The compilation of folk narratives of Chagatay coincides with the second half of the 19th century, the period following the Russian occupation of Central Asia. The content of these compilations is varied and includes many examples of folk literature, among which proverbs are the folk phrases that have attracted the most attention from Orientalists. Arminius Vámbéry was the first to record examples of proverbs from the region, and he included them in his Ćagataische Sprachstudien, published in 1867. Vámbéry’s collections inspired other scholars of the time, including the Russian orientalist Nikolai Petrovich Ostroumov. The subject of this article is the Chagatay proverbs that Ostroumov collected in Turkestan in the 1880s. Ostroumov published the first part of proverbs in 1888 under the title Poslovitsı tuzemnago naseleniya Turkestanskago kraya (Proverbs of the local people of the Turkestan region) and the second part in 1891 in Tashkent under the title Poslovitsı i pogovorki tuzemnago naseleniya Turkestanskago kraya (Proverbs and idioms of the local people of the Turkestan region). These works are very important because they are among the first compilations of proverbs, and their examples were recorded in the last period of Chagatay. At the same time, the examples of proverbs are a valuable source that contributes to the study of Chagatay in the 19th century in terms of phonetic and morphological features, as well as the vocabulary and dialectology. Ostroumov brought together both the Russian translation and the Arabic text of the proverbs in his work. In this paper, which aims to introduce the compilation in Turkey, we have transcribed the text in Arabic letters, given information about some words in the text, and tried to evaluate the proverbs in general.
Turkestan, Chagatay, Ostroumov, proverbs, compilation.