On Sanjyr during the Years of Perestroika and Sovereignty
The glasnost of the perestroika period opened new opportunities for the study and popularization of historical and cultural heritage. It was during this period that the dissemination of sanjyr received a new impetus. Starting from district and regional periodicals and ending with popular magazines of the republic such as "Ala-Too," "Kyrgyzstan Madeniyaty," and others, sanjyr began to be published, allowing a wide range of readers to become acquainted with them. In 1990, a competition for sanjyr storytellers was held for the first time in the village of Shalba in the Issyk-Kul Valley. Later, such events were organized on a regional scale. In the 1990s, the growing interest of the population in genealogical traditions was satisfied by publishing relevant materials in the pages of periodicals.
Since the 2000s, books have begun to be published about specific regions, as well as about clans and tribes based on oral narratives. It became popular to publish books about one's ancestors and specific individuals known among the people, such as batyrs, biys, or manaps.
Judging by the published books, there has been intensive work in this direction recently regarding the group of ichkilik (Nurbek Turan, 2012; Nurbek Turan, Teiit, 2013). In this group, targeted work on collecting materials had not been conducted before. However, it is difficult to assess their reliability, as the tradition of passing down genealogical information in this group began to lose its significance as early as the beginning of the 20th century. This is evidenced by the historian moldo Osmonaly Sydykov, who visited the southern region in 1910. It is possible that a significant portion of the information was already lost at that time, and collectors relied only on the available fragmentary materials, the carriers of which are our contemporaries.
In modern Kyrgyz society, many people pay great attention to restoring their genealogy. Certain segments of the urban and rural intelligentsia, sponsored by officials and businessmen, are interested in this. The genealogical collections they publish include the names of modern generations, including newborns through the male line. Such publications typically also include the genealogy and history of a specific clan and tribe, their current settlement, biographies of famous compatriots, as well as a list of historical and cultural sites in areas of compact residence. According to our observations, such "educational" activities, despite some unreliability of the provided information, mainly have an educational character.
Many storytellers who were carriers of genealogical traditions are no longer alive, and to some extent, the continuity between generations has been disrupted. There is now a loss of the tradition of disseminating sanjyr narratives in oral form.
Most modern experts on sanjyr have begun to recount past events and the genealogy of ancestors, relying on information from books and historical sources.
Recording and Collecting Genealogical Traditions of the Kyrgyz
