Life Work Life and work of Alisher Navoi

Work

Alisher Nava'i depicted on 1942 USSR stamps to celebrate the 500th anniversary of his birth
Alisher served as a public administrator and adviser to his sultan, Husayn Bayqarah. He was also a builder who is reported to have founded, restored, or endowed some 370 mosques, madrasas, libraries, hospitals, caravanserais, and other educational, pious, and charitable institutions in Khorasan. In Herat, he was responsible for 40 caravanserais, 17 mosques, 10 mansions, nine bathhouses, nine bridges, and 20 pools.^[10]
Among Alisher's constructions were the mausoleum of the 13th-century mystical poet, Farid al-Din Attar, in Nishapur (north-eastern Iran) and the Khalasiya madrasa in Herat. He was one of the instrumental contributors to the architecture of Herat, which became, in René Grousset's words, "the Florence of what has justly been called the Timurid Renaissance".^[11] Moreover, he was a promoter and patron of scholarship and arts and letters, a musician, a composer, a calligrapher, a painter and sculptor, and such a celebrated writer that Bernard Lewis, a renowned historian of the Islamic world, called him "the Chaucer of the Turks".^[12]
Among the many notable figures who were financially backed by Alisher include the historians Mirkhvand (died 1498), Khvandamir (died 1535/6) and Dawlatshah Samarqandi (died 1495/1507); the poets Jami (died 1492), Asafi Harawi (died 1517), Sayfi Bukhari (died 1503), Hatefi (died 1521), and Badriddin Hilali (died 1529/30); and the musicians Shaykh Na'i and Husayn Udi.^[3]

Literary works[edit]

Under the pen name Nava'i, Alisher was among the key writers who revolutionized the literary use of the Turkic languages. Nava'i himself wrote primarily in the Chagatai language and produced 30 works over a period of 30 years, during which Chagatai became accepted as a prestigious and well-respected literary language. Nava'i also wrote in Persian under the pen name Fāni, and, to a much lesser degree, in Arabic.
Nava'i's best-known poems are found in his four diwans,^[4] or poetry collections, which total roughly 50,000 verses. Each part of the work corresponds to a different period of a person's life:

A page from Nava'i's diwan. From the library of Suleiman the Magnificent.

• 
  Ghara'ib al-Sighar "Wonders of Childhood"
  
• 
  Navadir al-Shabab "Rarities of Youth"
  
• 
  Bada'i' al-Wasat "Marvels of Middle Age"
  
• 
  Fawa'id al-Kibar "Benefits of Old Age"
  

To help other Turkic poets, Alisher wrote technical works such as Mizan al-Awzan "The Measure of Meters", and a detailed treatise on poetical meters. He also crafted the monumental Majalis al-Nafais "Assemblies of Distinguished Men", a collection of over 450 biographical sketches of mostly contemporary poets. The collection is a gold mine of information about Timurid culture for modern historians.
Alisher's other important works include the Khamsa (Quintuple), which is composed of five epic poems and is an imitation of Nizami Ganjavi's Khamsa:

• 
  Hayrat al-abrar "Wonders of Good People" (حیرت الابرار)
  
• 
  Farhad va Shirin "Farhad and Shirin" (فرهاد و شیرین)
  
• 
  Layli va Majnun "Layla and Majnun" (لیلی و مجنون)
  
• 
  Sab'ai Sayyar "Seven Travelers" (سبعه سیار) (about the seven planets)
  
• 
  Sadd-i Iskandari "Alexander's Wall" (سد سکندری) (about Alexander the Great)
  

Alisher also wrote Lisan al-Tayr after Attar of Nishapur's Mantiq al-Tayr or "The Conference of the Birds", in which he expressed his philosophical views and ideas about Sufism. He translated Jami's Nafahat al-uns (نفحات الانس) to Chagatai and called it Nasayim al-muhabbat (نسایم المحبت). His Besh Hayrat (Five Wonders) also gives an in-depth look at his views on religion and Sufism. His book of Persian poetry contains 6000 lines (beits).
Nava'i's last work, Muhakamat al-Lughatayn "The Trial of the Two Languages" is a comparison of Turkic and Persian and was completed in December 1499. He believed that the Turkic language was superior to Persian for literary purposes, and defended this belief in his work.^[13] Nava'i repeatedly emphasized his belief in the richness, precision and malleability of Turkic vocabulary as opposed to Persian.^[14]
This is the excerpt from Nava'i's "Twenty-One Ghazals", translated into English:
Without Fortune and prospect, I ignite the fire
Of impatience – the guards of prudence have vanished:
My caravan defenseless in the coming fire.
A lightening flash has struck and changed me utterly
As rushes burst and spread in a sea of fire...
Understand, Navoiy, I deny my suffering
As the Mazandaran forests turned red with fire.^[15]

List of works[edit]

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