The fifteenth-century poet and statesman of Herat ‘Alishir Nava’i composed more than thirty works of prose and poetry, mostly in Chaghatay Turkic, but also in Persian. He purposefully wrote in an elevated style, rich in metaphor and allusion, and the problem that faced readers during both his own lifetime and after was how to make sense of the depth of his lexicon, which heavily incorporated Arabic and Persian loans. To that effect, readers compiled dictionaries and glossaries based on his work: prominent examples were produced for Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, and Persian audiences from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. But many more were produced in Central Asia during the nineteenth century, and the direction of translation, Turkic to Persian, Arabic to Turkic, or Turkic to Persian, underscores the multilingual and interactional nature (Sprachbund) of the region during this period. These works remind us that while he wrote mostly in Chaghatay Turkic, Nava’i was a writer who embraced Arabic and Persian influences in his own, unique vision. However, it was a vision not easily understood by many readers, at least not without the assistance of lexicographers. This paper analyzes key examples of this genre and illustrates how they helped readers read Nava'i. Some of these glossaries were little more than wordlists appended to copies of his work. Some not only listed words alphabetically by initial letter, but also by final letter, for rhyming purposes. In one major example, the Muntakhab al-lughat, compiled in Khiva at the turn of the nineteenth century, the author provided a lengthy introduction, explaining his reasons for compiling the work, and his reliance upon Nava’i for examples of Arabic, Persian, and Turkic words. And yet these were not simply linguistic tools: these were also keys to the manifold literary influences and cultural traditions of the Arabo-Persian-Turkic Sprachbund. The authors explained proper nouns, too: the names of Islamic prophets and saints, or Persian heroes and villains. They helped the reader navigate his way through the pyschogeography of the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central, and Inner Asia, as it appeared in the writing of 'Ali Shir Nava’i.