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.

The Classical Period

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 (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. 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.

Bābur inspecting a garden, portrait miniature from the Bābur-nāmeh, 16th century; in the British Library.By permission of the British Library

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.

The Tsarist Colonial Period

The tsarist colonial period in the Uzbek khanates marked a dark, tragic era for indigenous literature. From the beginning of the military invasion and occupation of these khanates—Bukhara was invaded in 1868 and Khiva in 1873, with Kokand annexed in 1876; all three became part of the Russian province of Turkistan—the Russians tried to make use of literature to further their interests. Uzbek writers such as Muqīmī, Furqat, Zavqi, Dilshad, Anbar Atin, and Nazimakhanum were forced to praise Russian culture and society in their works. Furqat, who was from Kokand, was typical of these writers: in his poems, he praised tsarist Russia, and for each such poem he was—as archival research later revealed—rewarded by the governor-general of Turkistan. When Furqat began to write poems criticizing the oppressive nature of Russian rule in the Fergana Valley, however, he was sent into exile in Chinese Turkistan.

In the first decades of the 20th century the Jadid reform movement, consisting of followers of the Turkish journalist Ismail Gasprinski, gained influence in Uzbekistan and throughout Central Asia. The Jadids’ primary concern was a new approach to education through so-called New Method (usul-i jadid) schools. (See Sidebar: Activities of the Jadid Reformers.) Among Uzbeks a new generation of Turkic-speaking writers—the Ziyolilar (“Enlighteners”), who counted themselves as Jadid reformers—made major contributions to modern Uzbek literature. These writers include Mahmud Khoja Behbudi, Abdalrauf Fitrat, Abdullah Qadiri, Cholpán (Abdulhamid Sulayman Yunús), Munawwar Qari, and Mannan Ramiz. They were among those writers who at the turn of the 20th century helped to introduce plays, novels, and short stories to the Uzbek people. The arrival of these Western genres also marked the highest stage of the development of classical poetry in Chagatai, which thereafter declined rapidly.

The Soviet Period

When Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate as a result of the Russian Revolution of 1917, there were hopes among the intellectuals of Turkistan for greater freedoms. In October 1917 an independent government called the Kokand Autonomy was declared, although it was quashed by Russian authorities the following year. During the first years of the Soviet regime, however, the Enlighteners found it easy to spread a transnational Turkic culture and literature. Concerned with other problems, the Soviets initially did little to hinder the activities of Uzbek intellectuals in Turkistan, but they later used their control over the press to create obstacles. After the Soviets crushed the revolts of the Uzbek people and took full control of Turkistan, they increasingly suppressed native literature, culture, and education.

In spite of these difficulties, Uzbek literature was able to maintain its spirit. Fitrat, Cholpán, Qadiri, Elbek (Mashriq Yunus Oghli), and many other poets and writers published their best works during the 1920s and early 1930s, risking their lives to express the voice of the Uzbek nation as they turned their attention to critiquing the ideas and social practices of the Soviet regime.

Fitrat was an outstanding scholar of the Jadid era, a theorist and an inspirer of the Jadid movement, a literary historian, and one of the early Uzbek dramatists. He came into contact with the reformist ideas of the Young Turks during his time at Istanbul University (1909–13), and, upon his return to Bukhara, he became active in the Young Bukharans, a group that likewise advocated political reform. Many of Fitrat’s plays—for example, Abu Muslim (1918), Ulūgh Beg (1919), Temurning saghanasi (1919; “Timur’s Mausoleum”), Oguz Khan (1919), Chinggis Khan (1920), and ʿAbul Fayz Khan (1924)—took the form of historical dramas that depicted actual figures from Central Asia’s early and medieval Islamic periods. Fitrat’s plays helped to raise national consciousness and feelings of patriotism among the Uzbek people. Fitrat, like many Central Asian writers of this period, also tried to unify the various Turkic languages of Central Asia in a literary language for all Central Asian peoples. He considered the broader historical region known as Turkistan to be a single, indivisible state with a common historical and cultural identity, and he opposed the imposition of the proletarian revolution exported from Russia.

Cholpán was Central Asia’s most popular poet during the first half of the 20th century. He was also a dramatist and novelist and was the first to translate William Shakespeare’s plays into Uzbek. Three collections of his poems were published during his lifetime: Uyghonish (1922; “Awakening”), Buloqlar (1924; “Springs”), and Tong sirlari (1926; “Secrets of Dawn”). In addition, a number of Cholpán’s poems appeared in the collection Özbek yosh shoirlari (1922; “Young Uzbek Poets”). Cholpán also published a novel, Kecha wa kunduz (1935; “Night and Day”), as well as a number of plays and many short stories.

Cholpán’s poetry became a source of lasting inspiration for later Uzbek writers, not least because of his innovative use of new forms of expression. He broke from the past by rejecting the mysticism that dominates Uzbek poems of the classical period, and his poems exhibit a simplified, straightforward language that is free of foreign borrowings. Cholpán also appealed strongly to Uzbek national identity. The poem “Bas endi!” (“That’s Enough!”) in Uyghonish, for instance, expresses the first awakenings of revolt against the Russian occupation:

That’s enough! There’s finally a limit
To all these insults, this humiliation!
The edge that’s arrived at bit by bit
Is only self-doubt and deprivation!
…
This last stone I hold in my hand
I long to fling at my nemesis.
This last tear that my eye contains,
I long to shed for my lifelong aims.

Qadiri was responsible for introducing realism to Central Asia. He did so through his historical novels, in which he adopted a style and method that, in echoing Sir Walter Scott’s, distinguished his work from that of Jurjī Zaydān, a Beirut-born novelist writing in Arabic who was then greatly in vogue. The central importance of Qadiri’s historical novels Otgän kunlär (1922; “Days Gone By”) and Mehrobdan chayon (1929; “Scorpion from the Altar”) lies in their sympathetic rendering of the lives and times of the Uzbek people prior to Russian annexation. Many other Central Asian novelists—including Mukhtar Auez-ulï (Auezov), perhaps the most prominent figure in 20th-century Kazakh literature—followed Qadiri’s example.

Soviet rulers feared Fitrat, Cholpán, and Qadiri because of the appeal their views enjoyed among the Turkic-speaking population of the Soviet Union. The Soviet regime attempted to exploit their popularity by encouraging them to write in support of the Soviet system, but these efforts failed, and, during the purge trials (Great Purge) directed by Joseph Stalin during the late 1930s, many prominent Uzbek writers—including Fitrat, Cholpán, and Qadiri—were executed. Thousands of other writers, teachers, and scholars were also imprisoned, many of them associated with the Jadid movement, which the Soviets regarded as a dangerous expression of Pan-Turkism.

The execution of many Uzbek writers had a chilling effect on literary circles. The decades after World War II saw the rise of authors who were dutiful but unimaginative servants of the Soviet regime, among them Kamil Yashin, Sharaf R. Rashidov, Nazir Safarov, Jumaniyaz Sharipov, Hamid Gulyam, Mirmuhsin, Ramz Babajan, Said Ahmad, Aybek, and Ibrahim Rahim. Making use of the techniques of Socialist Realism, Uzbek prose writers primarily produced novels about contemporary rural life. Many authors who wrote about rural life often falsified the reality of suffering experienced by farmers; otherwise their poems, short stories, plays, and novels would have never been published.

Independence And Beyond

The Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 and Uzbekistan’s subsequent independence transformed the Uzbek literary landscape. The literature written but banned by the Soviets (e.g., Fitrat’s plays, Cholpán’s novels) became widely available, but the independent press that had existed for a short time in the late 1980s vanished: newspapers were banned and their editors-in-chief put into prison or exiled. Soviet-style censorship became widely applied, and a number of prominent writers were arrested and tortured (e.g., Mamadali Mahmudov, Emin Usmon, Yusuf Jumaev, Muhammad Salih, and Safar Bekjon). Some, such as Usmon, died in prison.

Uzbek authors and critics were forced to engage in a serious debate as to what Uzbek literature should be. Demoralized by the repressive measures being used in independent Uzbekistan, they argued about possible ways out of the post-Soviet chaos. Links to past literary styles and themes remained very strong throughout the 1990s, and the habits of Socialist Realism proved hard to shake, especially in the novel. One group of writers (Abdulla Aripov, Erkin Vahidov, Adil Yakubov, Said Ahmad, and Utkir Hashimov) in order to survive began to praise the country’s president, Islam Karimov, in their poems and articles, and very soon three of these writers (Aripov, Vahidov, and Ahmad) were named Heroes of Uzbekistan, the country’s highest award.

Most of the best work published in the postindependence period was in prose. Toghay Murad’s lyrical novel Otamdam qolgan dalalar (1994; “Fields Which Remained from My Father”) describes the 19th-century Russian invasion of Central Asia. Tohir Malik’s novel Shaytanat (1992–96; “Devilry”) was read by Uzbeks with great interest, because many saw their local political leaders (so-called “new Uzbeks”), whom they thought to be behaving like criminals, as the “heroes” of this novel.