Oghuz Khan- Turkic HeroHero"World-Conqueror"

Birth

The Oghuzname, preserved in a Uyghur-script manuscript from the thirteenth or fourteenth century, opens with the birth of Oghuz Khan. His mother, wife of the ruler Kara Khan, delivers a child whose face is sky-blue, the color of Tengri's heaven. The infant speaks from the womb. After nursing once from his mother, he refuses further milk and demands meat and wine. Within days he grows to the size of a youth. Within weeks he moves and fights like a man grown.

The Hunt

The young Oghuz Khan's first feat is a hunt no ordinary man could survive. A monstrous creature has been terrorizing the land, devouring livestock and killing anyone who comes near. Oghuz tracks it alone. The Oghuzname gives the battle in brief, violent strokes: Oghuz finds the beast, fights it, and kills it. He returns carrying proof of the kill. He is still a boy by any normal reckoning.

Father and Son

Oghuz breaks with his father Kara Khan. In the Uyghur-script version, the conflict centers on authority: the son acts on his own, makes decisions for the people, and will not submit. In Rashid al-Din's Jami al-Tawarikh and Abu'l-Ghazi's Shajara-i Tarakima, the break is religious. Oghuz recognizes the one God and refuses to bow before his father's idols. Kara Khan will not yield. The quarrel becomes a war, and Oghuz defeats and kills his father. He takes the throne.

The Two Wives

Oghuz Khan's first wife comes from the sky. While he is alone, a beam of golden light falls from heaven, and within it he sees a maiden. He takes her as his wife. She bears him three sons: Gün (Sun), Ay (Moon), and Yıldız (Star).

His second wife he finds near a great tree beside a lake. She bears three more sons: Gök (Sky), Dağ (Mountain), and Deniz (Sea). The first wife's sons carry the names of heaven. The second wife's sons carry the names of the earth. Six sons, and the world already divided between them.

The Grey Wolf

With his six sons grown, Oghuz Khan rides to war in every direction. Before one campaign, a grey wolf appears ahead of the army. It does not flee. It walks forward, and the army follows. The wolf leads them through terrain they do not know, past ambushes they cannot see, to a victory they could not have won without it. The Oghuzname names the wolf böri and treats it as a guide sent by Tengri.

The campaigns stretch east to the sea and west to the mountains. Oghuz defeats every army that meets him. Peoples he conquers join his horde. By the time he is old, his realm covers more of the earth than any one man has held before.

The Bow and the Arrows

Oghuz Khan, old now and ready to pass on what he has built, calls a great feast. He orders a golden bow placed in the branches of a towering tree and three golden arrows laid at its base. His three elder sons, children of the heavenly wife, sit at his right. He calls them Bozok, Grey Arrow. His three younger sons, children of the earthly wife, sit at his left. He calls them Üçok, Three Arrows.

He breaks the golden bow into three pieces and gives them to the Bozok sons. He gives the three arrows to the Üçok sons. The bow-holders rule. The arrow-holders support. Each of the six sons later fathers four sons of his own, and these twenty-four grandsons become the ancestors of the twenty-four Oghuz tribes, each with its own tamga and its own rank at the feast. The entire order of the Oghuz world traces back to this moment: an old conqueror, a golden bow, and a tree.