Modern Uyghur is an Eastern Turkic language. Most of the seven to ten million native speakers of Uyghur live in northwestern China, where Uyghur is also the lingua franca of various other ethnic groups. A smaller Uyghur-speaking community is politically and culturally active in Central Asia. As the predominant indigenous language in a crucial area that bridges the frontiers of multiple states, and as a language of great interest to comparative linguists, Uyghur is increasingly important. This book has become one of the standard works on Modern Uyghur, and there is no comparable Western work on the modern standard language. With this book, both scholars and those who simply want a basic working knowledge gain access to Uyghur as it is spoken today. This book's primary purpose is to teach conversational skills. No familiarity with the structure of Turkic languages is assumed, and the material is appropriate for both self-instruction and classroom use. For those familiar with other Turkic languages, it demonstrates the characteristics specific to Uyghur and provides useful reading practice in Roman- and Arabic-based script. Spoken Uyghur also contains an extensive description of the morphophonology and orthography of the language, and fifteen instructional dialogue units, with extensive notes explaining grammar and customs. Of particular value are the Uyghur-English and English-Uyghur indexes and a reference guide to inflectional patterns. Also included is a reinterpretation of previous scholars' contributions to the study of Turkic languages, as well as a description of the current state of Uyghur language.

The demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted in new state-led nation-building projects in Central Asia. The emergence of independent republics spawned a renewed Western scholarly interest in the region’s nationality issues. Presenting a detailed study, this book examines the state-led nation-building projects in the Soviet republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Exploring the degree, forms and ways of the Soviet state involvement in creating Kazakh and Uzbek nations, this book places the discussion within the theoretical literature on nationalism. The author argues that both Kazakh and Uzbek nations are artificial constructs of Moscow-based Soviet policy-makers of the 1920s and 1930s. This book challenges existing arguments in current scholarship by bringing some new and alternative insights into the role of indigenous Central Asian and Soviet officials in these nation-building projects. It goes on to critically examine post-Soviet official Kazakh and Uzbek historiographies, according to which Kazakh and Uzbek peoples had developed national collective identities and loyalties long before the Soviet era. This book will be a useful contribution to Central Asian History and Politics, as well as studies of Nationalism and Soviet Politics.

In this study of the modern Uzbeks, Professor Edward A. Allworth provides a comprehensive and authoritative survey of an important group of Muslim people who live within the boundaries of the Soviet Union. After the Russians and the Ukranians, the Uzbeks are the largest ethnic group in the Soviet Union and the strongest of a number of Muslim communities that populate the vast region of Central Asia. Although he concentrates especially on the imperial Russian and Soviet periods of history, the author also gives earlier periods of Uzbek history solid scholarly assessment. Meticulously analyzed are Uzbek relations with their foreign rulers, the Uzbek response to Russification and modernization, and the ethnic and religious issues in Uzbek society. Also included is a critique of Soviet historiography and the underlying philosophical and ideological commitments that have shaped the study of history in the Soviet Union. Invaluable to scholars is the survey and assessment of Uzbek documents in Turkish, European, and American depositories.

This dictionary contains 22,903 headwords that are arranged according to the Uyghur Arabic alphabet. Entries begin with a Uyghur headword rendered in the Arabic script followed immediately by an equivalent in a Latinized orthography.

"'Tulip fields blaze the face of my soul's fire.' So begins one of the twenty-one ghazals in Dennis Daly's elegant translation of the work of the fifteenth-century poet, Alisher Navoiy. The fire that burns through these poems is complemented by stunning illustrations from the era chosen with care by the translator that set off their own quiet conflagrations"--Back cover.