585th Anniversary Of Alisher Navoi: The Making Of A Literary And Moral Civilization – OpEd
This February 9 of 2026 marked the 585th anniversary of the birth of Alisher Navoi, a poet, thinker, and statesman whose life reshaped the cultural and literary history of Central Asia and beyond. Recognized as the founder of classical Turkic literature, Navoi demonstrated that the Turkic language could stand alongside Persian in its capacity for profound thought, philosophy, and artistic expression. Beyond literature, he was a public servant, a patron of the arts, and a moral voice of his era. Despite the centuries that have passed, his legacy continues to inspire modern generations.
Alisher Navoi was born on February 9, 1441, in the city of Herat, one of the most important cultural centers of the Timurid Empire. His father, Giyosiddin Muhammad, was a respected official in the Timurid court, while his mother came from an aristocratic family connected to Amir Timur’s lineage. Navoi grew up in a courtly environment where politics, scholarship, music, and literature intersected daily.
From an early age, his intellectual gifts were obvious. Surrounded by scholars and artists, he developed a deep love for poetry and music. He started going to school at the age of 4 and when he was 7 he started writing his own ghazals. As a fact, ghazal is a lyric poem with a fixed number of verses and a repeated rhyme, usually common in Middle Eastern and Central Asian literature. As a child, he astonished elders by reciting complex verses from memory, and his education placed him alongside the future ruler Sultan Husayn Bayqara, who would remain his closest friend throughout life. This friendship would later shape the political and cultural direction of Khorasan.
After the death of Shah Rukh Mirzo in 1447, internal struggles among the Timurids forced Navoi’s family to leave Herat temporarily. These early disruptions exposed him to hardship and uncertainty, but they also deepened his resilience and independence. Even during periods of displacement, Navoi continued his studies, immersing himself in Persian classics such as Sa‘di’s Gulistan and Bustan, and Farid al-Din Attar’s Mantiq al-Tayr. Attar’s allegory of the birds’ spiritual journey would later leave a lasting imprint on Navoi’s own worldview.
By his teenage years, Navoi was already recognized as an exceptional poetic talent. Established poets such as Lutfi, one of the most influential poets of that era, openly acknowledged his genius, famously stating that he would exchange thousands of his own verses for a single ghazal written by the young Navoi. This was not just a praise but a signal of the arrival of a transformative literary figure.
When Sultan Husayn Bayqara ascended the throne in 1469, Navoi entered a new phase of life. He was appointed first as keeper of the royal seal, and later as vizier, placing him at the heart of state affairs. Despite holding immense power, Navoi remained personally ascetic and lived modestly.
In government, Navoi distinguished himself by defending justice and opposing corruption. He openly criticized the greed and abuse of the nobility, advocating for ordinary people. This moral stance earned him widespread respect among the public but hostility from powerful elites. At one point, political pressure led to his appointment as governor of Astrabad, effectively removing him from the capital. Despite that, he governed conscientiously and maintained his commitment to public welfare. There was also a time when the government expenditure went too high and Sultan Husayn Bayqara decided to increase the taxes. However, Navoi opposed it and noted the hardship it would put on people. He gave 25,000 dinars, equal to over 10 million in today’s US dollars, to the state budget to ease the situation without increasing taxes.
Navoi’s legacy extends far beyond poetry and politics. He was one of the greatest patrons of public architecture and charity in Timurid history. Using his personal wealth, he founded, restored, or endowed more than 370 mosques, schools, hospitals and libraries across Khorasan. These projects expressed his belief that power carried moral responsibility.
After withdrawing from active political life in the late 1480s, Navoi devoted himself entirely to writing. Under the pen name Navoi, meaning “melodious,” he produced an extraordinary body of work in Turkic, while also writing in Persian under the name Fani. His four great poetry collections, or diwans, comprise nearly 50,000 verses, organized according to stages of human life, from childhood to old age. This structure reflected his belief that poetry should accompany a person throughout their moral and spiritual development.
The heart of Navoi’s poetry is “Khamsa”, a cycle of five epic poems written between 1483 and 1485. His Khamsa was written in Turkic and this work had an enormous impact in shaping the literature of Central Asia. Until then, such huge literary projects had been written almost exclusively in Persian. His Khamsa demonstrated that Turkic was not a lesser language but one capable of expressing philosophy, ethics, love, and statecraft with equal depth. Navoi’s Khamsa is composed of five epic poems which includes Hayrat ul-Abror, a philosophical and ethical work reflecting on justice, faith, and moral governance; Farhod va Shirin, a romantic epic centered on devotion and sacrifice; Layli va Majnun, a tragic love story exploring spiritual love and social constraint; Sab’ai Sayyor, a narrative poem intertwining romance with moral and political instruction through allegory; and Saddi Iskandariy, a political and philosophical epic examining power, leadership, and justice through the figure of Dhu al-Qarnayn.
Equally important were Navoi’s scholarly and theoretical writings. In “Muhakamat al-Lughatayn” (Judgment between the Two Languages), he systematically compared Turkic and Persian, arguing that Turkic possessed equal expressive power. This work played a great role at a time when Persian language was the language of aristocrats and the attention for Turkic language was going down. Due to his role in preserving and promoting Turkic languages, Navoi is well-respected across all Turkic states including Turkiye, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan that have installed statues for him and continue to study and promote Navoi’s work. In Uzbekistan, the largest province was named after him. Additionally, a university, streets and research centers opened under the name of Navoi in the country.
Navoi died on January 3, 1501, in Herat. His passing was mourned across all layers of society, from rulers to ordinary people. Today, he is considered as a symbol of cultural confidence, ethical leadership, and intellectual courage. His life teaches that true legacy lies not in authority, but in what one builds for people, for culture and for the future.