Korkyt-Ata Memorial

Korkyt is the legendary figure of Turkic tradition credited with inventing the kobyz, the two-stringed horsehair fiddle, and with a life spent trying to escape death, a story told across the Turkic world in the Book of Dede Korkyt. The memorial on the steppe near his traditional burial place was built in 1980 by the architect Bekbolat Ibrayev and the physicist Sherkhan Isatayev: four concrete blades rising from a base, each shaped like the neck of a kobyz, with metal pipes set into the structure so that the constant steppe wind plays them and the monument sounds continuously. A museum and a newer complex have been added beside it. The setting is flat open steppe with the railway and the Syr Darya nearby.

What you actually see

• The four blades - the concrete kobyz forms rising from the steppe.
• The wind pipes - the tubes that sound the monument in the wind.
• The museum - the display on Korkyt and the kobyz tradition.
• The open steppe - the empty plain the memorial stands in.

When to go

April to June and September to October for tolerable weather. A windy day is better than a still one, since the sound is the point. Summer heat on the steppe is severe and winter bitter.

Honest expectations

The monument is roadside and the visit brief. The museum keeps irregular hours. There is no shade and little shelter. The sounding effect depends entirely on wind and can be absent on calm days.

Nearby

Kyzylorda lies southeast; Aralsk is northwest.