Abstract
FIVE COPIES OF THE QURAN TRANSLATION IN THE KHOREZMIAN TURKIC LANGUAGE
It were A.Zeki Velidi Togan and Abdulkadir Inan, who for the first time assumed that the Karakhanid and the Khorezmian Turkic translations of the Quran might have been copies of a single text. Furthermore, Inan argued that translations found in Anatolia, actually, had their origin in a single text brought during the Mongol invasion. Mustafa Toker and Ali Osman Solmaz also suggested after their small-scale comparisons that some copies rested on a single text.
Despite often usage of the comparative method in scientific works on Turkish texts from historical periods, it has not been used in regard to the translations of the Quran. Nevertheless, the comparative method has undeniable importance within linguistic researches. Therefore, copies of Quran translations belonging to various historical periods should be detected and their texts should be published (with critical edition) using the comparative method.
In my previous presentation, a Turkic translation of the Quran - the Anonymous Central Asian interpretation with Karakhanid and Khorezmian Turkic linguistic features TIEM 73, Rylands, the Tashkent (Uzbekistan) copy and the Hekimoghlu copy were compared and I suggested that these had their origin in a single text. Besides, I drew attention to the fact that the Tashkent and Hekimoghlu copies were, actually, the translation of the same text. This work includes three additional copies to the Tashkent and Hekimoghlu copies and all of the three copies are kept in the Astan Quds Razavi Foundation Library, Mashhad, Iran under tag numbers 293, 1007 and 2229. Some verses chosen from these five manuscripts written in Khorazmian Turkic have been compared and interpreted. In is concluded that the Tashkent, Hekimoghlu and Mashhad copies were written in the same language in different areas of West Turkestan; these three manuscripts are very close to each other in terms of phonological, morphologial and lexical materials; the true origin of all three manuscripts - the copy with the Karakhanid Turkic features TIEM 73, Rylands, the Anonymous Central Asian interpretation and the copy with Khorezmian Turkic linguistic features is the Persian-Turkish translation done during the rule of Mansur bin Nuh, which was written in early Karakhanid Turkic.
Keywords
Quran, Turkic Translations of Quran, Khorezmian Turkic, Critical Edition