Poetry
Алаң да алаң, алаң жұрт
Not translated into English
Kaztugan Zhyrau · 1450
Synopsis
A tolgau of farewell to the native land, on the banks of the Edil, the Volga. The poet recalls its abundance, its rivers and the places where his people camped, the spot where he was born and grew up. The word jourt, which means at once the people, the country and the encampment, returns at the end of the lines like a refrain, and the expression alaŋ jourt designates in turn the native land, a place where life is good and a green meadow.
Context
Only three pieces are attributed to him: a eulogy of himself as a warrior, this farewell, and an appeal to the fighters that widens into a meditation on mountains and men; the rest is lost. Sputnik Kazakhstan links the farewell to the departure of the Kazakh tribes from the Edil to the Chu, where the first khanate was founded. Malim stresses its repetitions and parallelisms, and K. Kurkebayev, at al-Farabi University, studied its key words, aphorisms and sound harmony in 2016.
Who it is for
A short, musical poem of farewell, to be read for its celebration of a lost land on the banks of the Volga.
Prizes and reception
The critic M. Zharmukhamedov ranks him, with Asan Qaighy, Shalkiiz and Dospambet, among the zhyraus of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.