Mehmet Turgut Berbercan

Keywords: Eastern Turki, Post-Classical Chaghatai Turkic, Kashgar, poems

Abstract

The poems represented in this study under the title as "Eastern TurkiPoems from Kashgar" constitute the main subject of this study. The poemson which no academical study conducted by now are kept in Sweden inthe Library of Lund University. Swedish Turkologist Gunnar V. Jarringrecorded in his catalogue that poems were written in Uighur languageand defined the poems as "Popular Eastern Turki Poems". Actuallypoems are consisted of 2 folios and they were copied in 1908 in Kashgarprobably from a manuscript of a collected literary works or the originalpoetry folios. As is known, Chaghatai Turkic became a classical commonliteral language in the 15th century via Ali Şir Nevāyī's works amongthe Turkic nations excluding Ottomans, but towards the 20th century,dominant character of Nevāyī's Chaghatai decreased little by little inthe Eastern Turki literature and also varied with some features of otherTurkic dialects because of the effects of local speech in different regions.According to the linguistic results of this paper, the Eastern Turki poems,that is to say, the research subject, belong to the "Post-classical periodof Chaghatai Turkic" and they are certainly the literal works of 18th or19th century. In the view of this information, the poems are analyzedfrom the perspective of a philological methodology in the study. Firstly atranscription of the poems in Latin alphabet, secondly the translation ofthe poems into Standard Turkey Turkish and thirdly a glossary in whicha list of words containing the morphological and etymological data arepresented in comformity with the mentioned methodology. Additionally,the original facsimile of the poems in Arabic script is presented at the end.