Karakhanid

Karakhanid Turkic (ISO 639-3: xqa), also called Khāqānī Turkic, was a literary Turkic language used in the Karakhanid realms of Central Asia from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. It represents an early Islamic literary stage of the Karluk branch and is classified by scholars within either late Old Turkic or Middle Turkic. Its central monuments include Yūsuf Khāṣṣ Ḥājib’s Qutadgu Bilig, completed in 1069–1070, and Maḥmūd al-Kāshgharī’s Arabic-language Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk, compiled in 1072–1074 and rich in Turkic words, poetry, and grammatical observations. Surviving works are transmitted mainly in Arabic script, although a manuscript of Qutadgu Bilig uses the Old Uyghur script. Karakhanid contributed to later Khwarazmian and Chagatai literary traditions and forms part of the historical background of modern Uzbek and Uyghur, rather than mapping exactly onto either language.