A LATE CHAGATAI QASIDA: ʿĀṢĪ'S MUNĀJĀT-I ḤÄŻRÄT-I ĀDÄM

The main object of this paper is the exploration of the poem titled Munajat-i Hazrat-i Adam and the isnad text related to it, which was found between 199 and 205 pages of the miscellany, including mainly manuscripts titled isnad under the classmark Ms. or. oct. 1661 at the Berlin State Library. Within the research framework, we compiled a comprehensive list of manuscripts belonging to an unidentified genre (isnad), potentially found in libraries worldwide. Furthermore, we identified common characteristics of the genre observed in the manuscripts. We transcribed and translated the discussed poem into English, with the Chagatai and Arabic texts added to the ending. We endeavored to find the answers to the following inquiries: who composed the poem, when was it written, and what are its verse form, genre, and prosody? We provided a critique on its substance. We traced the tracks of the late era in the Chagatai texts' orthography, phonetics, and vocabulary. As a result of the aforementioned research, we obtained the following findings: The Isnad manuscripts, written in Central Asia between the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, belong to a distinct popular genre. However, some of the genre's manuscripts have been incorporated into amulet texts. The discussed qasida was versified in the second half of the nineteenth century by Ahmad Akhund, who wrote the mathnawi titled Zafarnama under the pseudonym ʿĀṣī. The miscellany containing the manuscript was penned by Molla Akhund on February 13, 1889, in Eastern Turkestan. The poem in qasida verse form and munajat genre has been arranged with the variation of the mużariʿ meter (maf'ūlu / fā'ilātun / maf'ūlu / fā'ilātun). Due to being a musammat qasida, the poem's couplets can be converted into stanzas, with each line consisting of seven syllables through internal sub-rhymes. The orthography, phonetics, and lexicon of the Chagatai texts exhibit vernacular characteristics unique to the late period texts. The vernacular elements are copied from the southern Uyghur dialects, such as Kashgar and Yarkand. The poem has been included into an isnad text by ascribing blessedness to it. The isnad text associated with the poem is the one sample that includes a poem attributed to a certain author. Due to the fact that isnad texts are anonymous and prose.