Mahmud Kashgari's comprehensive dictionary, later edited by the Turkish historian, Ali Amiri,[7] contains specimens of old Turkic poetry in the typical form of quatrains (Persio-Arabic رباعیات, rubā'iyāt; Turkish: dörtlük), representing all the principal genres: epic, pastoral, didactic, lyric and elegiac.

[8] Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk also contains linguistic data about multiple Turkic dialects that may have been gathered from merchants and others involved in trade along routes that travelled through Transoxiana.

Scholars believe it is likely that Kashgari would have gathered most of the content about Oguz-Turkmen from Oguz tribes in Khorasan since he himself was a student in Seljuk Baghdad, but it is possible that some of this material could have come from early Turkmen.

[citation needed] He is claimed by Uyghur, Kyrgyz and Uzbek nationalists as part of their respective ethnic groups.

[15] An oriental study university, situated in the capital city of Bishkek in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, was named after Makhmud Kashghari, in the 1990s.