From the Demotic to the Literary

The Ascendance of the Vernacular Turkic in Central Asia (Eighteenth–Nineteenth Centuries)

Bibliographic Data

ID21779356
AuthorsPaolo Sartori (0000-0003-0325-7840, Austrian Academy of Sciences Vienna), Паоло Сартори (Austrian Academy of Sciences, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume18
Issue2
Pages213-254
Publication date2021-03-26
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEurasian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1722-0750 • E-ISSN: 2468-5623
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1163/24685623-12340094
OpenAlexW3142713298
LanguageEN
References cited18

Understanding why Persian ceded ground to the vernacular Turkic in Central Asia in the 18th century is key to detecting major cultural realignments in the Balkans-to-Bengal complex. To date, however, focus has been predominantly on the constraining of Persian’s hegemonic status in Asia, its shaping colonial knowledge, and its stamping an imprint on other literary languages in post-colonial situations. Taking this literature as a point of departure, I change perspective and examine the process whereby a vernacular idiom acquired prominence prior to the onset of Russian colonization. By setting aside the issue of scope of Persian, I turn to an exploration of writing practices in Turkic in the early modern period in Khorezm, a major oasis in Central Asia within the territory of what is today Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. Interpreted in the literature so far as an isolated phenomenon, the ascendance of Chaghatay Turkic in Khorezm has been in fact studied in isolation from similar processes of vernacularization. By reconnecting writing practices in this oasis to patterns of literary consumption in Central Eurasia more generally, I point to an area of shared vernacular sensibilities across Khorezm, the Middle Volga, the Kazakh Steppe and the Tarim Basin. Furthermore, I argue that the promotion of the vernacular among Turkic-speaking Muslims in the Russian empire in the early 20th century was built on earlier processes of elevation of a written culture from the demotic to the literary

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Colonialism · Empire · Geography · Hegemony · Kazakh · Linguistics · Literature · Political science · Politics · The Republic · Vernacular · History · Law · Philippine History and Culture · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East · Soviet and Russian History

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