Asena

Namık İsmail's proposed coat of arms of Turkey, bearing the wolf Asena

Asena is the name of a she-wolf associated with the Gokturk foundation myth.[1] The ancestress of the Göktürks is a she-wolf, mentioned yet unnamed in two different "Wolf Tales".[2] The legend of Asena tells of a young boy who survived a battle; a female wolf finds the injured child and nurses him back to health. The she-wolf, impregnated by the boy, escapes her enemies by crossing the Western Sea to a cave near the Qocho mountains and a city of the Tocharians, giving birth to ten half-wolf, half-human boys. Of these, Yizhi Nishidu[3] becomes their leader and establishes the Ashina clan, which ruled over the Göktürk and other Turkic nomadic empires.[4][5]

In certain cultural narratives and mythological accounts, the character of Asena, with its symbolic association to a she-wolf, is denoted by the name "Bozkurt" (meaning Gray Wolf in Turkish), embodying a significant archetype with multifaceted connotations.[6]

  1. ^ Ziya Gökalp, transcription: Şahin Filiz, "Türk devletinin tekâmülü 12: Hakanlık Teşkilatı",Küçük Mecmua -II-, Bu da Çinlilere göre (Asena=Kurt) manasındadır (in Turkish)
  2. ^ Golden, Peter B. (August 2018). "The Ethnogonic Tales of the Türks" in The Medieval History Journal, 21(2). 21 (2): 291–327
  3. ^ Hongen, Niu; 牛鴻恩 (2015). Xin yi Yi Zhou shu. 袁宏. (Di 1 ban ed.). Taibei Shi: 三民書局. ISBN 9789571460192. OCLC 913445355.
  4. ^ Findley, Carter Vaughin. The Turks in World History. Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-517726-6. Page 38.
  5. ^ Roxburgh, D. J. (ed.) Turks, A Journey of a Thousand Years. Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2005. Page 20.
  6. ^ Koto, Koray (2023-07-21). "Börü: The Wolf in Turkic Mythology". ULUKAYIN English. Retrieved 2023-07-24.

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