Gadāʾī

Little is known about Gadāʼī's life. Based on information about him provided by Navaʼi in the third section of Majalis un-Nafāʼis (compiled in 1497 or 1498), which describes poets who were still alive and whom Navaʼi knew, it is possible to deduce that Gadāʼī was born around 1403 or 1404.[1]^:p.2 However, based on other evidence, Ergash Rustamov concluded in the 1960s that Gadāʼī must have been born no later than 1360 and later served at the court of Abul-Qasim Babur Mirza at over 90 years of age.[1]^:p.2–3

The poet is referred to as Gadāʼī by Navāʼi, and in the one manuscript of his divans, as Gadā. This name, meaning "beggar", is understood to be a pen name. It is not known what his given name may have been.[1]^:p.1

Gadāʼī wrote a divan, or collection of poems, in what would now be considered the pre-classical Chaghatay literary language.[1]^:p.1 At the time, this language was known as "Türkī", meaning "Turkish" or "Turkic". Rustamov highlights the fact that Gadāʼī was not a Sufi poet, and incorporated aspects of the local Turkic literary traditions into his work.[1]^:p.5

The single manuscript containing Gadāʼī's divan is housed in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and is composed of two halves: the first containing the Divan of Luṭfi (another 15th-century poet who wrote in Chaghatay), and the second containing the "Dīvān-i Gadā", on folios 96b through 161a.[1]^:p.4 The last folio is missing, and may have included metadata about the manuscript, such as the name of the copyist and when it was copied.[1]^:p.4

The divan consists of mostly ghazals (229), but also five tuyughs, two qaṣīdas, and one mustazād.

The first mention of Gadāʼī in non-Chaghatay literature is thought to be in a 1914 work that mentions him by Mehmet Fuat Köprülü, a Turkish historian.[1]^:p.4 Fuad provided more information about him in his history of Chaghatay literature in 1945.[1]^:p.4 The Uzbek scholar Ergash Rustamov provides the first "scholarly appraisal" of Gadāʼi's work in a source published in the 1960s.[1]^:p.5 János Eckmann published a translation of some of Gadāʼī's works in 1960, which formed the basis of Rustamov's work,[1]^:p.2 and in 1971 published a complete transcription of Gadāʼī's divan, with facsimiles of all the folios, a glossary, and a brief introduction.[1]