THE GENESIS AND DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES OF THE TAXMIS GENRE: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF UZBEK, TURKISH AND AZERBAIJANI LITERATURES

Abstract

This article investigates the genesis and developmental stages of the taxmis genre in classical Eastern poetry, with particular focus on a comparative analysis of Uzbek, Turkish, and Azerbaijani literary traditions. Drawing on primary sources and recent scholarship, the study traces the genre from its roots in ninth-century Andalusian Arabic literature through its classical formulation in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Persianate poetry, to its canonical elaboration in Uzbek literature through the work of Alisher Navoi (1441–1501). The corpus-based evidence from Turkish literary studies — identifying 2,944 tahmis compositions across 970 classical divans — and documentation of a continuous Azerbaijani tahmis tradition on Fuzuli's ghazals from the seventeenth to the twentieth century together confirm that the genre operated according to identical formal and aesthetic principles across all three literatures. The comparative analysis demonstrates that taxmis functioned not merely as a formal exercise but as a medium of inter-generational literary dialogue, aesthetic competition, and the transmission of poetic heritage. The study employs a historical-comparative methodology and contributes to the broader understanding of the unified character of the Persianate–Turkic literary heritage.