25 Facts About Ali-Shir Nava'i

Ali-Shir Nava'i emphasized his belief in the richness, precision and malleability of Turkic vocabulary as opposed to Persian.

Alisher Ali-Shir Nava'i was born in 1441 at the city of Herat to a family of well-read Turkic chancery scribes.

Ali-Shir Nava'i's mother served as a prince's governess in the palace.

Ali-Shir Nava'i died while Alisher was young, and another ruler of Khorasan, Abul-Qasim Babur Mirza, adopted guardianship of the young man.

Ali-Shir Nava'i's family returned to Khorasan after order was restored in the 1450s.

Ali-Shir Nava'i was 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.

Ali-Shir Nava'i was one of the instrumental contributors to the architecture of Herat, which became, in Rene Grousset's words, "the Florence of what has justly been called the Timurid Renaissance".

Under the pen name Ali-Shir Nava'i, Alisher was among the key writers who revolutionized the literary use of the Turkic languages.

Ali-Shir 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.

Ali-Shir Nava'i wrote in Persian under the pen name Fani, and, to a much lesser degree, in Arabic.

Ali-Shir Nava'i crafted the monumental Majalis al-Nafais "Assemblies of Distinguished Men", a collection of over 450 biographical sketches of mostly contemporary poets.

Ali-Shir Nava'i translated Jami's Nafahat al-uns to Chagatai and called it Nasayim al-muhabbat.

Ali-Shir Nava'i believed that the Turkic language was superior to Persian for literary purposes, and defended this belief in his work.

Ali-Shir Nava'i repeatedly emphasized his belief in the richness, precision and malleability of Turkic vocabulary as opposed to Persian.

Ali-Shir Nava'i wrote it under the pen name Fani in 1481.

Ali-Shir Nava'i wrote Lison ut-Tayr under the pen name Fani between 1498 and 1499.

In Munojot, Ali-Shir Nava'i wrote about his unfulfilled dreams and regrets.

In Munshaot, Ali-Shir Nava'i provides much insight about political, social, moral, and spiritual matters.

Ali-Shir Nava'i had a great influence in areas as distant as India to the east and the Ottoman Empire to the west.

Ali-Shir Nava'i is one of the most beloved poets among Central Asian Turkic peoples.

Ali-Shir Nava'i is generally regarded as the greatest representative of Chagatai language literature.

Soviet and Uzbek sources hold that Ali-Shir Nava'i significantly contributed to the development of the Uzbek language and consider him to be the founder of Uzbek literature.

Many of Ali-Shir Nava'i's ghazals are performed in the Twelve Muqam, particularly in the introduction known as Muqaddima.

Alisher Ali-Shir Nava'i's works have been staged as plays by Uzbek playwrights.

In 2021, an international spiritual event dedicated to the 580th anniversary of Ali-Shir Nava'i was held at the House of Friendship in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan.