Paper abstract:

The events of the 1916 Uprising in Semirech’e and the subsequent displacement of Kyrgyz peoples to China shaped the development of Kyrgyz national identity. This forced migration, known as the ürkün, inspired a new category of oral poetry known as ürkün ırları, ‘songs of the ürkün’. These poems were composed by Kyrgyz literati, graduates of Islamic institutions of learning where they had studied in the final decades of the 19th century. Many of them were teachers in 1916 and experienced the ürkün firsthand. Following their return to Kirghizia after their displacement, these scholars drew on the Central Asian and Islamic traditions in which they were educated as well as their personal experiences to compose new type of literature and poetry. Their compositions also were strongly influenced by the new and evolving sociopolitical conditions of the nascent Soviet Union. In the early 1920s, a small group of scholars local to Kirgizia embarked on a grassroots campaign to find folkloric compositions and record them in writing. Among these materials they collected were many ürkün ırları. The manuscripts of these poems and other oral literature collected during these campaigns provided foundational materials for Soviet and post-Soviet folklore studies in Kyrgyzstan. However, the circumstances of composition, performance, and textualization set ürkün ırları apart from pre-Soviet Kyrgyz oral literature. Using historical and folkloristic methodologies, I critically examine the place of ürkün ırları in Kyrgyz folklore studies and historiography.