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Abstract:

In the late 19th-century Caucasus, an Armenian anthology printed in Constantinople, Kolkata and Tiflis was hand-copied in the Armenian language, but written in the mkhedruli script typically used to write Georgian. This unusual manuscript is ripe for symbolic reading. At a time of nation-making, when each singular ‘nation’ was being schooled to read in its one ‘national’ language, this manuscript evinces the persisting vernacular practices of the multilingual 19th-century Caucasus.

With this paper, I situate the mkhedruli-Armenian manuscript in an idea of day-to-day cosmopolitanism that draws on Pnina Werbner’s articulation of vernacular cosmopolitanism. In this view, the meetings, commercial exchanges, acts of hospitality and vulnerability that comprise the doing of cosmopolitanism (à la Sheldon Pollock) can take place in the small-scale movements of urban and rural life. This mkhedruli-Armenian manuscript participates in these cosmopolitan interactions as an object at once transcultural and local.

This paper is based on study of the manuscript and the stories it anthologises. Its contents belong to the centuries-long translation and transmission of literature across the Armenian cultural landscape, from Arabic wonder tales to Greco-Syriac saints’ lives. Meanwhile, its reproduction in the 19th-century Caucasus takes place alongside the transference of shared tales such as Köroğlu and Hoja Nasreddin between oral and written milieux, in multiple languages. While the manuscript is a ready symbol of multiculturalism, I argue that it also arises from the ordinary desire to read and share stories. Not every print-adjacent act in the second half of the 19th century perched precociously on the cusp of nationhood. It belongs, instead, to the common spaces where people lived.

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Abstract:

Recent scholarly perspectives suggest that the manuscripts titled Nawādir al-nihāya (‘Ali Shīr Navā’ī (1441–1501) could potentially represent curated collections, specifically selected divans, containing the author’s lyrical compositions from specific years. In this scholarly inquiry, we seek to address these questions by examining two manuscripts (No.11675, 1995) meticulously preserved in the collection of the Al Biruni Institute of Oriental Studies Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences.

In the manuscript of Nawādir al-nihāya (No.11675) copied by ‘Abd al-Jamil kаtib (d. XVI s.), the collection of ghazals stands out in terms of abundance compared to other manuscripts. Notably, both the main body and the marginal texts are written in the same script, indicating that the poems in the margins were transcribed by the scribe ‘Abd al-Jamil himself. According to us, these ghazals, attributed to Navā’ī and believed to have been composed between 1487–1490, particularly during the reign of Astrobad.

The presence of a ghazal ending with this maqta may serve as evidence supporting our viewpoint:

Bešä ičrä devlär maqtuli bolsun, ey pariy

Gar Navā’ī yana azmi Astrabad äylägäy.

The second manuscript of Nawādir al-nihāya, (No.1995) which was examined during the research, was transcribed by Sultan ‘Ali Mashhadi (1432–1520). The colophon text does not specify the exact date of this particular copy, which was intended for Sultan Husain’s palace library (years of reign 1469–1506). The researcher discovered that Navā’ī had completed writing his Khamsa at the time when this manuscript was copied. This deduction is based on compelling evidence extracted from a ghazal contained within the divan. Furthermore, the Mashhadi manuscript completely reflected the main and marginal ghazals of ‘Abd al-Jamil’s scribe copy, up to the part of the ghazals ending with the letter shin. This alignment likely indicates that the Mashhadi copy was scribed based on ‘Abd al-Jamil’s handwriting.

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This paper briefly presents a chapter from the book The Spiritual Legacy of Yasawi, translated into English in 2023 and forthcoming from the Almaty-based Kokzhiat-Gorizont Press. The author Prof. Aidar Abuov will co-present with his translator Dr. George Rueckert of Almaty’s KIMEP University. The paper discusses the work of the early 12th century Sufi poet and mystic Khoja Ahmed Yasawi, whose collection of verses the Divani Hikmet (Book of Wisdom) is among the masterpieces of Islamic and world literature and whose mausoleum in the city of Turkestan (ancient Yasy) is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Yasawi’s verses were written in a middle Turkic language that enabled their wide dissemination through Turkic Central Asia (Turan) along with disciples of the Sufi brotherhood that Yasawi established, called the Yasawiyya. The paper argues that the dissemination of Yasawi's verses was the most important factor in the Islamization of nomads living north of the Seyhun River (Syr Darya). But this process was not so much a matter of systematic proselytization as of a mutually interactive “compromise,” whereby nomadic tribes perceived Islam through the verses, while local rites and customs, such as the pagan cult of Tengri, receiving an Islamic interpretation in the verses, began their assimilation into the canons of Muslim faith. The resulting synthesis led to the version of Islam unique to Kazakhstan and much of Central Asia. Specific examples from the verses will be analyzed, including problems in literary and historical translation.