We will read together the national epic of Turkey, which has the status that Homer had in Greece or Gilgamesh in Babylon. Heroic tales (part prose, part verse) of the shamanic bard and warrior Dede Korkut originated among the Oghuz Turks, east of the Aral Sea (as was). These legends travelled with the Oghuz Turks in their migration to present-day Turkey, driven west by the expanding Mongols (just as the Danish epic 'Beowulf' accompanied the Anglo-Saxons when they migrated west to England). The dozen surviving tales about Dede Korkut tell of heroes raised by lionesses battling with one-eyed monsters, of noble warriors undaunted by vast odds, of life on horseback with bow and arrows in the trackless steppe. These stories became Islamized over the centuries, in the way that 'Beowulf' became superficially Christianized. I will provide a running commentary. You will need the Penguin translation by Geoffrey Lewis.