Fuzuli
Miniature of Fuzuli in 16th century Me?âirü'?-?uarâ
Born	Mahammad Suleyman oghlu c. 1494 Karbala, Aq Qoyunlu confederation (now Iraq)
Died	1556 Karbala, Ottoman Empire (now Iraq)
Genre	Azerbaijani, Arabic and Persian epic poetry, wisdom literature
Notable works	The Epic of Layla and Majnun (Leyli v? M?cnun)

Mahammad bin Suleyman (Classical Azerbaijani: ? ‎ M?h?mm?d Süleyman o?lu), better known by his pen name Fuzuli (Azerbaijani: ‎ Füzuli;^[a]c. 1494 - 1556), was an Azerbaijani,^[1][2][3] of the Bayat tribes of Oghuz,^[4][5][6] poet, writer and thinker. Often considered one of the greatest contributors to the divan tradition of Azerbaijani literature, Fuzuli in fact wrote his collected poems (divan) in three different languages: in his native Azerbaijani, Arabic and Persian.^[7] He was well-versed in both the Ottoman and Chagatai Turkic literary traditions as well as mathematics and astronomy.^[8]

Life

Fuzûlî is generally believed to have been born around 1480 in what is now Iraq, when the area was under Ak Koyunlu Turkmen rule; he was probably born in either Karbal?' or an-Najaf.^[8] He is believed to belong to Bayat tribe, one of the Turkic Oghuz tribes who are related to Azerbaijanis and were scattered throughout the Middle East, Anatolia, and the Caucasus at the time.^[4] Though Fuzûlî's ancestors had been of nomadic origin, the family had long since settled in towns.

Fuzûlî appears to have received a good education, first under his father--who was a mufti in the city of Al Hillah--and then under a teacher named Rahmetullah.^[9] It was during this time that he learned the Persian and Arabic languages in addition to his native Azerbaijani. Fuzûlî showed poetic promise early in life, composing sometime around his twentieth year the important masnavi entitled Beng ü Bâde ( ? ?; "Hashish and Wine"), in which he compared the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II to hashish and the Safavid shah Ismail I to wine, much to the advantage of the latter.

One of the few things that is known of Fuzûlî's life during this time is how he arrived at his pen name. In the introduction to his collected Persian poems, he says: "In the early days when I was just beginning to write poetry, every few days I would set my heart on a particular pen name and then after a time change it for another because someone showed up who shared the same name".^[10] Eventually, he decided upon the Arabic word fuzûlî--which literally means "impertinent, improper, unnecessary"--because he "knew that this title would not be acceptable to anyone else".^[11] Despite the name's pejorative meaning, however, it contains a double meaning--what is called tevriyye () in Ottoman Divan poetry--as Fuzûlî himself explains: "I was possessed of all the arts and sciences and found a pen name that also implies this sense since in the dictionary fuzûl (?) is given as a plural of fazl (; 'learning') and has the same rhythm as 'ulûm (?; 'sciences') and fünûn (?; 'arts')".^[11]

In 1534, the Ottoman sultan Süleymân I conquered the region of Baghdad, where Fuzûlî lived, from the Safavid Empire. Fuzûlî now had the chance to become a court poet under the Ottoman patronage system, and he composed a number of kasîdes, or panegyric poems, in praise of the sultan and members of his retinue, and as a result, he was granted a stipend. However, owing to the complexities of the Ottoman bureaucracy, this stipend never materialized. In one of his best-known works, the letter ?ikâyetnâme ( ?; "Complaint"), Fuzûlî spoke out against such bureaucracy and its attendant corruption:

? ? ?

Selâm verdim rü?vet de?ildir deyü almad?lar.^[12]

I gave my greetings but they didn't receive it as it wasn't a bribe.

Though his poetry flourished during his time among the Ottomans, the loss of his stipend meant that, materially speaking, Fuzûlî never became secure. In fact, most of his life was spent attending upon the Tomb of `Alî in the city of an-Najaf, south of Baghdad.^[13] He died during a plague outbreak in 1556, in Karbal?', either of the plague itself or of cholera.

Works

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Layla and Majnun

Manuscript of the Hadiqat al-Su`ada (Garden of the Blessed) of Fuzuli, 1602-3 C.E. Brooklyn Museum.

A page from the collected poems of Fuzûlî

Fuzûlî has always been known, first and foremost, as a poet of love. It was, in fact, a characterization that he seems to have agreed with:

? ?

?

Menden Fuzûlî isteme e?'âr-? medh ü zem

Men âkam hemî?e sözüm âkânedür^[15]

Don't ask Fuzûlî for poems of praise or rebuke

I am a lover and speak only of love

Fuzûlî's notion of love, however, has more in common with the Sufi idea of love as a projection of the essence of God--though Fuzûlî himself seems to have belonged to no particular Sufi order--than it does with the Western idea of romantic love. This can be seen in the following lines from another poem:

? ? ? ?

? ? ?

'Âk imi? her ne var 'âlem

'?lm bir kîl ü kâl imi? ancak^[16]

All that is in the world is love

And knowledge is nothing but gossip

The first of these lines, especially, relates to the idea of wahdat al-wuj?d (? ), or "unity of being", which was first formulated by Ibn al-'Arab? and which states that nothing apart from various manifestations of God exists. Here, Fuzûlî uses the word "love" (? 'a?k) rather than God in the formula, but the effect is the same.

Fuzûlî's most extended treatment of this idea of love is in the long poem Dâstân-? Leylî vü Mecnun ( ? ? ), a mesnevî which takes as its subject the classical Middle Eastern love story of Layla and Majnun. In his version of the story, Fuzûlî concentrates upon the pain of the mad lover Majnun's separation from his beloved Layla, and comes to see this pain as being of the essence of love.

The ultimate value of the suffering of love, in Fuzûlî's work, lies in that it helps one to approach closer to "the Real" (al-Haqq ?), which is one of the 99 names of God in Islamic tradition.

Selected bibliography

Works in Azerbaijani Turkic

• Dîvân ("Collected Poems")
• Beng ü Bâde ( ? ?; "Hashish and Wine")
• Hadîkat üs-Süedâ ( ?; "Garden of Pleasures")
• Dâstân-? Leylî vü Mecnûn ( ? ? ; "The Epic of Layla and Majnun")
• Risâle-i Muammeyât (? ; "Treatise on Riddles")
• ?ikâyetnâme ( ?; "Complaint")

Works in Persian

• Dîvân ("Collected Poems")
• Anîs ol-qalb (? ; "Friend of the Heart")
• Haft Jâm ( ; "Seven Goblets")
• Rend va Zâhed ( ? ?; "Hedonist and Ascetic")
• Resâle-e Muammeyât (? ; "Treatise on Riddles")
• Sehhat o Ma'ruz ( ? ; "Health and Sickness")

Works in Arabic

• D?w?n ("Collected Poems")
• Ma?la' ul-I'tiq?di (? ; "The Birth of Faith")

Translations into English

• Fuzuli. Leyla and Mejnun. Translated by Sofi Huri. Introduction and notes by Alessio Bombaci. London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1970.

Legacy

Portrait of Fuzuli by Azim Azimzade (1914). National Art Museum of Azerbaijan (Baku)

According to the Encyclopædia Iranica:

Fuzuli is credited with some fifteen works in Arabic, Persian, and Turkic, both in verse and prose. Although his greatest significance is undoubtedly as a Turkic poet, he is also of importance to Persian literature thanks to his original works in that language (indeed, Persian was the language he preferred for his Shi'ite religious poetry); his Turkic adaptations or translations of Persian works; and the inspiration he derived from Persian models for his Turkic works.

...

The fundamental gesture of Fozuli's poetry is inclusiveness. It links Azeri, Turkmen and Ottoman (Rumi) poetry, east and west; it also bridges the religious divide between Shiism and Sunnism. Generations of Ottoman poets admired and wrote responses to his poetry; no contemporary canon can bypass him.

In April 1959, in honour of his 400th death anniversary, Karyagin district and the Fuzuli (city) were renamed to Fuzuli.^[17] A street and a square are named after him in the center of Baku, as well as streets in many other cities of Azerbaijan. Several Azerbaijani institutions are named after him, including the Institute of Manuscripts in Baku.

Statue of Fuzuli in Guba

In 1996 the National Bank of Azerbaijan minted a golden 100 manat and a silver 50 manat commemorative coins dedicated to the 500th anniversary of Fuzûlî's life and activities.^[18]

Notes

References

Sources

Primary

• Fuzulî. Fuzulî Divan?: Gazel, Musammat, Mukatta' ve Ruba'î k?sm?. Ed. Ali Nihad Tarlan. ?stanbul: Üçler Bas?mevi, 1950.
• Fuzulî. Leylâ ve Mecnun. Ed. Muhammet Nur Do?an. ISBN 975-08-0198-9.

Secondary

• Andrews, Walter G. "Fuzûlî" in Ottoman Lyric Poetry: An Anthology. pp. 235-237. ISBN 0-292-70472-0.
• "Fozuli, Mohammad b. Solayman". Encyclopædia Iranica. Retrieved 25 August 2006.
• "Fuzuli, Mehmed bin Süleyman." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. 23 Aug. 2006 <[1]>.
• Kudret, Cevdet. Fuzuli. ISBN 975-10-2016-6.
• ?entürk, Ahmet Atillâ. "Fuzûlî" in Osmanl? ?iiri Antolojisi. pp. 280-324. ISBN 975-08-0163-6.
• The investigation of the mystical similarities and differences of Fozoli's Persian and Turkish Divans against Hafez's Divan (Thesis for M.A degree Islamic Azad University of Tabriz, Iran ) By: Gholamreza Ziyaee Prof.: Ph.D: Aiyoub Koushan
• A comparative adaptation of Peer in Khajeh Hafez's divan with Hakim Fozooli's Persian and Turkish divans,Article 7, Volume 6, Number 21, Autumn 2012, Page 159-188

Document Type: Research Paper Authors: 1Aiyoub Koushan; 2Gholamreza Zyaee 1Faculty member, Department of Persian Literature, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran 2Student, Department of Persian Literature, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran.

External links

• Fuzûlî, on archive.org
• Muhammed Fuzuli--a website with a brief biography and translated selections from Leyla and Mecnun
• FUZUL?
• Fuzûlî in Stanford J. Shaw's History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey