Oral performance and text: Narrators, authors, and editors in the Anatolian Turkish warrior epics Zeynep Aydoğan Yavuz adıla dünyada diri olmakdan eyü adıla ölmek yigdür 1 It is better to die with a good name than to be alive with a bad one. “The idea of eternity has ever had its strongest source in death”, which is at the same time “the sanction of everything that a storyteller can tell”, according to Walter Benjamin. 2 Stories come into being only after the passing of the events that constitute them. And it is the recording of these events, the transmission of that knowledge what makes them im- mortal, challenging death, the very source of that authority. This inex- tricable relationship between death and epic stories was more pressing for some, and so also was longing for having a distinct name to be re- membered. For the warriors who listened to the stories of the legendary warriors of the past death was a very likely occurrence as a result of their encounter with the enemy on a regular basis. Many of these warriors likely dreamed of earning a great reputation by making a splendid demonstration of martial skills in order to become the protagonist of per- haps another dāsitān one day and in this way attain immortality even if they lost their lives in the bargain. 3 Three epics: Battālnāme, Dānişmendnāme, Saltuknāme The three warrior epics that are being examined here declare explicitly each of the warrior’s desire to become a “legend” several times through- out the narratives. One of the Muslim characters in the Battālnāme, ‘Abdü’s-Selām becomes extremely jealous of Seyyid Battāl’s growing fame and decides to “go on an attacking expedition and acquire a name for himself”. He has the following three options: 1) the killing of a lead- 1 Battālnāme, A48–49. 2 Benjamin 1969, 93, 94. 3 Dāsitān (or destan in modern Turkish) means epic or legend. Its derivative destan yazmak (literally, to write a destan), which means to become a legend or to be the subject of an epic is still used in modern Turkish.