Ali-Shir Nava'i

Ali-Shir Nava'i, also called Nizām-al-Din ʿAli-Shir Herawī, lived from 9 February 1441 to 3 January 1501. He was a Timurid poet, writer, statesman, linguist, Hanafi Maturidi mystic, and painter, and is regarded as the foremost figure in Chagatai literature. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he argued that his native Chagatai Turkic was superior to Persian for literary purposes, a position he laid out in his work *Muhakamat al-Lughatayn* (*The Comparison of the Two Languages*). There, he stressed the richness, precision, and flexibility of Turkic vocabulary over Persian. Because of his poetry in Chagatai, many in the Turkic-speaking world consider him the founder of early Turkic literature. Today, places and institutions across Central Asia—such as the province and city of Navoiy in Uzbekistan—bear his name.

Nava'i was born in Herat in 1441 to a family of well-read Turkic chancery scribes. At the time, Herat was under Timurid rule and had become a major cultural and intellectual hub in the Muslim world. He belonged to the Chaghatai *mir* class of the Timurid elite. His father, Ghiyāth al-Din Kichkina (“The Little”), served as a high-ranking officer in Khorasan in the palace of Shahrukh Mirza; his mother worked as a prince’s governess in the palace. Ghiyāth al-Din once governed Sabzawar but died while Nava'i was young. After that, another Khorasan ruler, Abul-Qasim Babur Mirza, became his guardian. Nava'i was a schoolmate of Sultan Husayn Bayqara, who later became sultan of Khorasan. In 1447, after Shah Rukh’s death created instability, Nava'i’s family fled Herat. They returned to Khorasan when order was restored in the 1450s. In 1456, Nava'i and Bayqara went to Mashhad with Abul-Qasim Babur Mirza. When Abul-Qasim died the next year, the two parted ways: Bayqara sought political power, while Nava'i studied in Mashhad, Herat, and Samarkand. After Abu Sa'id Mirza died in 1469, Husayn Bayqara took control of Herat, and Nava'i left Samarkand to join his service. In 1472, he was appointed emir of the *dīvān-i aʿlā* (supreme council), which brought him into conflict with the Persian bureaucrat Majd al-Din Muhammad Khvafi over centralizing reforms that threatened the privileges of the Turkic military elite. Nava'i served Bayqara until his own death on 3 January 1501. He was buried in Herat. He led an ascetic life, never marrying or having children or concubines.

As a public administrator and adviser to Bayqara, Nava'i also patronized scholarship. The historian Mirkhvand composed his Timurid universal history under Nava'i’s sponsorship. He was a prolific builder, reportedly founding, restoring, or endowing some 370 mosques, madrasas, libraries, hospitals, caravanserais, and other charitable and educational institutions in Khorasan. In Herat alone, he was responsible for 40 caravanserais, 17 mosques, 10 mansions, nine bathhouses, nine bridges, and 20 pools. Among his projects were the mausoleum of the 13th-century mystic poet Farid al-Din Attar in Nishapur and the Khalasiya madrasa in Herat. He contributed significantly to Herat’s architecture, which historian René Grousset called “the Florence of what has justly been called the Timurid Renaissance.” Beyond building, Nava'i was a musician, composer, calligrapher, painter, and sculptor, as well as a writer so celebrated that Bernard Lewis described him as “the Chaucer of the Turks.” He financially supported many notable figures, including historians Mirkhvand, Khvandamir, and Dawlatshah Samarqandi; poets Jami, Asafi Harawi, Sayfi Bukhari, Hatefi, and Badriddin Hilali; and musicians Shaykh Na'i and Husayn Udi.

Nava'i wrote under the pen name Nava'i, primarily in Chagatai, and produced 30 works over 30 years. During this time, Chagatai became accepted as a prestigious literary language. He also wrote in Persian under the pen name Fāni, and occasionally in Arabic. His best-known poems appear in four *diwans* (poetry collections) totaling roughly 50,000 verses, each corresponding to a life stage: *Ghara'ib al-Sighar* (“Wonders of Childhood”), *Navadir al-Shabab* (“Rarities of Youth”), *Bada'i' al-Wasat* (“Marvels of Middle Age”), and *Fawa'id al-Kibar* (“Benefits of Old Age”). To assist other Turkic poets, he wrote technical works like *Mizan al-Awzan* (“The Measure of Meters”), a detailed treatise on poetic meters, and *Majalis al-Nafais* (“Assemblies of Distinguished Men”), a collection of over 450 biographical sketches of mostly contemporary poets—a rich source for modern historians of Timurid culture. His other major work is the *Khamsa* (Quintuple), five epic poems responding to Nizami Ganjavi’s *Khamsa*: *Hayrat al-abrar* (“Wonders of Good People”), *Farhad va Shirin* (“Farhad and Shirin”), *Layli va Majnun* (“Layla and Majnun”), and two others.