Balasagun
Djusup Balasagun was a writer and thinker born in the ancient city of Balasagin – where the Burana Tower stands, near the site of the present day Tokmok, possibly around 1016.
From a young age, he supposed to have shown his many talents, and after receiving a basic education in his home town he was then sent to the best schools of that era – in Farah, Kashgar and Bukhara . He mastered Arabic and Persian to his native Turkic language – and showed himself a master at philosophy, poetry, politics and science.
He is best known for his work Kutagdu Bilig – which is sometimes translated as ‘The theory of knowledge', or ‘The Knowledge that Brings Happiness' – an English translation by Walter May has been published under the title ‘Beneficent Knowledge'. Written in couplets, in the Uighur language, sometime around 1070, it gained for the author a renowned place in the history of Central Asian Literature – and a place at court in Kashgar. One interesting feature, amongst others, which marked it out was that it wasn't written in either Persian or Arabic – the lingua franca of the period, The Kyrgyz have adopted him as one of their own – largely, perhaps, because his birthplace is located in the territory of the modern republic – but it is not clear if he was himself Kyrgyz. Most of what we know about him is drawn from little snippets of information contained in the poem. The work suggests that he was a highly educated person, skilled in poetic forms, with a wide knowledge of astronomy, mathematics and medicine. It forms a sort of moral code – one of the central themes is the value and supremacy of laws.
The work first came to Western attention in 1796, when a copy was “discovered” by an Austrian scholar in Istanbul . It was translated and studied by classical scholars – and translated into Russian. It has since been translated into Kyrgyz, and an English version is available.
The Kyrgyz State National University is named in his honour, and in May 2003 a statue of him was unveiled in front of the main building (on Frunze Street ) in Bishkek.
A portrait of him appears on the 1000 som banknote.
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