Khwarezmian Turkic

Language: Khwarezmian Turkic
Detailed Content: The earliest known falnama of the Turkic-Islamic literature
Notes: The manuscript consisted of 129 folios, 71 of which includes the Siraj al-Qulub in Khwarezmian Turkic (Yaman 2016) and 58 of which includes the Falnama in Khwarezmian Turkic (Onur 2022). The place of copying and the name of the copyist are unknown. The last pages are missing, so we don’t know when the Falnama was copied. However, it is understood that both the Siraj al-Qulub and the Falnamah were written by the same copyist. The copying date of the Siraj al-Qulub is 1362. It is therefore possible to say that the Falnama was also copied around 1362. The linguistic differences between the two texts show that these two texts, written by the same copyist, were not composed by the same author (or translator).
Country, Settlement: Istanbul, Türkiye
Repository: Topkapı Palace Museum Library
Shelfmark: K1057
Keywords: Khorezmian Turkic language, Fortune-telling

Date of Copying

Around 1362

Copyist

—

Translator

—

Place of Copying

Unknown

Script

Arabic

Script type: Naskh

Vocalization: No vocalization

Text Language

Khwarezmian Turkic , folios 71v-129r

Creation: The language of the text represents Early Eastern Middle Turkic of the 13th to 14th century, known as Khwarezmian Turkic. However, some linguistic features of the text (mostly lexical), which are close to Western Turkic, set it apart from all the other Khwarezmian Turkic sources. These features indicate that the work was probably composed by an Oguz in Western Turkestan. In particular, the fact that the text contains many words peculiar to Old Anatolian Turkish, which do not appear in any Khwarezmian Turkic source, suggests that it was written by a member of an Oguz tribe who had not participated in the migrations to Anatolia.
Ownership: —

Kandemir, Yıldız. 1961. Kitabı - Dil Hususiyetleri Üzerinde Bir Çalışma. Undergraduate Thesis. Istanbul: Istanbul University.
Onur, Samet. 2020. Harezm Türkçesiyle Yazılmış Bir Fal Kitabı. Modern Türklük Araştırmaları Dergisi 17(1): 96–119.
Onur, Samet. 2022. Harezm Türkçesi Fal Kitabı (Yıldızname - Dîvname - Kur’an falı - Kura falı - Tılsımlar). Ankara: Akçağ Yayınları.
Yaman, Ümran. 2016. Doğu Türkçesi ile Yazılan Sirâcü’l-Kulûb’un Dili Üzerine. İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Türk Dili ve Edebiyatı Dergisi 55(1): 91–102.

Manuscript description by Samet Onur
Digital edition by Samet Onur

Citation: Onur, Samet 2024. ‘A digital edition of the Khwarezmian Turkic fortune-telling book K1057’, in László Károly and Michał Németh (eds) A database of Middle Turkic documents. Uppsala: Department of linguistics and philology. Accessed 4 Nov 2026. https://middleturkic.lingfil.uu.se/manuscripts/khwarezmian-turkic/K1057
Licensing: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Manuscripts