MATERIAL CULTURE IN THE KYRGYZ–KARAKALPAK EPIC “KURMANBEK”: A AS AN EXAMPLE OF WEAPONS

Abstract

The article examines the Kyrgyz epic Kurmanbek and the Karakalpak epic Kurbanbek from a historical and ethnographic perspective, viewing them as artistic reflections of the hard period spanning the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries—preserved in the historical memory of Central Asian peoples as the “Kalmyk era”. In the Kyrgyz tradition, several variants of the epic have been written, whereas among the Karakalpaks it has been preserved under the title Kurbanbek and is known and existed against the Kalmyk khan Sheirkan. Although the epic is a work of artistic literature, it can also show as an ethnographic layer of evidence that reflects the nomadic society’s notions of security, the warrior’s status, social hierarchy, and martial ethics. Methods. As the empirical base, Kyrgyz and Karakalpak epic texts were used. The first method was ethnographic classification (typological) analysis: weapons and protective equipment were grouped according to their function (offensive/defensive), contexts of use (single combat, assault, defense), and their role as social markers. The second method was terminological and semantic (contextual-lexical) analysis: the meanings of military terms, their epithet patterns, and their narrative roles were interpreted within their textual contexts. Results. In the epic the analysis demonstrates that, weaponry is not merely an “attribute” but a structured system that signals of the hero’s social position and martial competence. In the Kyrgyz material, defensive equipment such as the helmet (tuulga), chest armor (charaina), and mail/lamellar armor (soot/chopkut) is portrayed not only as protecting the warrior’s body but also as a status marker that is presented also delineates the warrior’s rank. In the Karakalpak variants as well, the rtial equipment complex combines stable defensive elements with offensive weapons—such as the bow and arrows, spear, sword, and knife/dagger—thereby reflecting combat tactics as an interplay between far and close-quarters fighting is shown. Weapon names and their contexts of usage the security model of the Kalmyk era. Moreover, a number of weapon-related terms preserve cognate Turkic vocabulary, attesting to Kyrgyz–Karakalpak cultural proximity and to the transformation of shared historical experience into artistic memory. Conclusions. The weapon-related realities in the Kurmanbek/Kurbanbek epic constitutes through an important ethnographic source: its depictions of weaponry and martial equipment, it preserves in artistic form the military and social practices of the Kalmyk era, the warrior’s status, and nomadic conceptions of security. The weapons-and-armor complex in the Kyrgyz and Karakalpak texts systematically reveals historical and ethnographic parallels between the two traditions.