Alisher Navaiy (9 February 441 – January 1501), also known as Nizām-al-Din ʿAlisher Herawī

Alisher Navoiy

" Alisher Navoi" redirects here. For the film, see Alisher Navoi (film).
Mīr 'Alisher Navaiy (9 February 1441 – 3 January 1501), also known as Nizām-al-Din ʿAlisher Herawī  (Chagatai-Turkic/Persian: نظام‌الدین علی‌شیر نوایی‎) was a Chagatai Turkic poet, writer, politician, linguist, mystic, and painter. He was the greatest representative of Chagatai literature.

Nava'i believed that Chagatai and other Turkic languages were superior to Persian for literary purposes, an uncommon view at the time, and defended this belief in his work titled The Comparison of the Two Languages. He emphasized his belief in the richness, precision, and malleability of Turkic vocabulary as opposed to Persian.

Because of his distinguished Chagatai language poetry, Nava'i is considered by many throughout the Turkic-speaking world to be the founder of early Turkic literature. Many places and institutions in Central Asia are named after him.

Life

Alisher Nava'i's portrait in Isfana, Kyrgyzstan

Alisher Nava'i was born in 1441 in Herat, which is now in north-western Afghanistan. During Alisher's lifetime, Herat was ruled by the Timurid Empire and became one of the leading cultural and intellectual centres in the Muslim world. Alisher belonged to the Chagatai amir (or Mīr in Persian) class of the Timurid elite. Alisher's father, Ghiyāth ud-Din Kichkina (The Little), served as a high-ranking officer in the palace of Shāhrukh Mirzā, a ruler of Khorasan. His mother served as a prince's governess in the palace. Ghiyāth ud-Din Kichkina served as governor of Sabzawar at one time. He died while Alisher was young, and another ruler of Khorasan, Abul-Qasim Babur Mirza, adopted guardianship of the young man.

Alisher was a schoolmate of Husayn Bayqarah, who would later become the sultan of Khorasan. Alisher's family was forced to flee Herat in 1447 after the death of Shāhrukh created an unstable political situation. His family returned to Khorasan after order was restored in the 1450s. In 1456, Alisher and Bayqarah went to Mashhad with Ibn-Baysunkur. The following year Ibn-Baysunkur died and Alisher and Bayqarah parted ways. While Bayqarah tried to establish political power, Alisher pursued his studies in Mashhad, Herat, and Samarkand. After the death of Abu Sa'id Mirza in 1469, Husayn Bayqarah seized power in Herat. Consequently, Alisher left Samarkand to join his service. Bayqarah ruled Khorasan almost uninterruptedly for forty years. Alisher remained in the service of Bayqarah until his death on 3 January 1501. He was buried in Herat.

Alisher Nava'i led an ascetic lifestyle, "never marrying or having concubines or children.

Work
Alisher served as a public administrator and adviser to his sultan, Husayn Bayqarah. He was also a builder who is reported to have founded, restored, or endowed some 370 mosques, madrasas, libraries, hospitals, caravanserais, and other educational, pious, and charitable institutions in Khorasan. In Herat, he was responsible for 40 caravanserais, 17 mosques, 10 mansions, nine bathhouses, nine bridges, and 20 pools.

Among Alisher's most famous constructions were the mausoleum of the 13th-century mystical poet, Farid al-Din Attar, in Nishapur (north-eastern Iran) and the Khalasiya madrasa in Herat. He was one of the instrumental contributors to the architecture of Herat, which became, in René Grousset's words, "the Florence of what has justly been called the Timurid Renaissance". Moreover, he was a promoter and patron of scholarship and arts and letters, a musician, a composer, a calligrapher, a painter and sculptor, and such a celebrated writer that Bernard Lewis, a renowned historian of the Islamic world, called him "the Chaucer of the Turks".