Kham-sat al-Mutahayyirin
("Quintet of
the Astonished") - the Persian historians Mirkhwand and his grandson
Khwandamir, the miniature-painters Bihzad and Shah Muzaffar, and the musicians
Qul-Muhammad, Shaykhi Na'i, and Husain Udi.
43
But above all, Navoi is remembered and revered as a quite marvelously
successful shaper and encourager of Turkish literature. Before 1400, it was not
uncommon for works of an informal, popular nature to be written in one or another
Turkic dialect, sometimes using the Arabic script, sometimes not. Not until the first
half of the 15th century did a small group of writers in Central Asia take the initial,
tottering steps in the use of Turkish for
belles-lettres.
The pioneers of this literature
- among whom were Sakka-ki, Lutfi, Yaqini and Gada'i were faced with a specific
and indeed, formidable problem. Wishing to write poetry that would conform to
the accepted rules of Perso-Arabic versification, they had as their raw material a
language, Turkish, not especially well-suited to those rules. Nevertheless, by deftly
exploiting the full range of the Turkish vocabulary and potential grammatical
formations, and by borrowing Arabic and Persian words and expressions, these
men created a literary language out of the Turkish vernaculars of Central Asia and
Khorasan called "Chagatai" Turkish, or simply "Chagatai."
43
Hoberman, Barry (January–February 1985). "Chaucer of the Turks". Saudi Aramco
World: 24–27.
44
Some of the early works in Chagatai are works of lasting merit - in particular,
the poetry of Lutfi. However, the language of these early Chagatai writers varied
from locale to locale and even from author to author within the same city. Navoi
changed all that. The cumulative effect of his 30-odd Chagatai works, written over
a span of 30 years, was to standardize and stabilize the new idiom. And it was
entirely due to the inimitable excellence of Navoi's poetry that Turkish was able to
win acceptance as a legitimate literary vehicle.
Navoi's best-known poems are found in his four
Divans
(collections of
poetry):
Ghara'ib al-Sighar
("Wonders of Childhood"),
Naivadir al-Shabab
("Witticisms of Youth"),
Bada'i' al-Wasat
("Marvels of Middle Age"), and
Fawi'id
al-Kibar
("Advantages of Old Age"). He also took it upon himself to write
technical works that would be helpful to other Turkish poets - such as
Mizan al-
Awzan
("The Measure of Meters"), a detailed treatise on poetical meters - as well
as compile the monumental
Majalis al-Nafa'is
("Assemblies of Distinguished
Men"), a collection of over 450 biographical sketches of more or less
contemporary poets, and a gold mine of information for modern historians of
Timurid culture.
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Perhaps his most impassioned work, however, was his very last -
Muhakamat al-Lughatayn
("Judgment between the Two Languages"), completed
in December, 1499,13 months before his death. In essay form, Navoi voices a
forceful plea on behalf of the Turkish language. Hoping to inspire authors of
Turkish origin to write in Chagatai rather than Persian, he endeavors to
demonstrate what he views as the inherent superiority of Turkish to Persian.
Intended as the poet's definitive statement on the subject dearest to his heart, the
44
Erkinov, A. (1998). "The Perception of Works by Classical Authors in the 18th and
19th centuries Central Asia: The Example of the Xamsa of Ali Shir Nawa`i". In Kemper,
Michael; Frank, Allen. Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia from the 18th to the
Early 20th Centuries. Berlin. pp. 513–526..
45
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