>>(oguz name would be in Latin Gesta Oguzorum).
BTW: I meant this not as a verbatim translation.
>Oguz Khan himself is apparently a "composite" figure, with
>elements of Attila and other great royal figures.
Absolutely.
>Which version of the Oguzname did you cite?
I don't know, since I don't have that article myself.
I only jotted down that quotation about 15 years ago;
it was included in some other article by some other
historian. So, the answer could be given only by
the author himself, Mehmet Ali Ekrem. Here again
the caption "O mentiune inedita despre românii din
sec. al IX-lea in 'Oguzname', cea mai veche cronica
turca" [roughly: A little known reference to Romanians
of the 9th c. in Oguzname, the oldest Turkish chronicle];
published in the review SCIVA, 31, no. 2, in 1980.
>Frankly there is no way of proving that the reference
>to "Ulak" is much older than the 14th c.
There are at least several Ulaq/Ulak references
within the frame of much earlier events (concerning
both Turkic and Tatar-Mongolian impacts).
In the case that Ekrem's version mixes events from
different epochs, i.e., putting together actions that
could have taken place in different areas of the
realm controlled by the Oguz Turks, then the epic
could very well refer to the then no longer anonymous
Romanians -- namely in the context of certain Oguz
Turks, the Cumans. In the western part of their
"empire", Kara KIpchak (the eastern part of it: Desht-
-i-KIpchak) they had a lot to do with Romanians. After
all, a considerable "chunk" of the Cumans was assimilated
by Romanians (along with the other "chunks" by
Hungarians, and Yugoslavs and Bulgarians). In Romania
they left considerable topo/hydronyms and patronyms.
Among the later Coman and its derivates (e.g. Com&nici,
cf. Nadia Com&neci) is outstanding. The equivalent of
the Hungarian 2nd name Kun (a province called Cumania
in Hungarian, KunSág, lies in the SE plains (Tisza plain)
of today's Hungary (North of Serbia, West of Banat;
on an axis between Szeged and Budapest. It was there
where some of the Cumans of Kuthen khan stayed for
good, after Kuthen khan's several 10 thousand tents
got... political asylum in Hungary -- for Cumans were
chased by the Mongolian armies, the Mongol khans
claiming they were the inheritors of Desht-i-KIpchak
and of the adjacent "kara" territories.)
So these... Polovtsies played a role not only in the history
of the Rus principalities. :) (BTW: The other Turkish branch,
the Petchenegs, left less traces, some toponyms in
the Romanian area Pecineaga, BeSinova, and BeSenyö
+ family name Besenyei in the Hungarian speaking area.
Some of them must have been assimilated in Transylvania,
where about 2 decades prior to the great Mongolian
invasion the Hungarian king Andrew II mentioned in his diploma
to the German colonists a province called terra Blachorum
et Bissenorum.)
George