Alisher Navoi — a genius of the centuries

During the 60 years of his life Alisher Navoi accomplished three lifetimes’ worth of achievements, as a government official, patron and author 7. The annals of history reflect his efforts in each of these fields. He was well known and respected as a politician by his contemporaries. His charitable work was also widely known, and the public and pious institutions he built served many future generations; but how much of this has actually survived over subsequent centuries? What the centuries did preserve, however, are his literary efforts — there was not a single Turkic poet, regardless of his nationality, who created so much and who has had such a significant an impact on the development of literature and culture in general. The works of Alisher Navoi are, first and foremost, a heritage of the Uzbek people, but the manuscripts, which bring to later generations the poet’s language, his thoughts and aspirations, were, in the 15th and especially in the 16th c., created in the style of Persian fine books. This is understandable, given that Navoi belonged to the intellectual, artistic and political elite of Herat, the capital of the Timurid state, in which the traditions of decorating books written in the Persian language were developed in line with the previous accomplishments of the masters from Shiraz, Tabriz, Yazd and Baghdad. It is well known that in turn, the Herat traditions and masters had a significant impact on the later development of the arts of the book in Safavid Iran, as well as in the cultural centres of Transoxiana.

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