Abstract:

Among the Old Uighur historical documents discovered in Turfan and its surroundings from the 13th and 14th centuries, Uighurs are many personal (private) letters belonging to Uighurs, mostly Buddhists, some Manichaeans, and a small number of Christians. A few of these letters were unearthed in 20th century China at the Kara-hoto ruins in the Kansu Corridor, and the majority in the Turfan oasis or the famous Thousand Buddha (Mogao) Caves in Dunhuang. Osman Fikri Sertkaya says that he identified 110 Uighur letters in his article published in 2012 based on the inventory work he had done until then, adding the 40 letters listed in Takao Moriyasu’s works, which he did not include in his list, making the total number of Old Uighur letters 150. Although it is known that these letters were published at different times by scientists from different nations such as Germany, Japan, Russia, France, the UK, Turkey, etc., the most comprehensive study on the subject was published in Turnout by Brepols Publishers in Berliner Turfantexte in 2019. It is the book published as the 46th volume of the series with the title Corpus of the Old Uighur Letters from the Eastern Silk Road (= COUL) written by the Japanese historian and Turcologist Takao Moriyasu. In this book, paleographic descriptions, transcriptions, English translations, and the author's comments on 209 Old Uighur letter fragments are presented. In COUL, letters were evaluated in five main groups, and at the same time, 7 envelopes and the texts on them were examined. In this article, first of all, the difficulties encountered in the identification of Old Uighur letters and the basic criteria are taken into account in the determination of the letters will be discussed. Then, the classifications of the letters arranged according to the compositions that can be represented by formulas in a systematic structure, which Osman Fikri Sertkaya and Takao Moriyasu created based on some words, phrases, opening and ending formals, will be compared and both similar and different aspects will be tried to be determined. Thus, it will be stated what kind of benefits the opening and ending patterns, which constitute the basic criteria in the classification of Uighur letters, can be systematically handled, determined, and demonstrated with formulas in the classification of documents that have yet to be defined. Simultaneously, a new proposal will be made to facilitate the identification and classification of Old Uighur personal (private) letters.

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