Alisher Navoi
Alisher Navoi – (Ali-Shir Nava'I, 9 February 1441 – 3 January 1501), was a great poet, writer, politician, linguist, who was the greatest representative of Uzbek literature which is called Chigatoy leterature in the West. He was born in Herat and spent the main part of his life there. Navoi's family was close to Timurid's palace. According to the information of great historian Hondamir, an old poet Lutfi met with Alisher Navoi, when he was a child and Lutfi appreciated his talent.
During 1464-65 the fans of Navoi's creation collected all of his poems and copied them to make "devon". Since 1469 Navoi had lived far from Herat because of the inside fights which were going in Timurid's state.
One of the Timurid's Husayn Boyqaro took the crown of Khorasan in 1469, and a new period began in Navoi's life. In 1469 he was given a title as a stamper and in 1472 as a minister of the state (vazir) by Husayn Boyqaro. He was famous as a poet and a statesman and owned a great wealth at that time. 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.
Under the pen name Nava'i, Alisher was among the key writers who revolutionized the literary use of the Turkic languages. Nava'i 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. Nava'i also wrote in Persian under the pen name Fāni, and, to a much lesser degree, in Arabic.
Nava'i's best-known poems are found in his four diwans, or poetry collections, which total roughly 50,000 verses. Each part of the work corresponds to a different period of a person's life.
Spreading the manuscripts of Navoi's "Hamsa" till the 20th centuries and finding out the number of it showed the important part in the intellectual life of the people in the Middle Asia.
To help other Turkic poets, Alisher 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. The collection is a gold mine of information about Timurid culture for modern historians.
Navoi's "Muhokamatu-l-lugatayn" is devoted to the comparative analysis of Turkish and Persian.
254 handwritings of 24 works of Navoi are kept in the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan, in the Institute of Oriental Languages.
This is the excerpt from Nava'i's "Twenty-One Ghazals", translated into English:
“Without Fortune and prospect, I ignite the fire
Of impatience – the guards of prudence have vanished:
My caravan defenseless in the coming fire.
A lightening flash has struck and changed me utterly
As rushes burst and spread in a sea of fire...
Understand, Navoiy, I deny my suffering
As the Mazandaran forests turned red with fire”.
One of the directions of the development strategy of a New Uzbekistan for 2022 - 2026, announced by the President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, is to study in depth and widely promote the rich scientific heritage of the great ancestors of the country.
In this sense, one of the urgent tasks in Uzbekistan today is to deepen the study of the rich scientific heritage of Alisher Navoi on human dignity, the management of public authorities based on spiritual values, and its wide dissemination among the people.
During 1464-65 the fans of Navoi's creation collected all of his poems and copied them to make "devon". Since 1469 Navoi had lived far from Herat because of the inside fights which were going in Timurid's state.
One of the Timurid's Husayn Boyqaro took the crown of Khorasan in 1469, and a new period began in Navoi's life. In 1469 he was given a title as a stamper and in 1472 as a minister of the state (vazir) by Husayn Boyqaro. He was famous as a poet and a statesman and owned a great wealth at that time. 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.
Under the pen name Nava'i, Alisher was among the key writers who revolutionized the literary use of the Turkic languages. Nava'i 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. Nava'i also wrote in Persian under the pen name Fāni, and, to a much lesser degree, in Arabic.
Nava'i's best-known poems are found in his four diwans, or poetry collections, which total roughly 50,000 verses. Each part of the work corresponds to a different period of a person's life.
Spreading the manuscripts of Navoi's "Hamsa" till the 20th centuries and finding out the number of it showed the important part in the intellectual life of the people in the Middle Asia.
To help other Turkic poets, Alisher 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. The collection is a gold mine of information about Timurid culture for modern historians.
Navoi's "Muhokamatu-l-lugatayn" is devoted to the comparative analysis of Turkish and Persian.
254 handwritings of 24 works of Navoi are kept in the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan, in the Institute of Oriental Languages.
This is the excerpt from Nava'i's "Twenty-One Ghazals", translated into English:
“Without Fortune and prospect, I ignite the fire
Of impatience – the guards of prudence have vanished:
My caravan defenseless in the coming fire.
A lightening flash has struck and changed me utterly
As rushes burst and spread in a sea of fire...
Understand, Navoiy, I deny my suffering
As the Mazandaran forests turned red with fire”.
One of the directions of the development strategy of a New Uzbekistan for 2022 - 2026, announced by the President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, is to study in depth and widely promote the rich scientific heritage of the great ancestors of the country.
In this sense, one of the urgent tasks in Uzbekistan today is to deepen the study of the rich scientific heritage of Alisher Navoi on human dignity, the management of public authorities based on spiritual values, and its wide dissemination among the people.