Turkic-language interpretations of Quran from Bashkiria of the XIX century as literary monuments

Abstract

The subject of this research is the literary-aesthetic characteristics of interpretation of Manzil written by Bashkir theologians Bahadirshah al-Qaynawi and Taj ad-Din ibn Yalchigul: the presence of coherent narratives based on the authorial approach towards the interpreted text, literary-aesthetic interpretations of plots and images reflected in the Quranic text directly, intertextual connections of interpretations with the works in other genres. The goal of this article lies in determination and description of the meaningful literary-aesthetic characteristics of interpretations of Manzil. The following tasks are resolved within the framework of this research: 1) determination of the key characteristics of the Tafsir genre, 2) revelation of the role of works under review for the tradition of the Turkic-language interpretation of Quran, 3) description of the literary-aesthetic characteristics of the interpretations by Bahadirshah al-Qaynawi and Taj ad-Din ibn Yalchigu, 4) translation of fragments of their interpretations that are significant from the perspective of literature into the Russian language. The scientific novelty and practical importance of this publication lies in introduction into the scientific discourse of two previously unexplored literary monuments that have not been translated into the Russian language. This significantly broadens the knowledge on the literary process in Bashkiria of the early XIX century. The author concludes that the interpretation of Quran fragments should be viewed in the context of evolution of Bashkir literature of the pre-national period. This opens great potential for studying their intertextual correlations with Turkic-language literary of the earlier period in the genres of “chronicles”, “history of the prophets”, and “miracles of the created”, as well as with sententious literature of the later period.