Oghuz Turks
The Turkish epic tradition properly begins with the "Book of Dede Korkut", which is in a language recognizably similar to modern Turkish and which developed from the oral traditions of the Oghuz Turks, that branch of the Turkic peoples which migrated towards western Asia and eastern Europe through Transoxiana beginning in the 9th century CE. The "Book of Dede Korkut" continued to survive in the oral tradition after the Oghuz Turks had, by and large, settled in Anatolia.