Medieval Turkic healing traditions and written artifacts

Abstract

A special place in the modern scientific direction is occupied by ethnographic research of the tradi- tions of traditional medicine on the basis of different ethnic groups, their practical application through popularization among the population. One of the most important issues in the study of the “Seven Facets of the Great Steppe” and the ethnocultural system of the peoples of Central Asia and Kazakhstan is the ethnomedicine of nomadic peoples, which was used on the territory of medieval Kazakhstan. In the period of rapid development of modern science, it is necessary to supplement the study of medieval folk medicine with new ethnographic materials and a comprehensive study of the history of field ethnomedi- cine. One of these medieval writings in a medical context is Dastur al-’ilaj (Tradition of Medicine), writ- ten in the first half of the 16th century by Sultan Ali al-Khorasani, the personal physician of a nomadic khan.

The aim of the study is to analyze the relationship between the healing arts and the culture of the peoples of the Great Steppe based on the written heritage by studying the culture and history of no- madic peoples. During the study of the topic, the number of sources with information about traditional medicine was increased and unpublished manuscripts were introduced, analyzed on the materials of published studies using comparative historical and linguocultural methods to study the morphological structures, meaning and content of words, including text analysis.

Key words: manuscripts, folk medicine, medieval written monuments, Chagatai language, healing tradition.