Idegäy is the central hero of the most celebrated Tatar heroic epic, the dastan Idegäy, a poem that grew around the memory of the historical emir Edigü of the Golden Horde (died 1419). In the epic he is a warrior of miraculous strength and cunning who, wronged by the tyranny of the khan Toqtamış, rises against his overlord, gathers the fighting men of the steppe and overthrows him, only for the cycle of vengeance to descend upon his own house through his son Nuradın. Transmitted for centuries by singers across the Turkic world, the Tatar recension gathered and published in the twentieth century stands as a national monument of Tatar oral literature, blending genuine fourteenth-century history with the marvels and heroic ideals of the steppe epic.