Sapar Berdiniyazov and Begench Karaev
“The great and rich in content legacy of Magtymguly predetermined the basis of Turkmenistan’s foreign policy: his unshakable ideas about peace, justice, humanism, friendship and brotherhood, about respect for everyone and everything have a significant impact on interactions with other states.”
From the speech of the President of Turkmenistan Serdar Berdimuhamedov at the International Forum “Interconnection of Times and Civilizations – the Basis of Peace and Development”, Ashgabat, October 11, 2024.
On October 11, 2024, the international forum “Interconnection of Times and Civilizations – the Basis of Peace and Development” was held in Ashgabat under the chairmanship of the President of Turkmenistan Serdar Berdimuhamedov. This major international forum became the central event of this year, dedicated to the celebration of the 300th anniversary of the great Turkmen poet and philosopher Makhtumkuli Fragi. The very high level of the forum is also evidenced by the fact that it was attended by presidents of nine states, heads of parliaments and members of governments of foreign states, international organizations, as well as famous scientists, diplomats, cultural and art figures.
The national motto of the year – “The Treasure of Makhtumkuli Fragi’s Mind” – predetermined a rich program, the content of which was also filled with events of a broad international scale.
The name of Magtymguly Fragi, who is rightfully considered the founder of modern Turkmen classical literature, entered the annals of the greatest thinkers of the East, who illuminated the medieval West with his creative and scientific impulse of the coming civilization. It is no coincidence, therefore, that the literary and philosophical heritage of the outstanding poet is recognized at the international level as an invaluable component of the cultural treasure of all mankind. His works clearly express universal human values that will never lose their significance, such as love for the Motherland, humanism, peacefulness, creativity, brotherhood.
The universal significance of the philosophical and literary heritage of Magtymguly Fragi is recognized throughout the world, primarily by major decisions of authoritative international organizations. In particular, the International Organization of Turkic Culture (TURKSOY) declared 2024 the “Year of the Great Poet and Thinker of the Turkic World – Magtymguly Fragi”. The collection of manuscripts of Magtymguly Fragi is included in the Memory of the World Register of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Also, the 300th anniversary of the poet’s birth is included in the List of memorable dates of the joint celebration of UNESCO. All this is a tribute of high respect to the great son of the Turkmen people.
Currently, the collection of poems by Magtymguly Fragi, which is the state property of Turkmenistan, consists of more than 80 divans, which include preserved ancient copies of manuscripts of his works of the 18th-19th centuries. There are also copies of manuscripts that are currently stored in the funds of Tashkent, St. Petersburg, London, Budapest, Istanbul, and some of them date back directly to the 18th century. According to UNESCO, this collection of poems by Makhtumkuli is considered a rare example of the written heritage of not only the Turkmen people, but also the peoples of the entire Turkic-speaking world, the embodiment of an exemplary example of oriental literature.
The national leader of the Turkmen people, Chairman of the Halk Maslahaty of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov is the initiator of the creation of a cultural and park complex in the picturesque foothills of Kopetdag, in the center of which is a monument to the outstanding classic of national and world literature. According to the idea of the national Leader, a unique component of the architecture of the complex was the alley of famous classical poets and world-famous thinkers representing various countries and continents. The monuments erected in their honor personify friendship, brotherhood and good neighborliness of peoples, which Magtymguly Fragi called for in his immortal works.
In addition to his literary heritage, the great significance of Magtymguly’s works is that they constitute a chronological encyclopedia that systematically and in detail describes the political and economic events that took place in Turkmenistan and neighboring countries in the middle and second half of the 18th century. Consequently, it is difficult today to fully comprehend the regional and broader international events of that period without studying the literary heritage of Magtymguly Fragi.
In this regard, the legacy of Magtymguly is becoming increasingly significant in the context of events of both his historical era and modern times, the analysis of which helps to understand the essence of many problems of humanity, including global and regional politics.
In support of this, we can quote the following thesis from the speech at the forum by the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin: “Far ahead of his time, Magtymguly never stopped in his creative and spiritual search and always strove for knowledge and truth. With the power of his genius, he was able to anticipate the future of his land and people. With his work, Magtymguly invariably called for purity, justice and equality not only in relations between people, but also between entire states, between nations. He advocated the affirmation of high ideals of friendship and good neighborliness and sagaciously tried to convey these thoughts to future generations, calling for agreement and responsibility, tolerance and understanding, respect and solidarity. All this is still close and understandable to sensible people. And it is especially relevant and in demand in the current difficult situation, when the world is faced with unprecedented threats generated by civilizational fault lines, interethnic and interfaith conflicts, when international relations have entered an era of global fundamental changes, when a new world order is being formed, reflecting the diversity of the entire planet, and this natural process is irreversible.”
These thoughts of the President of Russia once again emphasize the relevance in the modern era of Magtymguly’s ideas on the need for peaceful and good-neighborly relations between states, an appeal to which may possibly contribute to the formation of new approaches to many pressing issues of international relations. In the context of the ongoing transformation of the modern world order, the Russian leader described Magtymguly’s ideas as a call for “justice and equality not only in relations between people, but also between entire states, between nations.” Such an interpretation of the legacy of the great Turkmen poet takes its significance far beyond the scale of one nation or even region.
An interesting fact of history is that according to some sources, on Magtymguly’s birthday – May 18, 1724, the coronation of Catherine I as Empress of Russia took place in Moscow’s Assumption Cathedral. This was the peak moment of an epochal time, when the Russia of Peter the Great was at the zenith of glory and confidently ascended to the pedestal of world powers.
Looking ahead a little, we will say that, more than half a century later, in 1780, Empress Catherine II, titled the Great, demonstrated the preventive power of neutrality, which was characterized as “armed.”
In the 70s of the 17th century, the region of Central Asia and the eastern part of the Middle East began to disintegrate the rather powerful Durrani Afghanistan after the death of its creator Ahmad Shah in 1773 and the rise to power of his son Timur. As is known from history, the Durrani state with its capital in Kandahar was proclaimed at the end of the first half of the above-mentioned century during the period of weakening of the empires of the Great Mughals and Nadir Shah. The new state then included Khorasan and Seistan in the west, Sindh, Kashmir and Punjab in the southeast, as well as the regions of the left bank of the Amu Darya inhabited by Tajiks and Uzbeks in the north. This regional power was held together by an unstable alliance of lands and tribes, and after the death of Ahmad Shah Durrani, a struggle began between large feudal lords.
Afghanistan disintegrated into fiefdoms ruled by feuding khans and maliks. Magtymguly witnessed the chaos of that time, where the greatest suffering was borne not so much by the subjects of neighboring empires, emirates and khanates, but by the peoples and tribes of the region who did not have their own statehood and, accordingly, did not have the legitimate power to defend themselves. In particular, the Turkmens, who rebelled against the aggression and tyranny of the surrounding rulers, were characterized by them as nothing less than rebels, robbers, etc. In those days, Fragi was especially deeply concerned about the lack of statehood for his people, as well as the fratricidal strife and discord in neighboring countries. The famous researcher of the Middle East and Central Asia, Arminius Vambery, wrote in his book “Journey through Central Asia”: “The Turkmens often rebelled against the feudal states that were constantly fighting among themselves for possession of the Transcaspian region. The Qajar shahs, the Khiva khans, and the Bukharan emirs carried out punitive campaigns, robbing and ruining Turkmen nomad camps and villages.”
On his fiftieth birthday, Magtymguly wrote a short poem, “Mert bolmaz” (A coward will not be brave), where he conveyed the depth of despair from a seemingly hopeless life, about the departure of great personalities to another world and the proliferation of small princes. At the same time, he also had in mind the death of Ahmad Shah Durrani, whom he revered, in 1772 and the struggle for power of his heirs. In particular, in our practically word-for-word translation, this is how Magtymguly’s words about the purpose of a statesman sound:
A husband is born from a real husband,
A coward will never become a husband.
Fire burns in the wolf’s eyes,
But jackals and foxes will not become wolves…
…Magtymguly, at the end of his wits and reason,
and tears flow, oozing blood.
I’m only fifty with a proud figure –
But I will not give in to lamentation and grief.
In this same poem, Magtymguly addressed those who, by the will of fate, found themselves far from their homeland, calling on them to return home and build their own state:
Speak the truth – known to you forever,
Like a nightingale, distant from each other,
Listen, you are a human being:
There is no place dearer than our native Motherland.
If we return to Europe in the 18th century, and to the West as a whole, they were filled with major events that gave an irreversible character to the entire subsequent course of international development. This was the century of the triumph of the young Russian Empire and the emergence of a new free nation in place of a number of English colonies in North America. The “Golden Age” of Catherine the Great was no less, if not more, significant for Russia and Europe than the Victorian era was for the British in the following century.
The Russian Empress’s dire warning to the English, French and Spanish monarchs actually saved the United States from destruction during the first years of its independence. The proclamation of Catherine II’s Declaration of Armed Neutrality of Russia in February 1780 had enormous international significance, as a result of which firm international rules were established to ensure the safety of maritime trade of neutral powers during war. This also contributed to the strengthening of the European institution of neutrality, and an increase in the number of countries refusing to participate in military actions. And the Americans did not limit themselves to verbally welcoming the principles of the Russian Declaration of “Armed Neutrality”. Benjamin Franklin advised the members of the Continental Congress to consider whether their policy “should follow the spirit of neutrality”. The American authorities followed this advice and adopted a special resolution on October 5, 1780, which approved the principles of the Declaration and provided for appropriate instructions for US military ships and for American representatives abroad.
The significance of this Declaration was so significant for the young state of the “thirteen American states” that a little later the fourth US President James Madison wrote about it as an “American doctrine” and emphasized that this initiative of the Russian government constituted “an era in the history of maritime law.”
Thus, Catherine II, who long before these events predicted that “even during her lifetime” America would achieve independence from Europe, chose neutrality in support of the nascent States. The content and principles of the Russian declaration of armed neutrality were on the verge of a military ultimatum and almost forever pacified the claims of European monarchs regarding the Western Hemisphere.
As a rule, states outlive their leaders who created them by at least decades, and institutional memory, especially in foreign policy and diplomacy, lasts even for centuries. At the same time, unfortunately, in world practice, social memory of cases of hostility between states and peoples lasts much longer than of times of good relations. Relapses of such “negative” memory are often caused by changing priorities in the international arena in different historical conditions. This is evidenced by facts from the history of the past and the first quarter of the current century.
The age of Magtymguly is a long period in the difficult history of the Turkmen people, whose ancestors are the founders of such states as the powerful Ghaznavids, the Great Seljuks, the Khorezmshahs, the Ottomans and a number of others. Representatives of the Turkmen military nobility at one time occupied key positions in the implementation of the state policy of Khazaria, the Great Mughals, the Islamic Caliphate and others.
Magtymguly knew the history of the East very well and reflected on the reasons for the fall of great empires, including the subsequent fragmentation of his people. He also studied the factors of disintegration and internal strife of the Khorezmshahs, which led to the complete decline of a flourishing civilization after the Mongol conquests.
The years of Magtymguly’s adolescence and youth fell on the period of triumph of Nadir Shah, whose reign, like that of Timur the Great, was accompanied by both creative deeds and great wars of conquest and destruction.
Subsequently, Magtymguly placed great hopes in establishing stability and order in the region on Ahmad Shah Durrani. According to some reports, the Turkmen poet met with the founder of Afghanistan several times and thoroughly discussed issues of gaining independence for his people.
It is known that Russia also closely followed the situation in Iran and Afghanistan at that time, although interest in the Central Asian territories was significantly reduced after the unsuccessful expeditions of Peter I in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. One of the results is the fact that Catherine II, two years after her accession to the throne, in 1764, sent a mission to Afghanistan headed by Bogdan Aslanov to conclude a treaty of mutual friendship with Ahmad Shah Durrani. The Russian ambassador also passed through Turkmen lands on his way, where he feared a possible attack by the “desert wolves” that his local guides threatened him with. Aslanov was then unable to overcome the vast lands of various warlike tribes of Afghanistan to reach the capital of Kandahar. Thus, B. Aslanov did not fulfill his main task – the establishment of diplomatic relations with Afghanistan. According to the Russian researcher S.E. Grigorieva, reflected in his article “Russia and Afghanistan: the history of political ties” – the political significance of Bogdan Aslanov’s trip to Afghanistan was zero. He failed to establish diplomatic relations with this distant and little-known country, to conclude any agreement with its rulers, to agree on the arrival of the Afghan embassy in St. Petersburg.
Returning to Astrakhan in the summer of 1765, he submitted a detailed report of his mission, which, due to its confidentiality, was not published and was unknown and inaccessible to researchers of Afghanistan for a long time. His reports are currently reportedly stored in the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire (AVPR) in the “Afghan Affairs” collection.
In addition to Aslanov, we note that for the overwhelming majority of travelers and explorers of the East of those times, the description of difficult, if not cruel, living conditions and life of the Turkmen in the Karakum desert is typical. Not to mention the severity of the desert itself, the fortitude of the spirit and will of the Turkmen, who to a large extent lived in constant confrontation with foreign invaders, remained a great mystery for foreigners.
The famous British diplomat, Captain of the British Army Alexander Burns, one of the heroes of the “Great Game” described the great expanses of the Karakum Desert as follows: “Other deserts are insignificant compared to this boundless ocean of sand. I cannot imagine a sight more terrible than this desert.”
The famous Russian traveler, scientist and writer E. Markov wrote at the end of the nineteenth century: “The desert lives its own free, powerful life and does not want to know any other life next to it. This wild beast has not yet been tamed by any shackles and at the first explosion of anger destroys everything that carelessly approaches it, that naively trusts its seeming sleepy peace… The Turkmens are the original inhabitants of the desert, born in it and dying in it, adoring the desert as their deity.” For the same reason, the formidable armies of neither Alexander the Great, nor Genghis Khan or Tamerlane dared to enter the ocean of sands where the Turkmens lived. All of them bypassed the “blazing Arctic” as described by A. Platonov, since only the hooves of the Akhal-Teke horses and the iron bodies of the warrior riders were forged in the “hot sands” of the Karakum.
In Magtymguly’s works, the desert nature, outwardly harsh, is filled with the spirit of freedom and indomitable will inherent to the original inhabitants. Fragi describes the nature of his native land as its true patriotic son. In particular, this is evidenced by the following lines from his poem “The Future of Turkmenistan” translated by A. Tarkovsky:
The expanse is covered with Khazar swells
To the surface of Jeyhun by the winds of Turkmenistan.
The bliss of my eyes is the rose of the fields,
A stream generated by the mountains of Turkmenistan!..
The soul of Gör-oglu lives in his brothers;
Look, friends, at the Turkmen lion:
His head does not seek mercy,
When he stands before the enemies of Turkmenistan…
Here brotherhood is the custom and friendship is the law.
For glorious families and mighty tribes,
And if the people are ready for battle,
The enemies tremble before the sons of Turkmenistan.
Undoubtedly, not having their own independent statehood, the Turkmens could only to a limited extent influence the development of the then geopolitical situation in the region. Nevertheless, actively resisting their traditional external hostile neighbors and simultaneously maneuvering between the leading powers in the struggle for their territories, the Turkmens played a key role in the political history of the East.
Thus, the era of Magtymguly’s life and work clearly dictated the need to unite the entire Turkmen people and proclaim an independent state on the legal lands of their residence. In fact, Fragi was then the first poet-philosopher who declared his credo – to achieve national consent in order to create a national state, which had been lost since the time of the Great Seljuks.
The modern era of Turkmenistan’s independence reflects the true embodiment of the fulfillment of the centuries-old dream of the Turkmen people, the socio-philosophical foundations of which were also comprehended in the works of Magtymguly.
In his speech at the International Forum “Interconnection of Times and Civilizations – the Basis of Peace and Development”, President of Turkmenistan Serdar Berdimuhamedov emphasized: “The great and rich heritage of Magtymguly predetermined the basis of Turkmenistan’s foreign policy: his unshakable ideas about peace, justice, humanism, friendship and brotherhood, respect for everyone and everyone have a significant impact on interaction with other states. The poet and thinker, who played an incalculable role in shaping the character of our nation, comprehended the world: he visited many countries. His travels had a fundamental impact on his worldview: it expanded and improved, which ultimately led to the mutual enrichment of cultures and knowledge between peoples.”
These words confirm that Magtymguly’s poetic legacy is the result of a deep philosophical understanding of the fates of his own and other peoples in the context of the universal phenomenon of independent statehood of nations, peaceful relations between them in the name of development and prosperity.
Modern Turkmenistan is the embodiment of the great dream of Makhtumkuli Fragi. As a responsible member of the world community, relying on its neutral legal status, Turkmenistan makes its worthy contribution to the development of international relations, promotes the introduction of preventive diplomacy in the experience of such relations. Invariably remaining committed to the principles of permanent neutrality, peaceful coexistence and good neighborliness, our country has earned high authority in the world arena.
Evidence of this was the holding of the International Forum “Interconnection of Times and Civilizations – the Basis of Peace and Development” dedicated to the 300th anniversary of the birth of Magtymguly Fragi. The sixth paragraph of the Final Document states that the participants of the International Forum “Expressed the opinion that the cultural dialogue in the field of popularization of the works of the great thinker Magtymguly Fragi makes a significant contribution to the development of comprehensive cooperation between states, promotes the strengthening of friendship and mutual understanding between peoples, and the mutual enrichment of their cultures. In this regard, they agreed to provide all-round support for the further development of mutually beneficial cooperation in this area.”
The quintessence of the high assessment of the immortal legacy of Makhtumkuli Fragi is the assessment of the National Leader of the Turkmen people, Chairman of the Halk Maslakhaty of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, who initiated the proclamation of the motto of 2024, and in his poem “The Treasure of the Mind of Makhtumkuli Fragi” wrote the following lines:
For him, service to humanity is freedom,
It is the language and syllable – the speech of the Turkmen people.
Honoring the sacred eternal will of the Firmament –
The treasure trove of Magtymguly Fragi’s mind.
These magnificent lines extol the foresight of the great poet – a faithful son of his era and people, who in his poem “Visible” left the following lines to his descendants:
Magtymguly, centuries will pass,
But your line will not die.
You will be in a poor man’s yurt
And it is visible in the stone chamber.
///nCa, 13 October 2024
About the authors:
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Ambassador Sapar Berdiniyazov, a veteran of the diplomatic service, served for a long period of time in Afghanistan beginning in the 1970s and then in Pakistan, serving as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Turkmenistan to that country. He is the author of many research papers and analytical articles devoted to the history and modernity of the Middle East.
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Dr. Begench Karaev – deals with the problems of philosophy of law and politics. He is the author of a number of textbooks and monographs, including “Political Analysis and Strategic Planning”, “Political Analysis: Problems of Theory and Methodology: (Experience of Studying Modern Central Asian Society)” and “Traditional and Modern in the Political Life of Central Asian Society (Experience of Political Analysis)”. |