Chagatai literature, the body of written works produced in Chagatai, a classical Turkic literary language ofCentral Asia.

Chagatai literature took shape after the conversion of the MongolGolden Horde to Islam, a process completed under the 14th-century khanÖz Beg. The first literary efforts in Chagatai were translations of works from other languages, with literary activity centred inKhwārezm in Central Asia; in Sarai, the capital of the Golden Horde, located on the Volga River; and among the Turkic Mamlūks of Egypt and Syria. Two major monuments of early Chagatai literature are translations of works byPersian poets: in 1340 Quṭb Khorazmī translatedNeẓāmī’sromanticepicKhosrow o-Shīrīn (“Khosrow and Shīrīn”), and in 1390–91 Sayf-i Sarāyī translatedSaʿdī’sGulistān (“The Rose Garden”), a prose work interspersed with verse.

Turkic writers at this time were creating a distinctive style within Persian literary genres—including theghazal (lyric poem), therobāʿī (a type of quatrain; pluralrobāʿīyāt), and themasnawi (series of rhymed couplets)—and within one of their own forms, thetuyugh (also a type of quatrain). After Timur’s destruction of Khwārezm in 1388, this new Persianate Turkicliterature flourished in Samarkand and Bukhara (both now in Uzbekistan) and in Herāt (now in Afghanistan) in the literary language that came to be known as Chagatai. In the 15th century,ʿAlī Shīr Navāʾī, its greatest exemplar and proponent, established the name Chagatai to refer to the language he employed in his works. Prior to Navāʾī, most writers had referred to this language astürk tili (“Turkish language”). Derived from the name of the rulingdynasty founded in the 13th century byChagatai, the second son ofGenghis Khan and heir to part of Genghis’s empire, the term Chagatai was also used by the Mughal emperorBābur and by later Central Asian authors.

In the first half of the 15th century, writers began producing original works in Chagatai. These works reflected theTimurids’ preoccupation with systematization that can also be found in thepoetry theypatronized in thePersian language. In no previous era of Persianate literature had the rules ofrhetoric been as evident in virtually every poem. While the Persian literature of Iran and India abandoned this heavy reliance on such rules during the later 16th century, Chagatai poetry maintained it from its beginning until itsdemise in the late 19th century. Major poets of the first half of the 15th century include Sakkākī, Atāʾī, Luṭfī, and Gadāʾī. A noteworthy group of poems by Aḥmadī and Yūsuf Amīrī were written as "contestations" (munāẓara) in which inanimate things—such as musical instruments, hashish, and wine—are depicted arguing between themselves about their relative worth.

Navāʾī was the most active and influential literary figure among those writing inTurkic languages under the Timurids, and in his works he raised Chagatai to a very high artistic level. He showed his greatest originality in hismasnawis, where his newconception of plot caused him to abandon thegenre’s traditional narrative style and to embark on anovel theory ofmimesis. HisKhamseh demonstrates his centrality to the Chagatai literary tradition. It consists of a set of fivemasnawis:Khayrat ul-abrār (1483; “The Best of the Righteous”),Farhād u Shīrīn (1484; “Farhād and Shīrīn”),Leylī u Majnūn (1484; “Leylī and Majnūn”),Sebʿa-i seyyāra (1484; "The Seven Planets"), andSedd-i Iskandarī (1485; "The Wall of Alexander"). ThemasnawiLisān ul-tayr (1498; "The Language of the Birds"), anadaptation ofManṭeq al-ṭeyr (The Conference of the Birds) by the Persian poetFarīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār, is a similarly important work. Navāʾī was also able to incorporate the theoretical and institutionalSufism that dominated the Timurid age into his literaryaesthetic, creating abstract yet emotionally expressiveghazals androbāʿīyāt. His other writings include works on prosody, as well as atezkire (literary dictionary),Majālis-i nefaʾīs (1491; “TheExquisite Assemblies”).

Among those of the generation following Navāʾī, the Chagatai language was employed most effectively in the 16th century byBābur, in both his divan (collection of poetry) and his prose autobiography, theBābur-nāmeh—two of the greatest classics of Chagatai literature. Bābur’s conquest of India helped him to claim European attention, and, through later translations into Western languages, his autobiography became a classic of world autobiography. Roughly contemporary to Bābur was the Uzbek Muḥammad Shaybānī Khan, a noted lyric poet in both Chagatai and Persian. He found his panegyrist in the Khwārezmian poet Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ, who completed the epicShaybānī-nāmeh in 1506. The imposition of Uzbek rule inTransoxania in the 1490s, however, led more generally to a decline in the use of Chagatai as a literary medium.

During the 17th century, Chagatai became confined largely to the somewhatperipheral khanate ofKhiva, while the khanate of Bukhara usually patronized writing in Persian. The major literary texts in Chagatai during the 17th century were the historical writing of the Khivan khanAbū al-Ghāzī Bahādur—notably hisShajare-i Tarākime (1659; “Genealogical Tree of the Turkmen”) andShajare-i Turk (completed posthumously by his son in 1665; “Genealogical Tree of the Turks”)—and the radical Sufi poetry of the Farghanian Mashrab. The Khivan khans also patronized Turkic poets such as Vafāʾī and Nādir. However, the economic and political decline of the khanate during the 18th century led to its decline as an important centre of Chagatai literature and indirectly to the rise of an independentTurkmen literature. Two of the major Khivan poets of the 18th century, Pahlavanqul Ravnaq andNishātī, emigrated, the former to the khanate of Kokand and the latter to the khanate of Bukhara. While in Bukhara in the 1770s, Nishātī wrote the last majormasnawi in Chagatai,Hüsn u Dil (“Beauty and the Heart”). Turdī, a Bukharan, wrote political satires against several rulers, including in 1691 the emir Subhānquli.

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During the 18th century, members of the settled population of Bukhara andKokand, known asSarts, usually spoke both Persian and Turkic but nevertheless had two distinct literary heritages derived from those languages. The literary model for Sarts whose predominant language was Turkic remained the Chagatai classics of the 15th century, especially the works of Navāʾī. Sarts whose primary language was Persian preserved the entire Persian literary heritage of Iran and by the 18th century were deeply involved in the literary movement known as the Indian school (Sabk-i Hindī). This new movement wascultivated in Iran and especially in India under theMughal dynasty, and it was influential as far west as Ottoman Turkey. It seems that native speakers of both languages had a wide passive familiarity with the poetry created in the other, but, when they created new works, these reflected the dominant literary influences within each linguistic tradition. For example, the Kokandian princessMahlarayim (Māhilar), writing in the 19th century, created a Chagatai divan under themakhlaṣ (ortakhalluṣ; pen name) Nādira and a Persian divan under the name Maknüna; she also used the name Kāmila in her Chagatai works. In her Persian divan she includedmukhammas (imitative poems) that responded toghazals androbāʿīyāt by Saʿdī, while in her Chagatai divan she wrote responses to poems by Navāʾī.

During the first half of the 19th century, the khanate of Kokand became a considerable centre of literature in both Chagatai and Persian underʿUmar Khan, the husband of Mahlarayim. Among the poets of his court was Muhammad Sharaf Gulkhānī,author ofZarbumasal (“Proverbs”), amasnawi consisting of fables. The poet Uvaysī, believed to be a friend of Mahlarayim, also spent some years in the Kokandian court. This literary patronage was continued to some extent by Muhammad ʿAli Khan, ʿUmar Khan’s successor; it ended in 1842 when the khanate was conquered by Bukhara and Mahlarayim was executed by the Bukharan emir Nasrullah. The suppression of Kokand led to a culturalhiatus, but, after the Russian conquest of the late 19th century, new poets emerged, of whom the most creative wereMuqīmī andFurqat. Both were late Chagatai poets who saw Navāʾī,Mehmed bin Süleyman Fuzuli (a 16th-century poet who wrote in Turkish, Persian, and Arabic), and the poets of the court of Muhammad ʿAli Khan as their literary models. Nevertheless, they both expanded the generic boundaries of the traditionalghazal and themasnawi by using these forms for satirical poems, such as Muqīmī’sZavodchibay (“The Rich Industrialist”) andAvliyä (“The Saint”). Furqat also wrote a number ofdidactic poems that urged the people of Turkistan to emulate the scientific and cultural achievements of Russia.

Some notable Chagatai writing was also produced in Khiva during the 19th century. The two leading poets there wereShermuhammad Munis and his nephewMuhammad Āgahī. Between 1806 and 1825, Munis, a lyric poet, wrote the poems thatconstitute his divan,Munis-ul ʿushshäq (“The Most Companionable of the Lovers”). But he is best remembered as the author ofFirdaus-ul iqbāl (“Paradise of Felicity”), a history of Khiva begun at the command of Eltuzar Khan and continued under Eltuzar’s successor, Muhammad Rakhim Khan. Munis educated Āgahī, who compiled a divan,Taʿvīz-ul ʿashiq (“Amulet of the Lovers”), and continued the writing ofParadise of Felicity. Āgahī also was a major translator of the Persian classics into Chagatai. The khanSayyid Muḥammad Raḥīm Bahādur II introduced printing to Khiva in 1874, the year of Āgahī’s death. Taking the pen name Firuz, he also wrote verse in Chagatai.

The Russianconquest of much of Central Asia stimulated a new worldview there that resulted in the Jadid reform movement, which emphasized new forms of education through its New Method schools. (SeeSidebar: Activities of the Jadid Reformers.) By the early 20th century, a new literature had begun to emerge that was based on European models and used a form of Uzbek rather than the classical Chagatai language.