The Old Tatar ( İske imlâ: يسكى تاتار تلى, translit. tt-Cyrl, иске татар теле, translit=İske Tatar Tele, Volga Turki; ba, Урал-Волга буйы төрки теле) was a literary language used by some ethnic groups of the Volga-Ural region ( Tatars and others) from the Middle Ages till the 19th century. Old Tatar is a member of the Kipchak (or Northwestern) group of Turkic languages, although it is partly derived from the ancient Bulgar language (the first poem, considered to be written by

Qol Ghali Qol Ghali or Qul Ali ( tt-Arab, قل علی, , ; cv, Кул Али, Kul Ali; c. 1183-1236) was a famous Muslim Volga Bulgarian poet. His most famous poem is ''Qíssa-i Yosıf'' (''قصه یوسف,'' ''Tale of Yusuf''), written in the Old Tatar ...

in Old Tatar dates back to Volga Bulgaria's epoch). It included many Persian and Arabic loans. In its written form the language was spelled uniformly among different ethnic groups, speaking different Turkic languages of the Kipchak group, but pronunciation differed from one people to another, approximating to the spoken language, making this written form universal for different languages. The main reason for this universal usage was that the principal differences between the languages of the Kipchak group are in the pronunciation of the vowels, which was not adequately represented by the

Arabic script The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and the ...

. The language formerly used the

and later its variant İske imlâ. The Old Tatar Language is a language of Idel-Ural poetry and literature. With the

Ottoman Turkish Ottoman Turkish ( ota, لِسانِ عُثمانى, Lisân-ı Osmânî, ; tr, Osmanlı Türkçesi) was the standardized register of the Turkish language used by the citizens of the Ottoman Empire (14th to 20th centuries CE). It borrowed extens ...

, Azeri, Kipchak, Khaqani TurkicOutstanding examples of the Uighur Middle Age literature are Yusuf Balasaghuni ''

Qutatqu Bilik The ''Kutadgu Bilig'' or ''Qutadğu Bilig'' (; Middle Turkic: ), is an 11th century work written by Yūsuf Balasaguni for the prince of Kashgar. The text reflects the author's and his society's beliefs, feelings and practices with regard to quite ...

'' (''Wisdom Of Royal Glory'') (1069–70) and Mahmut Kashgari '' Divan-i Lugat-it Türk'' (''Dictionary of Turkic Dialects'') (1072) and Chagatai, they were the only Turkic literary languages used in the Middle Ages. It was actively used in publishing until 1905, when the first Tatar newspaper started being published in modern Tatar, which until then had been used only in a spoken form.

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