Alp Er Tunga or Alp Er Tonğa (Alp "brave, hero, conqueror, warrior", Er "man, male, soldier, Tom", Tonğa "

Siberian tiger The Siberian tiger or Amur tiger is a population of the tiger subspecies ''Panthera tigris tigris'' native to Northeast China, the Russian Far East, and possibly North Korea. It once ranged throughout the Korea, Korean Peninsula, but currently ...

") is a mythical Turkic hero who was mentioned in

Mahmud al-Kashgari Mahmud ibn Husayn ibn Muhammad al-Kashgari; ; , Мәһмуд Қәшқири; , Махмуд Қашғарий was an 11th-century Kara-Khanid scholar and lexicographer of the Turkic languages from Kashgar. His father, Husayn, was the mayor of ...

's ''

Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk The ' (; translated to English as the ''Compendium of the languages of the Turks'') is the first comprehensive dictionary of Turkic languages, compiled between 1072–74 by the Kara-Khanid scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari, who extensively documented t ...

'', Yusuf Balasaguni's

Kutadgu Bilig The ''Kutadgu Bilig'' or ''Qutadğu Bilig'' (; Khaqani Turkic: ) is an 11th-century work written by Yūsuf Balasaguni for the prince of Kashgar. The text reflects the author's and his society's beliefs, feelings and practices with regard to qu ...

and in the

Vatican Vatican may refer to: Geography * Vatican City, an independent city-state surrounded by Rome, Italy * Vatican Hill, in Rome, namesake of Vatican City * Ager Vaticanus, an alluvial plain in Rome * Vatican, an unincorporated community in the ...

manuscript of Oghuznama by an unknown writer. In Turkic literature he is considered to be the same character as

Afrasiab Afrasiyab ( ''afrāsiyāb''; ; Middle-Persian: ''Frāsiyāv, Frāsiyāk'') is the name of the mythical king and hero of Turan. He is the main antagonist of the Persian epic ''Shahnameh'', written by Ferdowsi. Name and origin ''Afrā'' is the po ...

in the Persian Epic

Shahnameh The ''Shahnameh'' (, ), also transliterated ''Shahnama'', is a long epic poem written by the Persian literature, Persian poet Ferdowsi between and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran. Consisting of some 50,000 distichs or couple ...

. He is sometimes mentioned as a khan of Saka (Scythia).William M. Clements, ''The Greenwood Encyclopedia of World Folklore and Folklife: Southeast Asia and India, Central and East Asia, Middle East'', Greenwood Press, 2006, , p. 432. The

Karakhanids The Kara-Khanid Khanate (; zh, t=喀喇汗國, p=Kālā Hánguó), also known as the Karakhanids, Qarakhanids, Ilek Khanids or the Afrasiabids (), was a Karluks, Karluk Turkic peoples, Turkic khanate that ruled Central Asia from the 9th to the ...

claimed to have descended from Alp Er Tunga.

Alp Er Tunga Epic

Sources

External links

''A king's book of kings: the Shah-nameh of Shah Tahmasp''
an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF),Which includes the name of the Turks at the time of the formation of the Western and Eastern Khaganates and said of the inter-ethnicity of the Iranians and the Turanians that Tor or Touraj is the son of Fereydoun and Iraj's brother, and shows that the Turks are not Turanians. Turkic mythology Heroes in mythology and legend Mythological kings Shahnameh {{Mythology-stub