The Scholar Who Recorded the Turkish Language in the Eleventh Century
Kaşgarlı Mahmud was an eleventh-century Turkish linguist, lexicographer, and scholar of culture. His compilation of Dîvânu Lugâti’t-Türk, the earliest known comprehensive dictionary of Turkish, made him one of the founding figures in the history of the Turkish language and Turkish thought. His work is not merely a dictionary providing Arabic equivalents for Turkish words; it contains a broad field of information concerning the languages, geographies, oral literatures, everyday lives, beliefs, and social relations of Turkic communities.
Information concerning Kaşgarlı Mahmud’s life is limited and at times contradictory. His year of birth, the institutions in which he was educated, his teachers, his life after Baghdad, and the date of his death are not known with certainty. Local traditions that developed in later periods state that he returned to the village of Opal near Kashgar and died there; however, these claims have not been conclusively verified through historical sources. It is therefore more accurate to describe him as an eleventh-century Karakhanid scholar rather than assigning him a definite lifespan such as 1008–1105. We know Kaşgarlı Mahmud’s intellectual personality primarily through his own work. Dîvânu Lugâti’t-Türk directly reveals his views on Turkish, his research method, and the conceptual framework through which he approached Turkic communities.
Was Kaşgarlı Mahmud a Philosopher?
Kaşgarlı Mahmud was not a philosopher who constructed an independent and systematic philosophy of being, knowledge, or ethics. To define him simply as a “Turkish philosopher” obscures the actual nature of his work. Kaşgarlı was primarily a linguist, lexicographer, comparative language researcher, and compiler of culture.
Nevertheless, his place in intellectual history cannot be reduced merely to technical linguistic research. To collect the words of a language is also to record how the society that speaks that language names the world. Words relating to kinship, power, war, peace, animals, plants, time, space, belief, virtue, professions, and everyday life carry the fields of experience of a society.
Kaşgarlı Mahmud’s fundamental intellectual problem can be expressed as follows:
Within what shared linguistic and cultural structure does Turkish bring together different communities spread across a vast geography?
Kaşgarlı Mahmud should therefore be approached not as a systematic philosopher within the history of Turkish philosophy, but as a founding scholar who recorded the linguistic and cultural ground of Turkish thought.
Why Was Dîvânu Lugâti’t-Türk Written?
Kaşgarlı Mahmud prepared Dîvânu Lugâti’t-Türk to teach Turkish to Arabs and to demonstrate that Turkish was a language as rich, regular, and capable of cultivation as Arabic. Turkish words are presented as headwords in the work, while the explanations are given in Arabic. This choice shows that the book was intended for Arabic-speaking readers.
The period in which the work was written was one in which the political and military influence of Turkic communities within the Islamic world was increasing. The Karakhanids and Great Seljuks had established power across a broad geography, and Turkish began to be used alongside Arabic and Persian in different social fields. Within these historical conditions, Kaşgarlı Mahmud argued for the political and social necessity of learning Turkish. Yet the purpose of the work was not merely to teach foreigners a practical spoken language. While recording the vocabulary and rules of Turkish, Kaşgarlı also defended the value of the language. His claim that Turkish could advance “neck and neck” with Arabic carried an explicit challenge to the linguistic hierarchy of the period.
Language here is not merely a means of communication. It is one of the fundamental elements representing a community’s historical existence, cultural value, and political position.
The Date of Composition
According to the note at the end of the only surviving manuscript, Kaşgarlı Mahmud began writing the work on 25 January 1072 and completed it on 10 February 1074 after revising it four times. Because different dates appear in some sections of the work, however, various views have been proposed concerning the process of composition. The generally accepted view is that the work was completed between 1072 and 1074.
Kaşgarlı Mahmud presented the work to the Abbasid caliph al-Muqtadi bi-Amr Allah. This presentation indicates that the book was conceived not merely as a local study of language, but as a comprehensive work directed toward the Baghdad-centred intellectual world of Islam. The surviving manuscript is not in Kaşgarlı Mahmud’s own handwriting. The only extant copy was produced in 1266 by Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr ibn Abi al-Fath on the basis of the author’s manuscript. It was discovered in Istanbul at the beginning of the twentieth century by Ali Emîrî and published through the work of Kilisli Rifat Bilge.
Travelling through the Turkic World and Studying Language in Its Living Context
Kaşgarlı Mahmud states that he learned the languages of Turk, Turkmen, Oghuz, Chigil, Yaghma, and Kyrgyz communities and travelled through Turkic regions collecting different pronunciations and products of oral culture. His work does not rely merely upon transmitting information from written sources. It is based on an attempt to listen to, compare, and classify the living forms of language in their own environments.
He records which words were used among particular communities, how sounds changed, and what forms certain words assumed in different dialects. He therefore does not present Turkish as a uniform and immutable language. He recognises the existence of diverse forms of speech within a shared linguistic field.
This approach defines Kaşgarlı Mahmud’s distinctive place in the study of the Turkish language. He was not merely a lexicographer collecting words, but an early researcher who compared linguistic differences. Because of his attention to phonetic distinctions, dialectal features, and the environments in which words were used, he is regarded as one of the pioneers of comparative Turkic language studies.
Recording the Word within Its Context
Kaşgarlı Mahmud’s lexicographical method is not limited to providing equivalents for words. To demonstrate how a word is used, he includes example sentences, fragments of poetry, idioms, and proverbs. This method is important because meaning is acquired not by the word in isolation, but through use. A term relating to war is explained within a narrative of war; a kinship term within a social relation; and a concept of virtue within a proverb or sentence of advice. The dictionary therefore also preserves the everyday and cultural functioning of language.
Kaşgarlı Mahmud explicitly states that he included poems spoken by people in times of distress or joy and proverbs transmitted from generation to generation. Through this material, the work became one of the principal sources for eleventh-century Turkish oral literature. Proverbs are not merely linguistic examples. They carry shared judgements concerning work, labour, courage, hospitality, caution, generosity, speech, power, and social solidarity. Dîvânu Lugâti’t-Türk is therefore an important archive of the ethical and practical thought of Turkic communities.
Language and Cultural Memory
The words contained within a dictionary reveal which distinctions were important in the life of the society speaking that language. Dîvânu Lugâti’t-Türk records an extensive vocabulary ranging from kinship relations to clothing, agriculture to animal husbandry, military techniques to music, games to medicine.
The work also contains information concerning marriage customs, horsemanship, food, plants, weaving, entertainment, poetry, dance, household objects, astronomy, warfare, sports, agriculture, transportation, and beliefs. The book therefore combines the characteristics of a dictionary, grammatical study, dialectological investigation, geographical source, and cultural encyclopaedia within a single structure. Kaşgarlı Mahmud does not approach language as a system of signs independent of society. He records together the person who uses the word, the geography in which that person lives, and the social practice within which the word occurs. Language and culture are therefore inseparable.
Preserving Turkish in this sense does not merely prevent words from being forgotten. Together with words, ways of life, social roles, and historical experiences are also transmitted into the future.
Turkic Tribes and a Shared Linguistic Field
Kaşgarlı Mahmud arranges Turkic tribes and the regions in which they lived according to a particular order within his work. From the Pechenegs to the Kipchaks, from the Oghuz to the Kyrgyz, from the Chigil to the Uyghurs, he provides linguistic and cultural information concerning numerous communities. He records the names and tribal marks of the Oghuz tribes in particular detail.
This classification does not reduce different communities to a single form. Each tribe possesses its own words, pronunciations, and traditions. At the same time, these communities are conceived as parts of a broad linguistic and cultural field under the name “Turk.”
What Kaşgarlı does is not to construct a nation in the modern sense. He operates within the eleventh-century relations among tribe, dynasty, geography, and language. Yet by comparing different Turkic communities and recording both their similarities and differences, he creates a linguistic map of the Turkic world. From this perspective, the work carries the relationship between diversity and unity. Commonality is constructed not by erasing differences, but by recording them through comparison.
Kaşgarlı Mahmud’s World Map
One of the most remarkable sections of Dîvânu Lugâti’t-Türk is the circular map showing the geography inhabited by Turkic communities. Balasagun lies at the centre of the map; Kashgar, Barsgan, and other cities inhabited by Turks are positioned in relation to this centre. Mountains, rivers, seas, deserts, and the regions of different communities are marked in different colours.
The map does not aim to represent the entire world with equal detail. Kaşgarlı Mahmud’s interest lies in the regions inhabited by Turks and the geographies with which those regions were connected. The world is therefore organised from the centre of the Turkish linguistic field.
The map is not merely a geographical supplement. It visually completes the fundamental idea of the work: language lives within a particular geography; words are understood together with the communities that use them and the spaces through which those communities move. While the dictionary establishes relationships among words, the map brings together cities, tribes, and natural boundaries. Linguistic space and geographical space thus become two layers of the same work.
Turkish, Arabic, and the Value of Language
Kaşgarlı Mahmud’s defence of Turkish does not rest upon a simple claim of superiority that devalues other languages. He wrote his work in Arabic and organised his dictionary through the resources of the Arabic grammatical tradition. This demonstrates his recognition of Arabic’s central position as the language of scholarship in his period.
At the same time, he rejects the view that Turkish is merely a local or everyday spoken language. Through examples, he demonstrates that Turkish possesses an extensive vocabulary, a regular structure, and expressive power.
This position is important from the perspective of intellectual history. A language’s capacity to produce thought is not merely proclaimed in the abstract; it is demonstrated through dictionaries, grammar, texts, and conceptual studies. Kaşgarlı Mahmud does not limit his defence of Turkish to statements of praise; by examining the language systematically, he establishes the material ground of his argument. The idea that Turkish advances “neck and neck” with Arabic constitutes an intervention into the cultural and political position of language. When a community’s language is recorded, that community’s possibility of having a voice within history is also strengthened.
The Lost Grammar Book
In addition to Dîvânu Lugâti’t-Türk, Kaşgarlı Mahmud states that he also wrote a Turkish grammar entitled Kitâbü Cevâhiri’n-Nahv fî Lugāti’t-Türk. This work has not survived. His references within the Dîvân to having explained certain subjects in greater detail in that grammar confirm that he prepared an independent study of the rules of Turkish.
The lost work suggests that Kaşgarlı Mahmud’s project was not limited to compiling vocabulary. He also aimed to systematise the principles governing the sounds, forms, and sentence structure of Turkish. Because only Dîvânu Lugâti’t-Türk survives today, his conception of language must be reconstructed through this text. Yet the existence of the lost grammar demonstrates that he conceived a broader programme of linguistic research.
Kaşgarlı Mahmud’s Place in the History of Turkish Thought
Kaşgarlı Mahmud’s fundamental contribution to the history of Turkish thought lies in recording the vocabulary of Turkish together with its cultural contexts for the first time on such a broad and systematic scale.
While Yusuf Has Hacip discussed justice, reason, the state, and happiness through Turkish, Kaşgarlı Mahmud gathered the linguistic world in which such thought lived. One develops concepts within a political and ethical work; the other records the vocabulary, dialects, and social contexts in which those concepts exist.
Kaşgarlı Mahmud’s work is foundational for three principal reasons.
First, it transforms Turkish into an object of knowledge worthy of investigation, comparison, and the determination of rules.
Second, it presents Turkic communities not merely through their political or military power, but through their languages, poetry, proverbs, and everyday lives.
Third, it practically demonstrates the idea that language carries cultural memory. To preserve a word is also to preserve the experience to which that word belongs.
It is therefore insufficient to confine Kaşgarlı Mahmud to the statement that he was merely “the author of the first Turkish dictionary.” He is a founding scholar of language who brought together the words, geography, and social memory of the Turkic world within a single work.
Works
Dîvânu Lugâti’t-Türk: A comprehensive dictionary and linguistic study that presents Turkish words with Arabic explanations and includes dialectal features, poems, proverbs, idioms, cultural information, and a map of the Turkic world. The work was prepared between 1072 and 1074.
Kitâbü Cevâhiri’n-Nahv fî Lugāti’t-Türk: A work on Turkish grammar that has not survived. Its existence is known from Kaşgarlı Mahmud’s own explanations within Dîvânu Lugâti’t-Türk.
No other work can be definitively attributed to Kaşgarlı Mahmud.
Conclusion
Kaşgarlı Mahmud’s work demonstrates that recording a language also means recording a world. In Dîvânu Lugâti’t-Türk, words are not separated from geography, social relations, oral literature, or everyday experience. His place in intellectual history arises not from constructing a systematic philosophical doctrine, but from approaching Turkish as a field of knowledge. He compared the different speech forms of Turkic communities, compiled their shared vocabulary, and transferred the cultural memory carried by language into written form.
Kaşgarlı Mahmud thus approached Turkish not merely as a language in use, but as a language of thought that could be studied, taught, compared, and defended through its own conceptual richness.
