This chapter picks up the stories which were told in Chapter 11, but with two differences of approach. Whereas the great importance of Maḥmūd al-Kāšġarī’s Dīwān Luġāt at-Turk requires attention to the early lexicography of the Turkic languages as a group, modern Turkish can be treated in isolation from its cousins, as it is here. And whereas the period covered in Chapter 11 ended at a point when Persian shared a writing system with Turkish, and when Persian was a language of high prestige in the Ottoman empire, the two languages have grown apart culturally, so that the present chapter is divided into two sections, one on Turkish and one on Persian.