Dictionary of Turkic languages (Diwan Lughat al-Turk)
Diccionario de las lenguas túrquicas (Divan Lughat al-Turk)
- Date
- 1072-1077 · confidence high
- Place
- Baghdad, Iraq
- Credited to
- Mahmud al-Kashgari (born in Barskoon, Issyk-Kul)
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What was discovered
The first dictionary and comparative grammar of the Turkic languages, written in Arabic with poetic examples and proverbs, including a circular map of the Turkic peoples. Its only manuscript was copied in Damascus in 1266 and discovered in Istanbul in 1915.
The author's origin (Barskoon, in present-day Kyrgyzstan, or Kashgar, in China) is debated; the work was written in Baghdad.
What it led to
- the main source on 11th-century Turkic dialects
- a circular map, one of the oldest of Central Asia
- the basis of historical Turkic lexicography and grammar