Old Anatolian Turkish or Old Turkish, also referred to as Old Anatolian Turkic, (,

Perso-Arabic script The Persian alphabet (), also known as the Perso-Arabic script, is the right-to-left script, right-to-left alphabet used for the Persian language. It is a variation of the Arabic script with four additional letters: (the sounds 'g', 'zh', ' ...

: اسکی انادولو تورکچه‌سی), was the form of the

Turkish language Turkish ( , , also known as 'Turkish of Turkey') is the most widely spoken of the Turkic languages, a member of Oghuz languages, Oghuz branch with around 90 million speakers. It is the national language of Turkey and one of two official languag ...

spoken in

Anatolia Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

from the 11th to 15th centuries. It developed into Early Ottoman Turkish. It was written in the

. Unlike in later Ottoman Turkish, short-vowel diacritics were used. It had no official status until 1277, when Mehmet I of Karaman declared a

firman A firman (; ), at the constitutional level, was a royal mandate or decree issued by a sovereign in an Islamic state. During various periods such firmans were collected and applied as traditional bodies of law. The English word ''firman'' co ...

in an attempt to break the dominance of Persian: , dir="rtl", : , : , :''From now on nobody in the palace, in the

divan A divan or diwan (, ''dīvān''; from Sumerian ''dub'', clay tablet) was a high government ministry in various Islamic states, or its chief official (see ''dewan''). Etymology The word, recorded in English since 1586, meaning "Oriental cou ...

, council, and at the hearings should speak any language other than Turkish.''

History

It has been erroneously assumed that the Old Anatolian Turkish literary language was created in Anatolia and that its authors transformed a primitive language into a literary medium by submitting themselves to Persian influence. In reality, the

Oghuz Turks The Oghuz Turks ( Middle Turkic: , ) were a western Turkic people who spoke the Oghuz branch of the Turkic language family. In the 8th century, they formed a tribal confederation conventionally named the Oghuz Yabgu State in Central Asia ...

who came to Anatolia brought their own written language, literary traditions and models from Khwarezm and

Transoxiana Transoxiana or Transoxania (, now called the Amu Darya) is the Latin name for the region and civilization located in lower Central Asia roughly corresponding to eastern Uzbekistan, western Tajikistan, parts of southern Kazakhstan, parts of Tu ...

. The Ajem Turkic language descended from Old Anatolian Turkish. Ajem Turkic started to form its shape in the

Aq Qoyunlu The Aq Qoyunlu or the White Sheep Turkomans (, ; ) was a culturally Persianate society, Persianate,Kaushik Roy, ''Military Transition in Early Modern Asia, 1400–1750'', (Bloomsbury, 2014), 38; "Post-Mongol Persia and Iraq were ruled by two trib ...

, Qara Qoyunlu eras, and, especially, the Safavid era.

Examples

Following texts are excerpts of the '' Qabus-nama'' taken from Turan Fikret's ''Old Anatolian Turkish: Syntactic Structure'' (1996):Mahsun Atsız, (2020), ''A Syntactic Analysis on Gonbad Manuscript of the Book of Dede Korkut'', pp. 190–196 * : "Our proofs." * ''devletlü gişiler'': "Fortunate ones." * ''zinhâr zinhâr'': "Never." * ''pîrlikde yigitlenmek rüsvâylıqdur'': "It is a shame to act like a young man in old age." * ''bulardan artanı beytügħl mâlda qoyalar'': "They should put in public treasury that which remained from them." * ''birgün bu ilçiyile oturur iken Qısri Büzürcmihre sorar'': "One day when he was sitting with this oreignambassador, Chosroes asked Büzürcmihr." * ''Kelâm-ı mecîd'': "The word of the most glorious (God), the Qoran." * ''dar'ül-harb'': " Countries outside of the domain of Islam." * ''Tañrı aña raħmet itmez'': "God does not forgive him." * ''ağırlañ aťañuzı anañuzı egerçi kāfirse daqı'': "Respect your parents even if they are unbelievers." * ''Ne qul kim alam âzâd olsun'': "Every slave that I would buy should be freed" * ''ve câhil gişileri gişi sanma ve hünersüzleri bilür sayma'': "And do not consider the ignorant ones the ealmen, and o not considerthe untalented ones the knowledgeable ones." * ''zinhâr işüñi ťanışmaqdan għarlanma'': "Beware, and never be ashamed of learning your job." * ''sen yalan söyleyesi gişi degülsin'': "You are not someone who would lie." * ''artuq zaħmet çeküp artuq ťama' eyleme'': "Do not work hard to satisfy your greed." * ''eger sen Tañrıya muťigħ olmayup bunlardan muťigħlıq isteyüp bunlara zaħmet virür iseñ Tañrılıq dagħvîsin itmiş olursın'': "If you yourself do not obey God and ask these people for obedience or youand oppress them, then you are considered as someone pretending to be God." * ''yagħnî bir şaxsuñ bir sarayda naṣībi olsa andan ol naŝîbi ŝatsa ne qadardur bâyigħyâ müşterî bilmese Ebû Ħanîfeden üç rivâyetdür'': "In other words, if someone has a share in a palace and then if he sells it without either seller or buyer knowing the exact value of it, then there are three traditions according to Abû Ḥanîfe." * ''benüm dostlarum beni ğâyet sevdüklerinden baŋa għaybum dimezler idi ve düşmânlarum benüm għaybumı xalqa söylerler idi'': "Because my friends liked me very much they did not say my shortcomings to me, utmy enemies told the people my shortcomings." * ''ben eyittim sübħān Allāh qırq iki yaşında gişi neçün şöyle içekim nerdübâñ ayağın nice urasın bilmeye düşe ve dün buçuğında neçün şöyle yörüye kim şunuñ gibi vāqıgħaya uğraya'': "I said ‘O God why would a person of forty-two years of age drink so much that he can not judge how to put his feet on the steps of a ladder, so he falls, and also why would he walk like that in the middle of the night when feeling this way."

Orthography

Alphabet

Notes

References