The most popular uzbek poets

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REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN 
MINISTRY OF HIGHER EDUCATION,
SCIENCE AND INNOVATION 
FERGANA STATE UNIVERSITY 
 
FACULTY OF: ____________________________________ 
THEME: “THE MOST POPULAR UZBEK POETS” 
From the subject of the English language 
BY: S 22.27-GROUP OF STUDENT 
FOZILOV SODIQJON 
Accepted: ___________________ 
 
 
 
Ferghana-2023 

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PLAN: 
1. Uzbek literature. 
2. Uzbek literature history. 
3. The most popular uzbek poet is Abdulla Oripov. 
 
 

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1. Uzbek literature. 
Uzbek literature, the body of written works produced by the Uzbek people of 
Central Asia, most of whom live in Uzbekistan, with smaller populations in 
Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. 
Although its roots stretch as far back as the 9th century, modern Uzbek 
literature traces its origins in large part to Chagatai literature, a body of works 
written in the Turkic literary language of Chagatai. The earliest works of Chagatai 
literature date from the 14th century but remain easily accessible to readers of the 
modern Uzbek language. Modern Uzbek has today assumed the role once held by 
Chagatai, which all but vanished by the early 20th century, of being the reference 
language for Turkic historical and literary works in Central Asia. 
Uzbek literature’s classical period lasted from the 9th to the second half of the 
19th century. During that period numerous literary works were produced, often 
under the patronage of Turkic emperors, kings, sultans, and emirs. The best-known 
patrons of the Turkic literature of the historical region known as Turkistan—which 
includes what is today Uzbekistan as well as a number of surrounding countries—
include the Qarakhanids (10th–13th centuries); such Timurids (14th–16th 
centuries) as Timur (Tamerlane), Shahrukh, Ulūgh Beg, Ḥusayn Bayqarah, and 
Bābur, the founder of the Mughal dynasty in India; and ʿUmar Khan, a 19th-
century ruler of the khanate of Kokand. 
From the 10th to the 12th century, Uzbek written literature migrated from a 
Turkic script to an Arabic one. This transition opened Uzbek writers to the 
influence of Arabic literature; the result was that Uzbek literature underwent 
extensive changes as it adopted many of the forms and some of the language of 
Arabic poetry and prose. Works from this period include Yusuf Khass Hajib’s 
Kutudgu bilig (―Knowledge Which Leads to Happiness‖; Eng. trans. The Wisdom 
of Royal Glory), written in 1069–70; Mahmud Kashgari’s Diwan lughat al-Turk 

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(Compendium of the Turkic Dialects), compiled in 1072–74; and Ahmad 
Yugnaki’s 12th-century Hibat al-haqaʾiq (―Gift to Truths‖), a didactic poem. 
Among the other Central Asian poets who had a lasting influence on Uzbek 
literature is Ahmed Yesevi, a 12th-century religious poet who was a follower of 
the great Sufi leader Yūsuf Hamadhānī. Ahmed Yesevi’s poems—collected as 
Divan-i hikmet (―Book of Wisdom‖)—constituted a new genre of Central Asian 
Turkic literature: a religious folk poetry. He used a popular vernacular that 
borrowed little Arabic and Persian and that featured a Turkic syllabic metre. 
The 13th and 14th centuries saw the emergence of works written in Chagatai, 
a tradition that had a strong influence on the literature later classified as Uzbek. 
Among the poets of this period, those whose works have been preserved to modern 
times and remain popular today are Khwārizmī, best known for his 
Muhabbatnamah (―Love Letters‖); Quṭb Khorazmī, who in 1340 translated 
Neẓāmī’s romantic epic Khosrow o-Shīrīn (―Khosrow and Shīrīn‖); and Durbek, 
best known for his Yusuf o-Zulaykha (―Yusuf and Zulaykha‖). In the second half 
of the 14th century and in the first half of the 15th, the regions of Transoxania and 
Khorāsān—especially the cities Samarkand and Herāt—became centres of a 
cultural renaissance in Central Asia. Under the Timurids, literature, written in 
Chagatai, underwent intensive development. Many poetic genres flourished, 
including the lyric, the elegy, and the romantic destān (an oral epic poem). Many 
works in prose, especially historical works, were also produced. Of the many 
outstanding poets of this period, Luṭfī was the great master of the ghazal (lyric love 
poem) and tuyugh (a Turkic quatrain, similar to the robāʾī), and he exerted a wide 
influence on poets of his time. In his sole narrative poem, Gul wa Nawruz (written 
in 1411; ―Gul and Nawruz‖), he extolled ideal love. Sakkākī, also among the 
period’s prominent poets, is best known for his divan (collection of poems), which 
contains munajaat (hymns), ghazals, and qasidas (odes) devoted to Ulūgh Beg. But 
it was Gadāʾī who was the most remarkable Uzbek poet of the 14th and 15th 
centuries. Although his divan has been preserved, very little of his life is known. 

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Even the poet’s original name is unknown; Gadāʾī is derived from his use of Gadā 
(―Beggar‖) as a tahallus (pen name) in his ghazals. His divan consists of 229 
ghazals, 5 tuyughs, 2 qasidas, and 1 mustazād (a poem in which every second 
hemistich, or half-line, is followed by a short metrical line that has some bearing 
on the sense of the first hemistich without altering its meaning). 
Chagatai—which would eventually evolve into modern Uzbek—assumed its 
classical shape in the works of ʿAlī Shīr Navāʾī, an outstanding thinker and great 
poet as well as a famous literary patron of his time. He was also a statesman and a 
prominent member of the court of the sultan Ḥusayn Bayqarah. Navāʾī’s influence 
on the Turkic writers of Central Asia—and especially on Uzbek writers—cannot 
be overestimated. Among his four divans, which contain tens of thousands of lines 
of lyrical verse written in Chagatai, are examples of almost every literary genre 
practiced during the 14th and 15th centuries. He also wrote ghazals in Persian 
under the name Fāni. Navāʾī’s important works include Lisān ul-tayr (―The 
Language of the Birds‖), a mystical masnawi (poem in couplets) completed in 
1498; Majālis-i nefaʾīs (1491; ―The Exquisite Assemblies‖), a prose work in which 
Navāʾī gave brief descriptions of the major poets of the 14th and 15th centuries; 
and Mizan al-awzan (1498; ―The Balance of Metres‖), a treatise on the Turkic 
prosodic system. He was also the author of a number of historical and scientific 
treatises, the most important of which is Muhakamat al-lughatayn (1499; 
―Judgment on Two Languages‖), which compares the relative merits of the Persian 
and Chagatai languages. 
Bābur, a prince of the Timurid dynasty who was crowned as king of the 
principality of Fergana (now in Uzbekistan) at age 12 and was the founder of the 
Mughal dynasty in India, was also an outstanding Chagatai poet and writer. One of 
the most attractive works not only in Chagatai literature but in Central Asian 
literature and historiography as a whole is his memoir, the Bābur-nāmeh, written 
during the 16th century in clear and refined Chagatai prose. 

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From the 17th through the 19th century Uzbek literature developed separately 
in the three independent Uzbek khanates, two of which had been founded in the 
15th century (Bukhara and Khiva [Khwārezm]) and the third in the mid-18th 
century (Kokand). In Bukhara the most famous poets were Mujrim Obid, one of 
the best lyric poets of the late 18th and early 19th century; Turdī, a follower of 
Navāʾī who wrote Sufi poems, although the character and motif of his poems later 
changed when he began writing poems that were socially engaged; and Sayido 
Nasafi. Abū al-Ghāzī Bahādur, a 17th-century khan of Khiva, wrote on the history 
of the Uzbeks, Turkmen, Kazakhs, and Karakalpaks. He played an important role 
in preserving many of these peoples’ folk legends, tales, proverbs, and sayings. His 
most notable works are Shajare-i Tarākime (1659; ―Genealogical Tree of the 
Turkmen‖) and Shajare-i Turk (completed posthumously by his son in 1665; 
―Genealogical Tree of the Turks‖). Nishātī, an important poet of the 18th century, 
composed the last major masnawi in Chagatai. Prominent 19th-century Khivan 
writers include Shermuhammad Munis and Muhammad Āgahī, both poets as well 
as historians. Munis began writing a history of Khiva, Firdaus-ul iqbāl (―The 
Paradise of Felicity‖), but he could finish only the introduction and first chapters; it 
was eventually completed by Āgahī, his nephew. The Kokand khanate produced 
such outstanding poets as Mashrab during the 17th century, Mahmur during the 
18th century, and Muhammad Sharaf Gulkhānī, Uwaysī, and Nodira during the 
19th century.