The present edition of a Kazakh manuscript (manuscript No. 493 titled “Қыргыз өлендері” — “Kazakh Poems”) from the holdings of the Eastern Department of the Research Library of St. Petersburg State University aims to publish and provide scholarly interpretation of previously unknown medieval Kazakh works. Among them is the lyric-epic “Adil sultan,” which has analogues in the literary heritage of the Nogai and Crimean Tatar peoples. The works of Kazakh and Nogai zhyrau (bards) likewise often trace back to literary models, many of which spread among nomads in the 14th–17th centuries. The dramatic upheavals in the Golden Horde in the second half of the 14th and the early 15th centuries, as well as the political, demographic, and military shocks experienced by the Nogai Horde in the 16th and early 17th centuries, left a vivid mark on the oral poetic creativity of the zhyrau and on the written literature of the nomads. Manuscript books and texts recorded by the nomads themselves carried great significance in their culture. It was precisely the written text that served as the foundation enabling many examples of the zhyrau’s literary creativity to be preserved and transmitted from generation to generation.
