The formation of the Mongol Empire...

The formation of the Mongol Empire, which embraced almost the whole Arabic world of the period, created for a time an atmosphere favourable to the development of uniform language for a considerable section of the Muslim Turkish peoples. At first Turkish literary activity under the Saljuqs in Asia Minor was to some degree bound up with that of Central Asia and Eastern Europe. The seventh/13th century, however, is an epoch of political agitations in Asia Minor and Eastern Europe.

It is, therefore, only in the next century that literary works are mainly to be found.[^4] Literary activity on the northern shores of the Black Sea, in Khwarizm which included the mouth of the Sir Darya, in the Capital Saray, and in the Crimea attained a considerable development by the beginning of the eighth/14th century but no uniform literary language developed. The elements of the literary language of the Karakhanid period were combined with those of the local spoken dialects.

In Syria, Egypt, and Persia under Turkish or Turkicized rulers there grew an interest in Turkish. Thus, we find a series of grammar books and lexicons in Arabic from the sixth/13th century until the beginning the tenth/16th century. They all deal with the Kipchak but contain elements from other Turkish dialects in varying degrees. The prose work Qisas al-Anbiya’ (Stories of the Prophets), with passages in verse written by N.

Rabghuzi, finished in 710/1310, although lacking aesthetic value, is of great literary importance. Another religious work in verse is the Mu‘in al-Murid of Sheikh Sharif Khuwaja (713/1313). The very attractive romance in verse, Khusraw wa Shirin of the poet Qutb (742 – 743/1341 -1342), although based on the corresponding Persian work of Nizami, has nevertheless many original passages. Khwarizimi’s poem Mahabbatnamah (The Book of Love), composed in 754/1353, is another work of high literary merit.

Seif-i Saray’s translation of Gulistan (The Rose Garden) that appeared in 782/1380 is another prose and verse book of high literary value. The religious work Nahj al-Faradis (Way to the Paradise) of Mahmud b. ‘Ali (716/1316) is, properly speaking, a “40-Hadith” book in simple prose with no aesthetic aims. Finally, it may be mentioned the religious prose work of Mi‘rajnamah (Book of the Ascension) composed for didactic purposes.