Alisher Navoi (1441-1501) or Mir Ali Shir Nava’i was one of the first great poets to write in any Turkish tongue. Hundreds of years later his verses and stories and songs are still read and sung and loved among the Turks, especially the Uzbeks, who claim him as a native son. His words are beautiful, both as words and in what they teach us about life.
Navoi came from Herat, then the capital of Khorasan, now the main city in the Afghan west. When his old schoolmate, Husayn Bayqarah became the king, he made Navoi his prime minister. Bayqarah was a great lover of the arts and made Herat into a Turkish Florence.
Navoi wrote in Persian under the pen name Fani and in Turkish under the name of Navoi, which means “The Weeper”. He wrote both prose and verse. He also wrote in Hindi and Arabic.
His best loved and best known work is the love story of Farhad and Shirin. Even then it was an old story. He told it in 12,000 lines of verse and told it better than anyone. It is part of his book “Khamsa”, which means “The Five”, because it contains five romances in verse: “Farhad and Shirin”, “Layli and Majnun”, “The Wall of Alexander the Great”, “Excitement” and “The Seven Wanderers”. These were the first romances written in any Turkish language.
Navoi wrote four divans or books of verse, one for each stage of life: childhood, youth, middle age and old age.
He also wrote books about religion, philosophy, language, Turkish verse and the lives of Turkish poets. Of these his most famous book is “The Trial of Two Languages” where he argues why the Turkish language is better than Persian.
Before Navoi all the great poets, Persian or Turk, wrote in Persian. People thought of Turkish as a good language for soldiers and herdsmen, but not for a poet. Navoi proved them wrong: by his verse he showed them how beautiful and wonderful Turkish can be.
Navoi wrote in Chagatay Turkish. Chatagay was the old, eastern Turkish that Tamerlane spoke. It is now a dead language, its nearest living relation being Uzbek.
The Soviets painted Navoi as a great man of learning, which he certainly was, but they left out his religious side. He was a Sufi of the Naqshbandi dervish order. Many of the great Persian poets were Sufis. Sufis are Muslim mystics who try to experience God directly through certain practices. Navoi studied under Jami, a great Persian poet, to learn how to become both a poet and a Sufi.
As the first great Turkish writer he had a profound effect on Turkish letters. Among his followers and admirers are Babur, the first Mogul prince, Mahmur, Ogohiy, Muqimiy, Furqat, Zavqiy, Nodirabegim, Uvaysiy, Mahzuna and Fuzuli. (Here I mainly follow the Uzbek spellings).
And of course, he affected more than just writers: he affects all of his readers. Like Homer and the Greeks or Virgil and the Romans, Navoi has shaped the mind and heart of Turks everywhere.
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