The importance of Alisher Navoi’s work «Muhakamatul-lugatayn» in the field of Turkic studies

Abstract

The works of Alisher Navoi take a special place in the literature of the Turkic peoples.
The poet, who wrote a lot in his time, is distinguished by the fact that he first introduced the tradition
of «Khamsa» among the Turkic peoples. His literary, historical, linguistic and memoir works had a
great influence on the work of later poets. One of these works is «Muhakamatul-lugatain» («Opinion
on two languages»). Having studied the grammatical features and poetic power of both languages,
Navoi scientifically substantiated in this work that the Turkic literary language is in no way inferior to
Persian. Using specific examples, he revealed the rich vocabulary of the Turkic literary language. In
particular, he mentioned one hundred verbs that are not found in Persian and gave some examples in
verses. Most of the ancient terms found in this work are widely used in the modern Kazakh language.
In this article, the author reveals the significance of Navoi’s work «Mukhakamatul-lughatayn» in
the field of Turkology. He also spoke briefly about the extant manuscripts of this work and focused
on the specifics of these versions. The author also shared his thoughts on the first publications and
subsequent studies of this work. The subject of the study is the Fatih manuscript, the specifics of the
use of some Turkic words are given on specific examples. Some of the questions raised in this work
of Navoi, written in the Middle Ages in parallel in two languages (zul-lisain), have not lost their
relevance today. In the Middle Ages, Arabic, Persian and Turkic languages competed with each other,
and in the era of globalization, the scope of application of English, Russian and Kazakh languages in
Kazakh society is growing again. This indicates the relevance of studying the work of Navoi.