ABSTRACT
The language communities of Arabic, Persian and Turkish extend far beyond the Middle East and Mediterranean regions, scenes of their classic political and cultural achievements. Not counting the overseas diasporas, Africa and Central Asia are present-day regions with active and expanding speech communities and literary ties to the contiguous “heartland” of the major languages of Islamic culture. Since the disintegration of the USSR, Central Asia and some areas of European Russia which had been detached from their Islamic orbits must again be studied in conjunction with the central Islamic region from the perspective of contemporary cultural development. Language is again one of the force fields involved. Both the Turkic-speaking and the Persian-speaking lands of the newly independent states look respectively to Turkey and Iran for models in refurbishing their enfeebled titular languages as fully functional media and symbols of anew national identity - more than they seek guidance from them in the political or economic realms.
