Epic of Manas

The Epic of Manas is a traditional epic poem dating to the 18th century but claimed by Kyrgyz tradition to be much older. The plot of Manas revolves around a series of events that coincide with the history of the region in the 9th century, primarily the interaction of the Kyrgyz people with Turkic and Chinese people.

The government of Kyrgyzstan celebrated the 1,000th anniversary of Manas in 1995. The eponymous hero of Manas and his Oirat enemy Joloy were first found written in a Persian manuscript dated to 1792–93. In one of its dozens of iterations, the epic poem consists of approximately 500,000 lines.