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{{more footnotes, date=March 2017 Itbaraks (English: Shaggy Dog) or just Baraks are Turkic mythological creatures. They were "dog headed, dark coloured manly creatures". According to the
Oghuz Khagan Oghuz Khagan or Oghuz Khan ( tk, Oguz Han or Oguz Kagan ; tr, Oğuz Kağan or Oğuz Han; Azerbaijani: Oğuz Xan or Oğuz Xaqan) is a legendary khan of the Turkic people and an eponymous ancestor of Oghuz Turks. Some Turkic cultures use the le ...
Narratives, their country was in the "unknown northwest". It can be assumed that it's around today's
Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...
. Oghuz tried to invade them but couldn't succeed, so he had to retreat to a small island.


Dog-headed men

A huge part of Oghuz Khagan Narratives was about "invasions on dog-headed men". Turks called them "Itbaraks". "It" means "dog" and "Barak" means a dark, shaggy dog species. When Oghuz Khagan's invasion on Itbaraks failed and he retreated to a small island, one of his dead soldiers' widow wife(could be a beautiful Itbarak woman) gave birth. Oghuz Khagan and his people had no home or tent. So the woman had to give birth to his child in a hollow. Oghuz named this child "Kıpçak (Kipchak)", meaning "hollow" in Old Turkic. When Oghuz Khagan had invaded Itbarak lands after 17 years, he gave the lands to Kıpçak to rule. Year after years, Kıpçak's lineage has believed to become the old Turkic tribe
Kipchaks The Kipchaks or Qipchaks, also known as Kipchak Turks or Polovtsians, were a Turkic nomadic people and confederation that existed in the Middle Ages, inhabiting parts of the Eurasian Steppe. First mentioned in the 8th century as part of the Se ...
.


Oghuz Khagan Narratives

The text about Itbaraks in the Narratives: :"Barak", that's what the Turks called the shaggy dog. :That's how they named the big noble dog. :The Barak is told in the sagas. :It was believed to be other dogs ancestor. :This dog was noble, and enormously big. :Hunting and shepherd dogs was his sons. :In the Northwestern Asia, there was Itbarak. :Turks were far away from them in the Middle Asia. :They had body of a man, head of a dog. :Their color was dark, like the Black Devil. :Their women was pretty and didn't run away from the Turks. :They were medicated, you couldn't spear them. :The saga said Oghuz Khagan was defeated. :He tried to recover on the island he retreated. :After seventeen years, Oghuz defeated them. :Women helped him, and the war has ended. :Oghuz gave this territory to "Kıpçak-Beg" :So Turks called the area "Kıpçak".


Similarities to other mythologies

Stories about "Dog-headed men" can be found on many other mythologies. Europeans called them "Borus" and believed they were living in northern parts of today's
Northern Europe The northern region of Europe has several definitions. A restrictive definition may describe Northern Europe as being roughly north of the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, which is about 54th parallel north, 54°N, or may be based on other g ...
. The itbaraks were believed to live in the pretty much same area.


References

*Bahaeddin Ögel, Turkic Mythology(Volume 1, Page 191) *Bahaeddin Ögel, Turkic Mythology(Volume 1, Page 194) Turkic legendary creatures Kipchaks Mythological human hybrids Mythological dogs