THOUGHTS OF NIZAMI GANJAVI ON THE TURKIC LAYER AND TURKIC NATIONAL IDENTITY IN HIS “KHAMSA”
Rafael Huseynov

The Azerbaijani poet Nizami Ganjavi wrote his works in Persian according to the tradition of that time. Along with Arabic, the scientific language of that time, the Persian language which became the common language of poetry in Central Asia, had an exceptional influence on the convergence of literary and cultural ties in the Middle Ages and brought individual creators out of the national framework thus raising them to the level of the general classics of the entire Near and Middle East. Therefore, the Azerbaijani poet Nizami Ganjavi is a poet not only of his homeland, but also a poet of the entire region.
However, the concepts of Persian language poetry and the concepts of Persian verses are fundamentally distinct. One should always take into account the difference between the works of poets of Persian origin and the literature created in the Persian language by representatives of many nations including Nizami. The poetry of the Persian language like the literary heritage created in English, French, Arabic, Spanish and other common languages, is also multinational, and Azerbaijani poets have contributed to the development of this direction for a thousand years, and this process is going on today.
Nizami Ganjavi who wrote his works in Persian, covered the entire region with his themes and addressed humanity, but the poet who valued his Turkic origin and nationality, repeatedly talks about the advantages of the Turkic people. His principled and consistent position in this direction is clearly visible when comparing the views of the Iranian poet Abulqasim Ferdowsi, a preacher and exponent of Persian fanaticism, with his Turkist views which sound completely opposite.
If the emergence of many Turkic words and proverbs in Nizami Ganjavi’s “Khamsa” is a direct influence of his native linguistic environment to his Farsi, then the expressions and phrases found in Nizami’s Farsi which differs in a number of features from the language of the Persian classics, were created by the poet himself directly in accordance with the grammatical nature of the Turkic language. That is, these are the stylistic features of an author who thought in Turkic and wrote in Persian.

It was this feature of Nizami's Farsi that prompted the prominent Iranian scholar Said Nafisi to put forward the idea that Nizami's Farsi had a Turkic character. Taking this into account, it is necessary to prepare a dictionary consisting of a detailed analysis of each word in its literary heritage and the contexts in which they are placed in order to more fully explore the parameters of Nizami's Turkisms. Nizami Ganjavi's Turkisms and his thoughts on Turkic national identity were first explored separately by Mahammadamin Rasulzada in the mid-20th century, and research on this subject was continued later, nevertheless, all this is still an introduction to the topic and there is a need for a c of the problem.

Keywords: Nizami Ganjavi, Khamsa, Central Asia, Persian language poetry, multinational, Turkic origin, Ferdowsi, Persian fanaticism, Turkist views, Turkic words, Nizami’s Farsi, grammatical nature, Said Nafisi, Turkic character, Turkisms, Turkic national identity, Rasulzada, comprehensive study