The
Chagatai language (
????? -
Jagatay;
Uyghur ??????? Chaghatay;
Uzbek ??????? Chegheta'iy;
Turkish Çagatay) is an extinct
Turkic language which was once widely spoken in
Central Asia, and remained the shared literary language there until the early twentieth century. It was also spoken by the
Mughal rulers in
India.
The word Chagatai relates to the Chagatai Khanate, a descendant empire of the Mongol Empire, which was left to Genghis Khan's second son, Chagatai Khan. Many of the Chagatai Turks and Tatars who were the speakers of this language claimed descent from Chagatai Khan.
Chagatai belongs to the Uyghur branch of the Turkic language family. It is descended from the Old Uyghur that served as a lingua franca in Central Asia, with a strong infusion of Arabic and Persian words and turns of phrase. It was developed as a sophisticated written language using the Perso-Arabic alphabet. It can be divided into three periods
The first period is a transitional phase characterized by the retention of archaic forms; the second phase starts with the publication of Mir Alisher Navoi's first Divan and is the highpoint of Chagatai literature, followed by the third phase, which is characterized by two bifurcating developments. One is the preservation of the classical Chagatai language of Navoi, the other trend is the increasing influence of the dialects of the local spoken languages. The Chagatai Turkic language lived its heyday in the Timurid Empire. Chagatai remained the universal literary language of Central Asia until the Soviet reforms of the early twentieth century.
