Millennium of Turkish Literature : a concise History

Rapture and Revolution: Essays on Turkish Literature
, 
edited by Jayne L. Warner (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse Univ. Press, 2007), 159.
3. A comprehensive survey of language reform is Uriel Heyd, 
Language Reform in 
Modern Turkey
(Jerusalem: Israel Oriental Society, 1954). Also see Geoff rey Lewis, 
Th
 e 
Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success
(Oxford, U.K.: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999).

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Th
e Dawn in Asia
3
can rise and acquire power and prestige.”
4
Yusuf Has Hâcib of the eleventh 
century, the fi rst Turkish poet to produce a major original work, 
Kutadgu 
Bilig
(Wisdom of Royal Glory),
proclaimed in these words the supremacy of 
language in Turkish life and culture. Th
roughout the later stages of Turkish 
history and most signifi cantly during the Ottoman period, the poetic word 
was a more prevalent method of expression than most other modes. Today, 
too, the spoken and written word is the pivotal force of Turkish culture.
Because the Turks originated in the Ural-Altai region of Central Asia, 
their language is oft en referred to as “Ural-Altaic,” together with such other 
Turkic languages as Uzbek, Azeri, Chaghatai, Kirghiz, and Yakut. It is an 
agglutinative language rich in rhythmic eff ects and rhyme potential, with 
a mellifl uous phonological structure ideally suited for poetic utterance.
It is, however, with the Orhon inscriptions of the eighth century a.d.
5
that we get the most signifi cant documents of early Turkish literature. 
Th
ese inscriptions as well as the oral epics
6
and a large body of oral lyric 
verse
7
constitute the best work of the nomadic and settled Turkish com-
munities until the latter part of the eleventh century.
Th
us, the Turkish migration that started around the sixth century 
a.d.—a migration into China, India, Persia, the Caucasus, and Asia 
Minor—brought with it a rich oral tradition. Between the ninth and early 
thirteenth centuries, a vast majority of the Turks who settled in Asia Minor 
4. Yusuf Has Hâcib, 
Kutadgu Bilig,
2 vols., edited by ReŞit Rahmeti Arat (vol. 1, 
Ankara: Milli Eğitim, 1947; vol. 2, Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1959), 1:33–35, 2:23–24. 
For an English translation of 
Kutadgu Bilig,
see Yusuf Khass Hajib, 
Wisdom of Royal Glory: 
A Turko-Islamic Mirror for Princes,
edited and translated by Robert Dankoff (Chicago: 
Univ. of Chicago Press, 1983).
5. Th
e best work on the inscriptions was done by the Russian Turkologist Wilhelm 
Radloff and the Danish linguist Vilhelm Th
omsen. Th
e earliest comprehensive Turk-
ish work on them is Hüseyin Namık Orkun, 
Eski Türk Yazıtları
(Istanbul: Devlet, 1936; 
reprint, Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1986). Also see the excellent scholarly works by 
Talat Tekin, 
A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic
(Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1968) and 
Orhon Yazıtları
(Istanbul: Simurg, 1989).
6. For a comprehensive study, see Nora K. Chadwick and Victor Zhirmunsky, 
Oral 
Epics of Central Asia
(London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1969).
7. A large selection of early Turkish poems may be found in Reşit Rahmeti Arat, 
Eski Türk Şiiri
(Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1965), and Saadet Çağatay, 
Türk Lehçeleri 
Örnekleri
(Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1950).

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4
A Millennium of Turkish Literature
accepted Islam as their faith. By the end of the eleventh century, much 
of Turkish literature, oral and written, had already acquired an Islamic 
fl avor. Th
is orientation, together with the infl uence of Arabic and Persian 
cultures, was to continue throughout Ottoman history.
In addition to the early