Nizam al-Din Ali-Shir Nava'i, or by his common name Ali-Shir Nava'i (Chagatai: نظام الدین علی شیر نوایی; Uzbek: Alisher Navoiy; Uyghur: نىزامىدن ئەلشىر ناۋائى; Persian: نظام الدین على شير هروی Nizām al-Din ʿAlī Shīr Herawī, or in short علیشیر نوایی Alishīr Nevāī; 9 February 1441, Herat – 3 January 1501, Herat) was a 15th-century Turkic poet.
Ali-Shir Nava'i was born in 1441 in Herat (located in present-day northwestern Afghanistan). In the era in which Ali-Shir Nava'i lived, Herat was under the rule of the Timurid State, and Herat was foremost among that state's most important cultural and intellectual centers. Ali-Shir Nava'i's family was of the Chagatai line, and Ali-Shir Nava'i, as a member of a high-ranking class within the Timurid State, bore the title of "emir" (in Persian, mir). Ali-Shir Nava'i's father was known by the name Siyab al-Din "Kıçına (the Younger)." At that time Shahrukh Mirza, the fourth son of Sultan Timur, was governor of the Khurasan province of the Timurid State and, from Timur's death in 1405 until 1447, ruled the western part of Timur's state quite independently from Herat. Siyab al-Din "Kıçına (the Younger)" was a high state administrator in Shahrukh's realm of rule, at the palace called the Devlethane. For a time Siyab al-Din served as governor of Sabzevar, one of the important cities of this state. Ali-Shir Nava'i's mother, too, served at Shahrukh's court as the governess of one of Shahrukh's princes.
When Ali-Shir Nava'i was a young child, his father died. He passed into the guardianship of "Abu'l-Qasim Babur Mirza ibn Baysunghur Beg," a member of the Timurid line and the son of Timur's grandson, who also served as governor of Khurasan, and grew up at his side.
In this courtly education, Ali-Shir Nava'i was raised together with Husayn Bayqara, who would later become the ruler of the Timurid State in Khurasan. But immediately after Shahrukh's death in 1447, Herat fell into turmoil and the political situation became unstable. For this reason Ali-Shir Nava'i, together with his fellow student Husayn Bayqara, was forced to flee to Mashhad under the leadership of their guardian "Abu'l-Qasim Babur Mirza ibn Baysunghur Beg." The following year, while in Mashhad, ibn Baysunghur Beg died. The future paths of Husayn Bayqara and Ali-Shir Nava'i diverged. Husayn Bayqara threw himself into the political life of the time in order to make himself sultan of the state and gain political power. Ali-Shir Nava'i began attending the Nizamiyya madrasa, first in Herat and then in Samarkand, and began teaching (as a müderris) at the Samarkand madrasa.