Akhmet Baitursynuly is a Kazakh enlightener, linguist, literary critic, turkologist, poet and translator, public figure and political publicist. In Kazakhstan, it is revered as «Ұлтұстазы» («Teacher of the Nation»).
Baitursynuly was a brilliant writer, teacher, linguist. He reformed the Kazakh script on the basis of the Arabic script, making it possible for millions of Kazakhs living abroad to use it. A. Baitursynuly excluded all purely Arabic letters that are not used in the Kazakh language, and added letters specific to Kazakhstan. The new alphabet, called «Zhana Emle» («New spelling»), is still used by Kazakhs living in China, Afghanistan, Iran.
Ahmet Baitursynuly was the head of the Academic Center of the Republic, was a professor of philology at the first state university in the history of Kazakhstan. He created teaching aids in his native speech, textbooks for the system of educational programs, an illustrated primer, which went through several editions in the 1920s. Baitursynuly developed scientific terminology to define Kazakh grammar and for the first time gave detailed definitions of the history, theory and criticism of literature, methodology, created a system of Kazakh literary criticism.
Literary works: A collection of works by AkhmetBaitursynuly «Forty Fables», «Masa» (Қырықмысал), the main idea is a call to the public for reading, art-knowledge, culture, work. A.Baitursynuly translated the poems of Russian poets A.S. Pushkin, M.Yu. Lermontov, S.Ya. Nadson, the French philosopher Voltaire and others into Kazakh.
In memory of the enlightener a house-museum named after Akhmet Baitursynuly was opened in Almaty, in many cities of Kazakhstan streets were named and monuments were erected.