Azerbaijan’s classical poetry lost outside its borders
By Charles van der Leeuw

A unique amalgam of Turkic, Persian and Arabic literature, Azerbaijan's classical poetry is one of the richest in world history - be it also one of the less known. Yet, every Azeri is proud of his late-medieval and renaissance poets and their work, and much is being done to keep the tradition on people's minds.

Poetry was written in Azerbaijan at the time of Alexander the Great, when it stretched from the current-day border between Iran and Turkey to Derbent in the far northeast. However, hardly any information about the literary work in those days and no single manuscript has survived. The oldest Azeri literature known dates from the early 11th century AD, when Azerbaijn consisted mainly of feudal principalities under the umbrella of the Turkish Selyuk sultans who ruled over most of Central Asia and the Middle East.

The oldest known Azeri poet is considered Gatran Tabrizi, who worked in Ganja for most of his life. His work mainly consists of epics about wars and other big events of his time. The next great name in history is a woman by the name of Mekhseti khanum Gandjavi, who lived and worked in Ganja in the mid-12th century. Adored by the feudal classes - including sultan Sanjar - and hated by the islamic clergy, a simple quote from one of her rubiyaat explains why:

Though my soft braids turned chains of
steel and anchored in your heart
Could any chain keep me at home if I
should wish to roam?

Mekhseti was the herald of Azerbaijan's golden age under the Atabek dynasty after the Selyuk realm's desintegration. The period features the names of Khagani Shirvani (1120-1194) and Nizami Ganjavi (1141-1209). Originally a hired poet at the court of the Shirvanshahs in Shemakha, Khagani took to travelling and most of his early poetry results from his travels. On his return, he was put in prison but kept on writing sharp poems against oppression. His late poetry consists of lamentations as his relatives passed way one by one before he died himself. As for Nizami, he lived a quiet life - even if his poetry hardly reflects much modesty, as a phrase from one of his shorter poems illustrates:

If a new sord is coined it is useless,
for compared to my word it is cheap
With my writings of beauty
mysterious, I have conquered the
heart of the world

The core of Nizami's work consists of five long epic poems, plus a number of Gassidas, Guitas and Ghazals. The best-known epic poems are Khosrow and Shirin, Leyla and Majnun and The Seven Beauties. His work has often been compared with his German and French contemporaries Wolfgang Eschenbach and Chretien de Troye.

Although not honored to the extent Nizami is to this day, the names of Imadeddin Nassimi (1370-1417) and Mohammed Suleymanoglu Fizuli (1498-1556) remain well known in Azerbaijan and beyond. Nassimi, born in Shemakha and a contemporary of Timurleng whose armies battered Azerbaijan with their raids, belonged to a mystical-theosophical islamic sect considere heretical at the time. Most of his poems are odes to the supreme and immortal human soul - for which he became famous but was also persecuted and eventually tortured to death on one of his travels in Aleppo. Nassimi's philosophy is fully reflected in his poetry:

I am the universe, the spirit,
and the dream
The banks I overflow of time's
unending stream

As for Fizuli, he lived at the time the region was the scene of never-ending wars between Persia and the Ottomans, and never set foot in Iran. His poem Leyla and Majnun, on the same theme as Nizami's, is the first of its kind written in the Azeri language (Nizami wrote in Persian), whereas his Book of Plaints is the first major prose work in Azeri. Fizuli's Leyla and Majnun was to be taken as the basis for the libretto of Haddjibekov's opera of the same name in later times.

Azerbaijan's 11th-16th century classics have laid a sound basis for later poetic schools in the 18th century and a new revival of Azeri literature in the late 18th, the 19th and early 20th century. The late 18th century poets Vidadi and Vagif are perfect examples of belletrism, featuring a personal, sometimes self-indulgent style mingling political items of the time with the coming and going of joys and sorrows. Mainly thanks to the linguistic reforms of Mirza Fathali Akhundov in the first half of the 19th century, Azerbaijan's poets obtained the tools to incorporate romantic, symbolist, naturalist and impressionist tendencies from Europe in their work. Examples of such elaborate work are Abbas Guly-Aga Bakikhanov, a symbolist who also wrote the first history of Azerbaijan (in Russian), and the romantic poetesses Kheyran-Khanum nad Khurshid-Banu Natavan.

Later 20th century poetry in Azerbaijan came under heavy influence of soviet poetry trumpeting the virtues of the proletarian brotherhood. The economic crisis that followed independence prevented a swift flare-up of literature in the country - leaving future challenges for future generations.