Book of Dede Korkut

The Book of Dede Korkut, also spelled as Dada Gorgud, Dede Qorqut or Qorqit ata, is the most famous epic stories of the Oghuz Turks. The stories have values important to the social lifestyle of the nomadic Turks and their pre-Islamic beliefs. The book's mythic story is part of the culture of Turkic states. Some of those are Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and to a smaller amount Kyrgyzstan.
The stories were first told orally before they were written as a book. There are many versions of the stories. Many dates have been used for the first written copies. Geoffery Lewis dates it fairly early in the 15th century. Cemal Kafadar said that it was no earlier than the 15th century. Stanford Jay Shaw (1977) in his history of the Ottoman empire dates it in the 14th century.