Risbek, 2010

Wandering Through Nomadic Epics Whispers of Lost Israeli Tribes blow across a knot of mountains spanning Afghanistan, Kashmir,, Altai, Tadjikstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Medieval Europe caught wind of the tales and fascinated themselves with the likes of Prestor John and Red Jews - entities who maintained their religious identity in an increasingly Islamic realm. Legends eventually gave way to exploration, observation and objectivity. Enlightened historians uncovered a string of Lost Tribe and Prestor John hoaxes developed to give Christian Europe hope during its own struggle with Islam. Now modern academics researching Central Asian oral epics write off biblical similarities as mere archetypes. But two Kyrgyz epics, Manas and Semetey contain biblical styled names that appear more like code than archetypes. The Kyrgyz hero Manas son of Jakyp () sounds suspiciously similar the founder of a biblical tribe, Manasseh, later known as Jacobs son Manasseh. Jakyp and Jacobs biographies also mirror each other: Kyrgyz Jakyp, like biblical Jacob (Yaqb), is a cunning shepherd with two wives, a limp, and a grueling rags to riches story, whom we find behaving more like a greedy entrepreneur than a saintly patriarch: cursing his murderous son, fearing for his life, and snapping at his barren wife. Jakyb and Jacob mirror each other. Manas epic, with its unique biblical parallels, also contains a wandering angel similar to the man who wrestled biblical Jacob. Medieval author Alisher Navoi, depicting this wanderer, may have discovered a paradoxical bridge spanning east and west through the most unlikely of characters, the Islamic and Christian Messiah, who himself tells a parable about a wandering son.

Many Kyrgyz legends pay homage to this wandering saint, known as Kyzyr. He has made his way into Persian and Turkish religion, poetry and legends. This same sage crossed into the Arabic world where the immortal character is known as al-Khizr, the Green Prophet. Alice E. Lasaster and other scholars believe Kyzyr (a.k.a Kydyr) could be associated with the Green Man or Green Knight in northern European legends, while others compare him with the Hebrew Elijah or Europes controversial Wandering Jew. Local Kyrgyz belief claims the Kydyr was a Hebrew saint, like the prophets of old. One famous 12th century poet, Nizami-ye Ganjavi, also grouped Kyzyr with the ancient prophets, stating Khizr... descended from Abraham and guided Moses. The Semetey Epic, sequel to Manas, is a narrative of Manas son Semetey. Set during the Medieval Islamization of Central Asia, Semeteys maternal uncle, a Tadjik, agrees to raise Semetey on condition that he never learns of his real father, Manas. When first confronted with his true ancestry, twelve year old Semetey battles the stubborn messenger, but eventually listens long enough to wake up and, like the son in Kydyr-Messiahs parable, returns home. If an Israeli tribe, descended from Jacobs son Manasseh, was pressured to deny their ethnic beliefs and conceal their semitic origin from future offspring, it is possible they may have encrypted their ancestry into national epics. The name Semetey () itself appears to be a codename, close enough to Semittey (), or Semitish in modern Kyrgyz - an appropriate name after centuries of wandering, mixing, scattering, and regrouping. Their clever riddle, whispered through a series of oral epics, spans to modern times, giving breath to dead fables, in a land where people still wait for the wandering Kydyr.