ACCEPTANCE OF THE ISLAM BY TURKS AND THE FIRST TRANSLATIONS OF THE QUR’AN IN TURKIC

Abstract

After Turks had accepted Islam as the official state religion, the Qur’an was translated into Turkic as a whole. The emergence of the Islamic religion in the Arabian Peninsula dates back to the VI-VII centuries. The adoption of Islam as the official state religion among the Turks corresponds to circa three centuries after the birth of Islam. Suppose some Turkic tribes and small communities are exempted. In that case, Idil (Volga), the first independent Muslim Turkic state accepting Islam as the official state religion, is the state of Volga (Idyll) Bulgaria. Thus, Volga (Idyll) Bulgarian Khanate, the first independent Turkic-Islamic state, was completely far from Islamic countries, Bulgarian territory joined the Islamic geography with the acceptance of this religion, and the Bulgarian nation also accepted the spiritual authority of the Abbasid Caliphate. The Qarakhanid Khanate, the Ghaznavid dynasty, and the Seljuq dynasty emerged as the Turkic-Islamic state in later periods. With the acceptance of Islam as the state religion, the translation of the Qur’an into Turkic accelerated. As the patron of the religion was a state institution in this way, translation activities gained an official quality. The first translations of the Qur’an into Turkic were made using the word-for-word translation technique, which is often referred to as interlinear translation. Turkic equivalents were given to each Arabic word mentioned in the Qur’an. This method called interlinear translation is the translation technique seen in the first early Qur’an translations. Bilingualism was taken as the basis in the translations of the Qur’an, which are supposed to be made in the region of Transoxiana. In other words, both Turkic and Persian equivalents were given to Arabic words in the Qur’an translations made in this region. In the 10th century, Persian and Turkic were common languages of culture in the regions of Samarkand and Bukhara. Today, Persian domination is discussed in this geography.