Examples Of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Mahmud Al-Kashgari’s “Dīwān Lughāt Al-Turk”

Abstract

This article analyzes, from historical-cultural and ethnolinguistic perspectives, information related to intangible cultural heritage preserved in “Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk” by Mahmud al-Kashgari, one of the major representatives of eleventh-century Turkic scholarship. In addition to its function as a dictionary, the work is shown to contain folk proverbs, aphoristic expressions, songs and poetic fragments, concepts related to rituals, traditional knowledge, terminology connected with labor and crafts, folk games, and perceptions of the natural world. It is argued that the author’s practice of explaining word meanings by linking them to the real life of the people made the “Dīwān” an important written source for studying the cultural memory of Turkic peoples.