A Philological Analysis of a Chagatai Waṣīyatnāma-Will from the Republican Period in Shanghai

In the quiet archives of a university in Shanghai, a single sheet of paper from 1919 offers a rare glimpse into the legal and linguistic world of Central Asia. This document is a will, written in Chagatai, a historic language that once served as the common tongue for trade, literature, and law across a vast region stretching from the steppes of Central Asia to the oases of Xinjiang in western China. For centuries, Chagatai acted as a bridge, blending the grammar of Turkic languages with a rich vocabulary borrowed from Arabic and Persian. Over time, however, this unified language began to split, evolving into the distinct modern languages we know today, such as Uyghur and Uzbek. Understanding exactly how this transition happened is difficult because written records from the turning point are often scarce or difficult to decipher. Scholars rely on these surviving contracts and personal documents to trace the subtle shifts in spelling, grammar, and word choice that mark the birth of new languages. These papers are not just records of who owned what; they are snapshots of a culture in motion, capturing the moment a shared linguistic heritage began to diverge into separate identities.

The researchers behind this study, Osman Juma and Maysigul Husiyin, focused their attention on a specific will found in the collection of the Shanghai Lixin University of Accounting and Finance. The document, measuring 71 cm × 56.5 cm and containing 27 lines, was written in the city of Kashgar on May 2, 1919. It was penned by a well-known Hajj pilgrim named Uns ed-dîn, a man from Margilan, a city in what is now eastern Uzbekistan. The text is a formal declaration of how his estate should be handled after his death, detailing the division of his money, his property, and his business interests among his heirs. What makes this piece of paper particularly valuable to linguists is not just the story it tells, but the way it is written. The authors treated the document as a linguistic puzzle, carefully transcribing the original script into a Latin alphabet and translating it into English to reveal the specific grammar and vocabulary used at that precise moment in history.

As the researchers examined the text, they found clear evidence that the language was in a state of flux. The writer followed the traditional rules of Chagatai but also introduced small, personal variations that hinted at the future. For instance, the word for "money," which was traditionally spelled with a "p" sound, appeared in the document sometimes with a "p" and sometimes with an "f," reflecting how the sound was shifting in spoken speech. Similarly, the way the writer attached possessive endings to words showed a mix of old and new patterns. In the traditional Chagatai style, the ending for "my" could take several different forms depending on the vowels in the word, a rule known as vowel harmony. In this will, the writer used these traditional forms, but also showed signs of the simpler, more uniform endings that would eventually become standard in modern Uzbek. This coexistence of old and new forms within a single document provides a rare, concrete look at how a language evolves in real time, showing that the split between modern Uyghur and Uzbek was not a sudden event but a gradual process of change.

The will itself reveals a complex web of family and business relationships. The testator, Uns ed-dîn, left specific instructions for his eldest son, Maula Ṣāliḥcān. He confirmed that the son had earned a significant sum of money through his own trading efforts and owned a house in Margilan, which the father explicitly stated did not belong to the family estate. The father then set aside a large portion of his own wealth—ten thousand units of currency—to build a school, or madrasa, in the Qäländärḫānä neighborhood. He intended to personally oversee the construction and manage the earnings if he lived long enough, but if he died before the building was finished, he instructed that his factory be sold and the proceeds used to complete the project. The document also details how the remaining money should be divided among all the heirs according to Islamic law, with the eldest son acting as the guardian for any younger children until they reached adulthood.

To ensure the will was legally binding, the document was sealed by four different authorities, a detail that offers a fascinating look at the social structure of the time. The paper bears the marks of three judges, known as qāżîs, and one community leader, called an aqsaqal. The researchers noted a distinct visual difference in the seals: the three judges used round stamps, while the community leader used an oval one. This subtle distinction in shape suggests a formal system where different types of authority were visually represented, with the round seals signifying judicial power and the oval seal representing local administrative leadership. The presence of these seals, along with the names of the witnesses, confirms that this was a serious legal transaction involving a family of high social standing, who relied on established religious and civic institutions to protect their property rights.

Ultimately, this study does more than just translate an old will; it uses the document to map the linguistic landscape of early 20th-century southern Xinjiang. By analyzing the specific words, the grammar, and the legal formulas used, the authors show that the Chagatai language of 1919 was a living, changing system. It was a language that still held onto its classical roots while simultaneously adapting to the realities of modern trade and local speech patterns. The document stands as a testament to a family's legacy, but for historians and linguists, it is also a crucial piece of evidence that helps explain how the diverse languages of Central Asia came to be what they are today. The will remains a silent witness to a time when the boundaries between languages were still being drawn, preserved in ink and seal in a museum far from the bustling markets of Kashgar where it was first written.