Gazi Türkiyat

Öz

In the second half of the 19th century, when Tsarist Russia conquered Turkestan, it began to study the region in depth, and much important research was carried out. One of the most prominent figures in these studies was Abubakir Akhmetjanovich Divayev. Divayev made important contributions to the folk literature of the region with the tales he collected from various regions of Turkestan. In particular, the legend of Ūc b. Unūk, which he collected from the Jambyl region of Kazakhstan in the early 20th century, attracted Divayev’s attention because it was widely known among Kazakhs. The legend was published in Kazan in 1908 under the title “Kirgizskaia Legenda o Vetxozavetnom Velikane Adje (Oge)” (A Kazakh Legend About the Old Testament Giant Āc). The publication presents the Arabic text, the Cyrillic transcription and the Russian translation of the legend. This legend, which has a multi-layered structure based on the sources of the Jewish and contains different narratives, has been variously referred to by the Kazakhs as Āc, Alaŋ Ḳasar, Alaŋḳasar Alıf, Alpamıs. Another point that makes the legend valuable is that it was recorded from the mouth of a Jambyl inhabitant in a way that reflects the Jambyl dialect of the time, and when the Arabic text was transferred to Cyrillic, the regional dialect was carefully marked in the transcription, paying attention to the differences between the written language and the spoken language. In this paper, the characteristics of the Kazakh language as reflected in the Chagatay written language through the transfer of the Arabic text to Latin letters are highlighted, and some characteristics of the Jambyl dialect are analysed on the basis of Divayev’s transcription.