who tell him about the atrocities of the cruel king (the old woman, her daughter, the old man).
Then he himself sees Katil donate people to the lake and to the fire (perhaps these were the memories of the Bashkirs about the brutality of foreign invaders).
Schulgen (Ural's brother) met a handsome forever-young man picking flowers and is glad that he will soon be in the country of eternal happiness and youth.
The divas who try to bring Akbuzat to Azraka's palace are thrown by the horse high into the sky, creating the constellation Yetegan (the Big Dipper).
If the daughter of the king of birds, Samrau, falls in love with Shulgen, then she will give him Akbuzat and a magic sword.
Homay asks to find an unusual bird, promising to give him the horse Akbuzat and a magic sword.
Shulgen intends to take away the winged horse, the magic sword and the Padishah's daughter, Homay, from Ural.
Homay and Aihylu are endowed with the properties of peri – traditional female images in Turkic mythology.
Ural says goodbye to Homay, jumps on Akbuzat, picks up his magic sword and goes to war with the padishah of divas to save life on earth.
The final version was published alongside the original Bashkir text and the Russian translation in a glossy gift book Ural-batyr in 2003.
In 2013 a new English language translation and retelling were done by David and Anastasia Andresen and published in the United States under the title "Ural the Brave.
