Epic of Manas

The epic tells how the hero Manas united forty Kyrgyz tribes against their enemies; the second part follows his son Semetey and the third his grandson Seytek. The 40 rays on the flag also refer to the forty tribes.

For centuries Manas was recited from memory by manaschy without being written down. Sayakbay Karalaev's version exceeds half a million lines — about twenty times longer than Homer's Iliad and Odyssey combined. The hero's name first appears in a Persian manuscript of 1792.

Kyrgyzstan celebrated the 1,000th anniversary of Manas in 1995, and in 2013 UNESCO inscribed the trilogy Manas, Semetey, Seytek. Bishkek's airport, a university and many streets bear its name.