Nizām-al-Din ʿAlī-Shīr[1] Herawī (Chagatai/Persian: نظام الدین على شير هروی; Uzbek: Alisher Navoiy) (9 February 1441 – 3 January 1501) was a Central Asian politician, mystic, linguist, painter, and poet of Uyghur origin who was born and lived in Herat. He is generally known by his pen name Navā'ī (Persian: نوایی, meaning "the weeper"). Because of his distinguished Chagatai (Middle Turkic) poetry, he is considered by many throughout the Turkic-speaking world to be the founder of early Turkic literature. In particular he is claimed by the Uzbeks as their national poet, as the modern Uzbek language is descended from Chagatai.
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Origins
Mīr Alī Shīr was born in 1441 in Herat, which is now in northwestern Afghanistan. He belonged to the Chagatai amir (or Mīr in Persian) class of the Timurid elite. His father, Ghiyāth ud-Din Kichkina ("the Little"), served as a high-ranking officer in the palace of Shāhrukh Mirzā, the ruler of Khorasan. According to contemporary historian Mirza Muhammad Haidar Dughlat (1499-1551), he was a descendant of Uyghur "Bakhshis" (traveling bards, similar to Turkmen bakshys), many of whom later served at the courts of almost all Chagatai and Timurid rulers and later became powerful military officials (thus the military title Mīr). His mother served as a princes' governess in the palace.
His father died while Mīr Alī Shīr was young, and the ruler of Khorasan, Babur Ibn-Baysunkur, adopted guardianship of the young man.[2] He was subsequently educated in Mashhad, Herat, and Samarkand.
Mīr Alī Shīr was a schoolmate of Husayn Bayqarah, who would later become the sultan of Khorasan. During Mīr Ali Shīr's lifetime, Herat was the capital of the Timurid Empire and became one of the leading cultural and intellectual centers in the Muslim world. It was there that Navā'i met his good friend Jāmī.
Achievements
Mīr Alī Shīr 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, 9 bathhouses, 9 bridges, and 20 pools.[3]
Among his most famous constructions were the mausoleum of the 13th-century mystical poet, Farid al-Din Attar, in Nishapur (northeastern 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".[4] 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, the distinguished English historian of Islam, called him "the Chaucer of the Turks".[5]
Literary achievements
Under the pen name Navā'i, Mīr Alī Shīr was among the key writers who revolutionized the literary use of the Turkic languages. Navā'ī himself wrote primarily in the Chagatai language and produced 30 works over a period of 30 years, during which Chagatai became accepted as a prestigious and well-respected literary language. Navā'i also wrote in Persian (under the pen name Fāni), and to a much lesser degree in Arabic and Hindi.
Navā'ī's best-known poems are found in his four divans, or poetry collections, which total roughly 50,000 verses. Each part of the work corresponds to a different period of a person's life:
- Ghara’ib al-Sighar ("Wonders of Childhood")
- Navadir al-Shabab ("Rarities or Witticisms of Youth")
- Bada'i' al-Wasat ("Marvels of Middle Age")
- Fawa'id al-Kibar ("Advantages of Old Age")
To help other Turkic poets he wrote technical works such as Mizan al-Awzan ("The Measure of Meters"), and a detailed treatise on poetical meters. He also crafted the monumental Majalis al-Nafais ("Assemblies of Distinguished Men"), a collection of over 450 biographical sketches of mostly contemporary poets that is a gold mine of information for modern historians of Timurid culture.
Navā'i's other important works include the Khamsa (quintuple), which is composed of five epic poems and an imitation of Nezami Ganjavi's Khamsa:
- Hayrat-ol-abrar (Wonders of Good People) (حیرت الابرار)
- Farhad va Shirin (فرهاد و شیرین)
- Layli va Majnun (لیلی و مجنون)
- Sab'ai Sayyar ("Seven travellers (planets)", سبعه سیار)
- Sadd-i-Iskandari ("Alexander's Dam", سد سکندری , an epic poem about Alexander the Great).
He also wrote Lisan-ol-tayr (لسان الطیر or "Language of Birds", following Attar's Manteq-ol-tayr منطق الطیر or Speeches of Birds), in which he expressed his philosophical views and Sufi ideas. He translated Jami's Nafahat-ol-ons (نفحات الانس) to Chagatai Turkic and called it Nasayim-ul-muhabbat (نسایم المحبت). Hi Besh Hayrat (Five Wonders) also gives an in-depth look at his views on religion and Sufism. His book of Persian poetry contains 6000 lines (beit).
Perhaps his most passionate work[citation needed] was his last, Muhakamat al-Lughatayn ("Judgment between the Two Languages"), completed in December 1499. He believed that the Turkic language was superior to Persian for literary purposes, and defended this belief in his work. It was the writer’s last definitive statement on the subject dearest to his heart; the Muhakamat acted as the author's last will and testament. Repeatedly, Nava'i emphasizes his belief in the richness, precision and malleability of Turkic vocabulary as opposed to Persian.
Navā'ī had a great influence in areas as distant as India to the east and the Ottoman Empire to the west.
- Babur (1483-1530), founder of the Mughal dynasty of India, wrote one of the first autobiographies among Islamic rulers, the epic "Baburnama". He was influenced heavily by Nava’i and even includes his respect for the writer in this famous book.
- The Ottomans were highly conscious of their Central Asian heritage; Süleymân the Magnificent was impressed by Nava’i and had the Divan-i Neva’i, Khamsa and Muhakamat added to his personal library.[6]
- The renowned Azari poet Fuzuli, who wrote under the auspices of both the Safavid and Ottoman empires, was heavily influenced by the style of Nava’i.
- Further influence can be found in Kazan of Russia, Turkistan/Central Asia, modern day Turkey and all other areas which Turkic speakers inhabit.
Navā'ī became one of the most beloved poets in the Turkic-speaking world. With the rise of the great Ottoman poets, the place of Turkish as a classical language of Islam and a major world literature was solidified.
 Nava'i monument in Moscow |
 Nava'i monument in Tashkent, Uzbekistan |
 The Nava'i Opera and Ballet Theatre in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. |
 -Navoiy city (Uzbekistan) founded in 1958 in dedication of Nava'i |
Notes
- ^ In the early new Persian and the eastern contemporary variants of the Persian language, there are two different vowels ī and ē which are shown by the same Perso-Arabic letter ی, and in the standard transliteration, both of them are usually transliterated as ī. However, when the distinction of ī and ē is considered, his first name should be transliterated as Alī-Shēr.
- ^ The National Library of Russia
- ^ Alisher Navoi. Complete works in 20 volumes, Vol.1-18, Tashkent, 1987-2002.
- ^ Maria Eva Subtelny. Socioeconomic Bases of Cultural Patronage under the Later Timurids. International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Nov., 1988), pp. 479-505
- ^ Chaucer of the Turks-Written by Barry Hoberman-pages 24-27 of the January/February 1985 print edition of Saudi Aramco World.
- ^ Suleyman the Magnificent, J.M.Rogers & R.M.Ward page 93-99 ISBN 0-7141-1440-5
References
- Barry Hoberman - Islamic and Central Asian history at Harvard and Indiana universities
External links
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