Qarakhanid Scholar Yusuf Composes Kutadgu Bilig

1063

At the Qarakhanid court in Kashgar, the scholar Yusuf Khass Hajib completed the Kutadgu Bilig - 'Wisdom of Royal Glory' - a 6,500-couplet poem in Turkic that served as a mirror for princes. Written in the Uyghur script, it was the first major literary work in any Turkic language, blending Islamic ethics with Central Asian statecraft into a manual for just governance. The poem proved that Turkic could carry philosophical weight as capably as Arabic or Persian.