Fuzuli (poet) facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Fuzuli
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Portrait by Azim Azimzade, 1914
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| Born | Muhammad bin Suleyman 1483 |
| Died | 1556 (aged 72–73) |
| Resting place | Karbala |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Language | |
| Notable works | Leyli and Majnun |
| Children | Fazli |
Muhammad bin Suleyman (Azerbaijani: Məhəmməd Süleyman oğlu, مَحمد سلیمان اوغلو; 1483–1556), better known by his pen name Fuzuli (Füzuli, فضولی), was a 16th-century poet who composed poetry in his native Azerbaijani, as well as Persian and Arabic. He is regarded as one of the greatest poets of Turkic literature and a prominent figure in both Azerbaijani and Ottoman literature. Fuzuli's work was widely known and admired throughout the Persianate Turkic cultural domain from the 16th to the 19th century, reaching as far as Central Asia and India.
Born in 1483 in modern-day Iraq, Fuzuli studied literature, mathematics, astronomy and languages as a child. During his lifetime, his homeland changed hands between the Aq Qoyunlu, Safavid, and Ottoman empires. He composed poetry for officials in all three empires, writing his first known poem to Shah Alvand Mirza of the Aq Qoyunlu. Fuzuli wrote most his poetry during the Ottoman rule of Iraq, which is why he is also sometimes called an Ottoman poet. Throughout his life, he had several patrons but never found one that fully satisfied him, and his desire to join a royal court was never realised. Despite expressing a desire to see places like Tabriz, Anatolia and India, he never travelled outside Iraq. In 1556, Fuzuli died from the plague and was buried in Karbala.
Fuzuli is best known for his Azerbaijani works, especially his ghazals (a form of amatory poem) and his lyric poem Leyli and Majnun, which is an interpretation of a Middle Eastern tragic love story. He also wrote divans (collections of short poems) in Azerbaijani, Persian, and possibly Arabic. His style is distinguished by his "intense expression of feelings" and his use of mystic metaphors and symbols, showing influences from Persian poets like Nizami, Jami, and Hafez, as well as Azerbaijani poets like Habibi and Nasimi.
Fuzuli's poetry played a role in the development of the Azerbaijani language, helping it to attain a higher level of refinement in Azerbaijani classical poetry. His work has been characterised as a reconciliation of Azerbaijani, Persian, and Arabic literary practices, as well as of Shia and Sunni beliefs. He also frequently incorporated themes of love into his poetry. He remains a popular poet in Azerbaijan, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq.
Contents
Biography
Fuzuli, whose given name was Muhammad and whose father's name was Suleyman, was born in 1483. He adopted the pen name Fuzuli, which can be translated both as "presumptuous, superfluous" or "exalted, superior, virtuous". In his writings, he wrote that he picked this name to stand out, knowing that no one else would choose such a pen name. Little is known about Fuzuli's life. He was probably a Shia Muslim of Azerbaijani Turkic origin, descending from the Bayat tribe. Although some contemporary sources refer to him as Fuzuli of Baghdad (Arabic: Fuzuli-yi Baghdadi), suggesting he was born or raised in that city or its surroundings, other sources cite the nearby cities of Najaf, Hilla, or Karbala as his birthplace. As a child, Fuzuli studied literature, mathematics, astronomy and languages. Aside from his native Azerbaijani, he also learned Persian and Arabic at an early age. He had an interest in poetry since his childhood, getting his first poetic inspiration from the poems of the late-15th-century Azerbaijani poet Habibi.
Fuzuli lived in Iraq under the Aq Qoyunlu dynasty, which had ruled the region since 1470 until 1508, when Shah Ismail I of the Iranian Safavid dynasty took over. By the time of the Safavid takeover, Fuzuli was already a popular young poet and had dedicated his first known poem, a Persian qasida (eulogy), to Shah Alvand Mirza of the Aq Qoyunlu. After 1514, the poet received patronage from Ibrahim Khan Mawsillu, the Safavid governor of Baghdad, whom he met during Mawsillu's visit to Najaf and Karbala. ..... After Mawsillu was murdered by his own nephew in 1527, Fuzuli lost his patron and moved to Hilla or Najaf, likely because he could not find another reliable patron among the Safavid nobles. There, he worked as a custodian of the Imam Ali Shrine. Despite this position, he did not have much money and relied on different patrons for support. His life between 1527 and 1534 is largely unknown.
When Sultan Suleiman I of the Ottoman Empire conquered Baghdad in 1534, Fuzuli was already in his fifties. He presented the sultan with a long qasida and also wrote qasidas to Ottoman officials in his entourage in order to earn their favour. One of these officials, Celalzade Mustafa Çelebi, was appointed chancellor while in Baghdad and arranged for the poet to receive a stipend of nine akçes a day from the surplus of donations made to Shia sanctuaries. Later when administrators withheld the stipend claiming that there was no excess, he expressed his disappointment in a poetic letter called Şikayetname (lit. Complaint), written in Azerbaijani and addressed to Çelebi. In the letter, he declared that he had abandoned all hope, explaining that he had been greatly affected by the political and theological instability of his age. At the time, he was working as a candle-lighter at the Bektashi convent in the Imam Husayn Shrine in Karbala. He wrote that he never found a patron who satisfied his needs and his desire to join a royal court was never realised. Despite expressing a strong desire to see places like Tabriz, Anatolia and India, he never travelled outside Iraq. The majority of his life was spent in the cities of Karbala, Hilla, Najaf, and Baghdad. In 1556, he died from the plague, either in Baghdad or Karbala, and was buried in Karbala within the grounds of the Bektashi convent.
Poetry
Fuzuli composed poetry and prose in Azerbaijani, Persian and Arabic. Fifteen of his works are extant. ..... His frequent use of love themes in his poetry has earned him the nickname of "poet of love" by scholars. Abdülkadir Karahan, a scholar of medieval Turkic literature, notes that what distinguished Fuzuli was his "sincerity, enthusiasm, simplicity, sensitivity, and power of expression". Alireza Asgharzadeh, an academic studying Iranian and Azerbaijani culture, describes Fuzuli's poetry as having "manifested the spirit of a profound humanism, reflecting the discontent of both the masses and the poet himself towards autocracy, feudal lords, and establishment religion". His poems have also been described by the literary researcher Muhsin Macit as having a "multi-layered structure" because of his "skilful use of metaphors and mystic symbols". He has also stated that Fuzuli's poems in Azerbaijani "have a multi-faceted structure, which, combined with perfection of expression, gives them permanence". His works show influence from Persian poets like Nizami, Jami, and Hafez, as well as Azerbaijani poets like Habibi and Nasimi.
Leyli and Majnun
Fuzuli is best known for his works in Azerbaijani, especially his ghazals (a form of amatory poem) and his masnavi Leyli and Majnun. This lyric poem, written in 1535, is the poet's interpretation of the Middle Eastern tragic love story of Layla and Majnun. He reveals in the work that he was prompted to write it by a request from some Ottoman poets who had accompanied Sultan Suleiman during his invasion of Baghdad. Accepting the request as a challenge, he completed the work in a short amount of time. Before beginning the work, he studied Persian versions of the story, particularly drawing inspiration from the 12th-century poet Nizami's rendition. However, Fuzuli made significant changes to the narrative. For instance, while Nizami's work concludes with Majnun's death, Fuzuli's version sees the two lovers reunited in heaven and their graves transformed into türbes (tombs).
His interpretation of the story generated more interest than previous Arabic and Persian versions, which the Turkish literature scholar İskender Pala attributes to the sincerity and lyricism of the poet's expression. The work has been described by the Encyclopædia Iranica as "the culmination of the Turk[ic] masnavi tradition in that it raised the personal and human love-tragedy to the plane of mystical longing and ethereal aspiration". Through his interpretation, the story of Layla and Majnun became widely known and Fuzuli's poem is considered one of the greatest works of Turkic literature.
Other Azerbaijani works
Another famous work by Fuzuli is the maktel (a poem about a historic death) Ḥadīqat es-suʿadā (lit. The Garden of the Blessed) which deals with the Battle of Karbala, a military engagement in 680 CE between the army of the second Umayyad Caliph Yazid I and a small army led by Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. The work, which includes an introduction, ten chapters and an epilogue, was written mostly in Azerbaijani to provide Turkic people with access to the Battle of Karbala narrative. In the introduction, the poet explains that while there were existing works about the event in Arabic and Persian, there were none in a Turkic language, leaving the Turkic people deprived of this knowledge. Adapted from the 15th–century Persian poet Husayn Kashifi's Rawżat al-šohadāʾ (lit. The Garden of Martyrs), it is considered a masterpiece of the Turkic maktel genre and is the most popular among contemporary works covering the Battle of Karbala. Although the work does not specify its date of creation, it is believed to have been written before 1546. This estimation is based on the oldest available copy, the Cairo manuscript, which was recorded in library records as dating back to 1546.
Fuzuli was also the author of a divan (a collection of short poems) in Azerbaijani, which is his most extensive work in this language. It comprises 302 ghazals, 27 qasidas, several panegyrics, and rubaʿis (four-line poems). In the preface of his divan, he emphasises the importance of science to poetry, writing that "poetry without science cannot be permanent, just like a wall without a pillar". Karahan regards several of the qasidas in the divan as masterpieces, including the radif na'ts (poems praising the Prophet Muhammad) titled sabâ (lit. Sabbath), su (lit. Water), gül (lit. Flower), and hançer (lit. Dagger), as well as the qasida composed by Fuzuli to commemorate Sultan Suleiman's capture of Baghdad. Despite this, it was Fuzuli's ghazals that brought him widespread recognition. Karahan states that Fuzuli "reached the peak of lyricism, mystical love and excitement in his ghazals".
..... Additionally, he wrote a poetic letter to Sultan Bayezid II and four others to his Ottoman officials.
Persian works
Fuzuli also authored several works in Persian, including a divan. According to Karahan, this collection of short poems, comprising 410 ghazals, 46 qasidas, 106 rubaʿis, and other works, demonstrates the poet's proficiency in Persian equal to that of any classical Iranian poet. The collection opens with a prose preface, where the poet praises the merits of poetry, his enduring fascination with it, and its ability to turn pain into pleasure. In the divan, he shows great influence from Persian poets like Hafez and Jami.
He also wrote Haft jām (lit. Seven Goblets, also called Sāqī-nāma, lit. Book of the Cupbearer), a seven-part masnavi of 327 couplets with each part focusing on a specific musical instrument. The work is notable for its richness in symbolism related to Sufism. Another Persian masnavi by him is Ṣeḥḥat o marazµ (lit. Health and Sickness, also called Ḥosn o ʿEšq, lit. Beauty and Love), which was inspired by the 15th–century Persian poet Fattahi Nishapuri's Ḥosn o Del (lit. Beauty and Heart) and is an important work in demonstrating Fuzuli's knowledge of both medicine and well-being of the body and the soul. It tells the story of a dervish losing and regaining his body's health physically due to its struggle with a disease and later psychologically due to its struggle with love. Fuzuli also has a prose work in Persian titled Rend o zāhed (lit. Sufi and Ascetic), which imagines a discussion between an ascetic who is attempting to instruct his son Rend, who tries to justify his lack of interest in education. Additionally, he wrote Resâla-ye moʿammīyāt (lit. Treatise of Idioms), a work consisting of 190 riddle poems, and Anīs al-qalb (lit. Amiable Heart), a 134-couplet long qasida dedicated to Sultan Suleiman. The latter piece conveys the poet's philosophy on life as a whole.
Arabic works
Arabic works by Fuzuli include eleven qasidas and a prose work titled Maṭlaʿ al-iʿtiqād (lit. The Birth of Faith). The prose work describes the idea that man can reach God by learning the secrets of the universe through gaining knowledge and is related to the Islamic theological discipline ʿIlm al-Kalām. His Arabic qasidas are believed to be fragments from a larger divan. All of them discuss the Islamic prophet Muhammad and Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad and the first Shia Imam.
Legacy and assessment
Described by Kathleen Burrill, a professor of Turkish studies, as the "foremost of all the Azeri [Azerbaijani] poets", Fuzuli is also regarded as one of the greatest poets in the Turkic literary world. He had a major influence on Azerbaijani and Ottoman literature, and is sometimes considered an Ottoman poet, not because of his language or culture, but because he composed most of his poetry after the Ottoman conquest of Iraq. His work also had an impact on Chagatai literature; later writes in Ottoman and Chagatai literature drew on the poet's work due to his ability to reinterpret traditional themes and ideas through his poetry, which brought the two literary traditions closer together. His work has been characterised as a successful reconciliation of Azerbaijani, Persian, and Arabic literary practices, as well as of Shia and Sunni beliefs, with his legacy characterised as inclusive. Fuzuli was succeeded by his son, also a poet, who took the name Fazli in tribute to his father. Fazli is believed to have received his poetic education from his father, and wrote both religious and secular poems in Azerbaijani, Persian, and Arabic.
Widely recognised and admired throughout the Persianate Turkic cultural domain from the 16th to the 19th centuries, Fuzuli's work was famous not only in the Ottoman Empire, Iran, and Central Asia, but also in the Indian subcontinent, as indicated by Indian library catalogues. The poems were transcribed by scribes from various linguistic backgrounds using different writing systems over a vast area. Some of Fuzuli's works have been translated into English. Sohbetü’l-esmâr was traslated by the Turkologist Gunnar Jarring in 1936 in Lund under the title The Contest of the Fruits, and Leyli and Majnun was translated by the writer-translator Sofi Huri in 1970 in London under the title Leyla and Mejnun.
His poetry played an important role in the development of the Azerbaijani language, with modern scholar Sakina Berengian emphasising his greatness by referring to him as the "Ferdowsi and Hafez of Azeri literature", comparing him to two poets regarded as among the greatest in Persian literature, and stating that Azerbaijani poetry and language reached new heights in his writings. Karahan regarded Fuzuli as a "brilliant linguist" due to his flawless use of language in his poems, and while he drew inspiration from earlier Persian works for most of his Azerbaijani pieces, he was able to add a "particular stamp of his personality" on his interpretations of subjects, making them popular.
His musical knowledge, combined with the harmonious and expressive nature of his poems, make them suitable for composing music. His ghazals continue to be enjoyed in Turkey by both members of high society and performers outside major cultural hubs, where classical Turkish music merges with folk music. The first opera in the Islamic world, Leyli and Majnun, was based on Fuzuli's work of the same name and composed by the Azerbaijani composer Uzeyir Hajibeyov in 1908. The poet's ghazals were also the subject of a cantata composed by another Azerbaijani composer, Jahangir Jahangirov, in 1959, titled Fuzuli Cantata.
Fuzuli remains a popular poet in countries such as Azerbaijan, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. A street and a square in central Baku are named after him. Additionally, an administrative region and its capital city are also named after the poet. In October 1994, the Turkish Authors' Association and Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality jointly organised an academic conference in Istanbul about Fuzuli to honour the 500th anniversary of his birth. Another conference took place in Konya in December of the same year.
See also
In Spanish: Fuzûlî para niños
