Asan Qaigy, 'Asan the Sorrowful', is the legendary sage, prophet and zhyrau of Kazakh tradition, associated with the age of the khans Janibek and Kerei and the birth of the Kazakh Khanate in the fifteenth century. His byname comes from the grief with which he foresaw the hardships in store for his people. In the most enduring legend he rides the steppe on Zhelmaya, a she-camel swift as the wind, searching for Zheruiyq, a promised earthly paradise of boundless green pasture and gentle waters where flocks multiply and neither sorrow nor oppression is known. Though he never reaches it, his quest and his wise, mournful sayings became a lasting image of the yearning for a just and abundant homeland, and he is counted among the first and greatest of the steppe poet-sages.