Life Work Life and work of Alisher Navoi

Legacy[edit]

Nava'i is one of the most beloved poets among Central Asian Turkic peoples. He is generally regarded as the greatest representative of Chagatai language literature.^[4][5] His mastery of the Chagatai language was such that it became known as "the language of Nava'i".^[4]
Although all applications of modern Central Asian ethnonyms to people of Nava'i's time are anachronistic, Soviet and Uzbek sources regard Nava'i as an ethnic Uzbek.^[24][25][26] According to Muhammad Ḥaidar, who wrote the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, Ali-sher Nava'i was a descendant of Uighur Bakhshi scribes,^[27] which has led some sources to call Nava'i a descendant of Uyghurs.^[5][28][29] However, other scholars such as Kazuyuki Kubo disagree with this view.^[30][31]
Soviet and Uzbek sources hold that Nava'i significantly contributed to the development of the Uzbek language and consider him to be the founder of Uzbek literature.^{[24][25][32][33]} In the early 20th century, Soviet linguistic policy renamed the Chagatai language "Old Uzbek", which, according to Edward A. Allworth, "badly distorted the literary history of the region" and was used to give authors such as Alisher Nava'i an Uzbek identity.^[23]
In December 1941, the entire Soviet Union celebrated Nava'i's five-hundredth anniversary.^[34] In Nazi-blockaded Leningrad, Armenian orientalist Joseph Orbeli led a festival dedicated to Nava'i. Nikolai Lebedev, a young specialist in Eastern literature who suffered from acute dystrophy and could no longer walk, devoted his life's last moments to reading Nava'i's poem Seven Travelers.^[35]
Many places and institutions in Uzbekistan and other Central Asian countries are named after Alisher Nava'i. Navoiy Region, the city of Navoiy, the National Library of Uzbekistan named after Alisher Navoiy,^[36] the Alisher Navoi Opera and Ballet Theatre, Alisher Navoiy station of Tashkent Metro, and Navoi International Airport – all are named after him.
Many of Nava'i's ghazals are performed in the Twelve Muqam, particularly in the introduction known as Muqäddimä.^[37] They also appear in popular Uzbek folk songs and in the works of many Uzbek singers, such as Sherali Jo‘rayev. Alisher Nava'i's works have also been staged as plays by Uzbek playwrights.^[9]