The Model of the Ideal Ruler in Alisher Navo’i’s Lyrics: The Image of Alexander and the Poetics of Justice

This article examines the artistic model of the ideal ruler in Alisher Navo’i’s lyric poetry through the image of Alexander the Great (Iskandar). The scholarly significance of the study derives from the fact that, in Navo’i studies, Alexander has mainly been examined within the epic interpretations of the Khamsa, whereas his function in lyric poetry remains insufficiently explored.
The study employs four approaches: context-based textual analysis, poetic analysis of comparison, antithesis, allusion, and metaphor, intertextual comparison with the Iskandarnama tradition developed in the works of Nizami and Jami, and conceptual analysis of justice. The findings demonstrate that Alexander’s image functions not as an object of glorification but as an ethical and normative standard.
In Navo’i’s lyric poetry, the image is interpreted in three ways. First, through comparison, it serves as a criterion for assessing the degree of justice and the rectitude of judgment. Second, its association with the transience of worldly possessions and time highlights justice as the only enduring value. Third, it intensifies the ethical demands of the lyrical subject, elevating justice from an individual virtue to a principle of social order.
The analysis shows that justice is not limited to the lexeme adl but operates within a broader semantic field including me’yor (norm), tarozu (scales), rostlik (truthfulness), and insof (equity). These concepts become artistic reality through images of balance, criterion, and mirror. The “Mirror of Alexander” (Oynayi Iskandariy) functions as a central symbol, transforming an abstract ethical concept into a concrete evaluative standard.
Unlike the narrative and adventurous Alexander of Nizami and Jami, Navo’i’s lyric Alexander becomes a concise intertextual sign representing an ethical norm. Thus, justice emerges as a principle of ethical order, while the ideal ruler is defined by the norms he upholds rather than by his identity.