Ali Shir Navai in Turkish Traditional Literature: Themes and Plots

Abstract

The legasy of Ali Shir Navai has influenced both Turkish and Ottoman literature and Turkish folklore. His poems penetrated into the Ottoman Empire since the 15th century, and in the 16th century became well known to the Ottoman poets. The article is devoted to the works of Navai in the literature and folklore of Turkey in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. After the reforms of the Tanzimat era, Ottoman intellectuals turned not only to European philosophical thought and Western literature, but also to the Turkic literary heritage of Central Asia. In 1872–1873 (1289 AH), in Istanbul, under the editorship of Ahmed Vefik Pasha, Navai's didactic treatise (which was chronologically one of the poet's latest works) “Mahbub al-kulub” (“Beloved of Hearts”) was published. This publication laid the foundation for the scientific study of Ali Shir Navai in Turkey (works and translations by I. Hakkı, N. Asım, M.F. Köprülüzade), and also to a certain extent anticipated the expression of the ideas of Turkism. After this publication, the Chagatai-Ottoman dictionary of Sheikh Suleiman of Bukhara was published in Istanbul in 1880–1881, which also testifies to the interest in the cultural heritage of the Timurid era in Turkey in the second half of the 19th century. At the same time Ali Shir Navai himself becomes the prototype of the hero of Turkish folklore as the character of the folk narrative about Gül and Mir Ali Şir which performed in Turkey up to the middle of the 20th century