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A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

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92 A history of Inner Asia<br />

Significantly, an analogous work appeared among the Qarakhanids: the<br />

Qutadghu Bilig (“The Wisdom of Felicity”), a didactic poem written in<br />

Turkic by Yusuf of Balasaghun, the “Khass Hajib” or personal secretary<br />

of the Qarakhanid ruler.Dated to 1069, it is a near-contemporary of<br />

Mahmud Kashgari’s dictionary, and predates by a few years Nizam al-<br />

Mulk’s work.We can discern several characteristic strains in the Qutadghu<br />

Bilig: one is an Islamic religious veneer, for the author opens with the customary<br />

formulas of praise of God and Muhammad; another is a<br />

politico-philosophical substance, drawing on two different but mutually<br />

complementary systems: Iranian traditions of kingship and relationship<br />

between the sovereign, his ministers, and the people (it is in the sovereign’s<br />

interest to rule justly), and Turkic principles of the ruler’s duty to<br />

rule justly (because the heavenly mandate that makes his rule legitimate<br />

also makes him accountable for his actions and responsible for the<br />

people’s welfare); and a third veneer, local color, expressed above all in<br />

the poem’s Turkic language, but also in the delightful portrayals of the<br />

author’s and his Turkic compatriots’ homeland: the awakening of<br />

nature in the springtime, the boisterous joy of living creatures, the<br />

passing of a Silk Road caravan on its way from China.Like Mahmud of<br />

Kashgar, Yusuf of Balasaghun eloquently asserted his ethnic identity by<br />

giving his work a Turkic form and setting.We have already mentioned<br />

the efforts of some Qarakhanid rulers to rule justly, which are evident<br />

from their pious foundations and behavior; the Qutadghu Bilig is another<br />

illustration of the political and cultural climate characteristic of this first<br />

Turkic dynasty to rule Islamic Central Asia.<br />

The Qutadghu Bilig has survived in three undated manuscripts.Arabic<br />

script was used for two of these, but the third is in the Uighur alphabet.<br />

Internal evidence suggests that it was copied in the Timurid period<br />

(fifteenth century), when that script received new currency thanks to the<br />

ubiquity of Uighur bakhshis in the nomadic monarchs’ chanceries, or<br />

even to a certain Turkic pride among the elite.Today this didactic poem<br />

ranks among the priceless monuments of Turkic antiquity, cherished by<br />

linguists as well as by cultural and social historians.

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