Azerbaijani literature

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Azerbaijani literature (

.

The two traditions of Azerbaijani literature

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Throughout most of its history, Azerbaijani literature has been rather sharply divided into two rather different traditions, neither of which exercised much influence upon the other until the 19th century. The first of these two traditions is Azerbaijani folk literature, and the second is Azerbaijani written literature.

For most of the history of Azerbaijani literature, the salient difference between the folk and the written traditions has been the variety of language employed. The folk tradition, by and large, was oral and remained free of the influence of Persian and Arabic literature, and consequently of those literatures' respective languages. In folk poetry—which is by far the tradition's dominant genre—this basic fact led to two major consequences in terms of poetic style:

• the
  poetic meters employed in the folk poetic tradition were different, being quantitative (i.e., syllabic
  ) verse, as opposed to the qualitative verse employed in the written poetic tradition;
• the basic structural unit of folk poetry became the quatrain (Azerbaijani: dördmisralı) rather than the couplets (Azerbaijani: beyt) more commonly employed in written poetry.

Furthermore, Azerbaijani folk poetry has always had an intimate connection with song—most of the poetry was, in fact, expressly composed so as to be sung—and so became to a great extent inseparable from the tradition of Azerbaijani folk music.

In contrast to the tradition of Azerbaijani folk literature tended to embrace the influence of Persian and Arabic literature. To some extent, this can be seen as far back as the Seljuk period in the late 11th to early 14th centuries, where official business was conducted in the Persian language, rather than in Turkic, and where a court poet such as Dehhanî—who served under the 13th century sultan Ala ad-Din Kay Qubadh I—wrote in a language highly inflected with Persian.

With the founding of

• the
  poetic meters
  (Azerbaijani: aruz) of Persian poetry were adopted;
• Persian- and Arabic-based words were brought into the Azerbaijani language in great numbers, as Turkic words rarely worked well within the system of Persian poetic meter. This style of writing under Persian and Arabic influence came to be known as "Divan literature" (Azerbaijani: divan ədəbiyatı), dîvân (ديوان) being the Persian word referring to the collected works of a poet.^[5]

Azerbaijani folk literature

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The epic tradition

The form developed from the oral traditions of the Oghuz Turks influenced Azeri literature. Turkic epics like Alpamysh are popular among Azerbaijanis.^[6]

The

• the aşık tradition, which—although much influenced by religion, as mentioned above—was for the most part a secular tradition;
• the explicitly religious tradition, which emerged from the gathering places (
  tekke
  s) of the Sufi religious orders and Shi'a groups.

Much of the poetry and song of the aşık/ozan tradition, being almost exclusively oral until the 19th century, remains anonymous. There are, however, a few well-known aşıks from before that time whose names have survived together with their works: the aforementioned Köroğlu (16th century); Karacaoğlan (1606–1689), who may be the best-known of the pre-19th century aşıks; Dadaloğlu (1785–1868), who was one of the last of the great aşıks before the tradition began to dwindle somewhat in the late 19th century; and several others. The aşıks were essentially minstrels who travelled through Anatolia performing their songs on the

The explicitly religious folk tradition of tekke literature shared a similar basis with the aşık/ozan tradition in that the poems were generally intended to be sung, generally in religious gatherings, making them somewhat akin to Western hymns (Azerbaijani ilahi). One major difference from the aşık/ozan tradition, however, is that—from the very beginning—the poems of the tekke tradition were written down. This was because they were produced by revered religious figures in the literate environment of the tekke, as opposed to the milieu of the aşık/ozan tradition, where the majority could not read or write.

16th until 19th century

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The two primary streams of Azeri written literature from the 16th until 19th century are poetry and

Divan poetry was a ritualized and symbolic art form. From the Persian poetry that largely inspired it, it inherited a wealth of symbols whose meanings and interrelationships—both of similitude (مراعات نظير mura'ât-i nazîr / تناسب tenâsüb) and opposition (تضاد tezâd)—were more or less prescribed. Examples of prevalent symbols that, to some extent, oppose one another include, among others:

• the nightingale (بلبل bülbül) — the rose (ﮔل gül)
• the world (جهان cihan;
  عالم
  ‘âlem) — the rosegarden (ﮔﻠﺴﺘﺎن gülistan; ﮔﻠﺸﻦ gülşen)
• the ascetic (زاهد zâhid) — the dervish (درويش derviş)

As the opposition of "the ascetic" and "the dervish" suggests that divan poetry, much like Azerbaijani folk poetry, was heavily influenced by Shia Islam. One of the primary characteristics of divan poetry. However, as of the Persian poetry before it—was its mingling of the mystical Sufi element with a profane and even erotic element. Thus, the pairing of "the nightingale" and "the rose" simultaneously suggests two different relationships:

• the relationship between the fervent lover ("the nightingale") and the inconstant beloved ("the rose")
• the relationship between the individual Sufi practitioner (who is often characterized in Sufism as a lover) and God (who is considered the ultimate source and object of love)

Ottoman and Azeri divan poetry influenced each other. As for the development of divan poetry, the Ottomanist Walter G. Andrews points out, that it is a study still in its infancy.

A limited vocabulary and common technique, as well as the same world of imagery and subject matter based mainly on Islamic sources were shared by almost all poets of Islamic literature.[11]

Despite the lack of certainty regarding the stylistic movements and periods of divan poetry, different styles are clear enough, and can perhaps be seen as exemplified by certain poets:

• Fuzûlî (1494–1556) was one of the most important Azerbaijani poets, who wrote with in Azerbaijani, Persian, and Arabic
  .
• Habibi (1470–1520) was a late 15th and early 16th century poet. He is regarded as one of the most important Azerbaijani poets, and wrote in Azerbaijani, as well as Anatolian Turkish.

The vast majority of divan poetry was

Early prose

Until the 19th century, prose never managed to develop to the extent that contemporary divan poetry did. A large part of the reason for this was that much prose was expected to adhere to the rules of sec' (سجع, also transliterated as seci), or rhymed prose,^[12] a type of writing descended from the Arabic saj' and which prescribed that between each adjective and noun in a sentence, there must be a rhyme.^{[citation needed]}

Nevertheless, there was a tradition of prose in the literature of the time. This tradition was exclusively nonfictional in nature—the fiction tradition was limited to narrative poetry.^[13]

Classical era

The earliest known figure in Azerbaijani literature is

Azerbaijani literature of the nineteenth century was profoundly influenced by the

The fascination with language is seen in the work of

Although there were those who did not follow to the official party line in their writings. Among them were Mahammad Hadi, Abbas Sahhat, Huseyn Javid, Abdulla Shaig, Jafar Jabbarly, and Mikayil Mushfig, who in their search for a means of resistance,^[32] turned to the clandestine methodologies of Sufism, which taught spiritual discipline as a way to combat temptation.^[33]

When Nikita Khrushchev came to power in 1953 following Stalin's death, the harsh focus on propaganda began to fade, and writers began to branch off in new directions, primarily focused on uplifting prose that would be a source of hope to Azerbaijanis living under a totalitarian regime.

Iranian Azerbaijani literature

An influential piece of post-World War II Azerbaijani poetry,