beginning in the ninth century). The Book of Dede Korkut endured in the oral tradition of the Oghuz Turks after settling in Azerbaijan and Anatolia. Alpamysh is an earlier epic, translated into English and available online. The Book of Dede Korkut was the primary element of the Azerbaijani epic tradition in the Caucasus and Anatolia for several centuries: 11th–12th centuries. Concurrent to the Book of Dede Korkut was the so-called Epic of Köroğlu, which concerns the adventures of Rüşen Ali ("Köroğlu", or "son of the blind man") as he exacted revenge for the blinding of his father. The origins of this epic are somewhat more mysterious than those of the Book of Dede Korkut: many believe it to have arisen in Azerbaijan sometime between the 15th and 17th centuries; more reliable testimony, though, seems to indicate that the story is nearly as old as that of the Book of Dede Korkut, dating from around the dawn of the 11th century. Complicating matters somewhat is the fact that Köroğlu is also the name of a poet of the aşık/ozan tradition. Folk poetry The folk poetry tradition in Azerbaijani literature, as indicated above, was strongly influenced by the Islamic Sufi and Shi'a traditions. Furthermore, as partly evidenced by the prevalence of the still existent aşık/ozan tradition, the dominant element in Turkic folk poetry has always been song. The development of folk poetry in Turkic —which began to emerge in the 13th century with such important writers as Yunus Emre, Sultan Veled, and Şeyyâd Hamza—was given a great boost when, on 13 May 1277, Karamanoğlu Mehmet Bey declared Turkic the official state language of Anatolia's powerful Karamanid state; subsequently, many of the tradition's greatest poets would continue to emerge from this region. There are, broadly speaking, two traditions of Azerbaijani folk poetry: the aşık/ozan tradition, which—although much influenced by religion, as mentioned above—was for the most part a secular tradition; the explicitly religious tradition, which emerged from the gathering places (tekkes) of the Sufi religious orders and Shi'a groups. Much of the poetry and song of the aşık/ozan tradition, being almost exclusively oral until the 19th century, remains anonymous. There are, however, a few well-known aşıks from before that time whose names have survived together with their works: the aforementioned Köroğlu (16th century); Karacaoğlan (1606–1689), who may be the best-known of the pre-19th century aşıks; Dadaloğlu (1785–1868), who was one of the last