The wise words of Jamal ad-Dīn Abū Muḥammad Ilyās ibn-Yūsuf ibn-Zakkī
This timely quote comes from an accomplished poet and philosopher of whom most of us have never heard. Jamal is better known as the 12th century poet Nizami Ganjavi (‘the poet of Ganja’,) who lived from 1138 to 1209 in a small town deep in the heart of the Caucasus.
Many of his romantic works were to influence Renaissance European literature. Indeed one of his most famous tales, ‘Leili and Mejnoon’ is said to have been the inspiration for both Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and Eric Clapton’s ‘Layla’.
Yet the great man never left his native Ganja, second city of what is now Azerbaijan.
Founded more than a thousand years ago the country has survived numerous occupations resulting in a very diverse population. Nizami, orphaned as a child, is evidence of this. Thought to have been of Kurdish and Iranian heritage he is regarded as one of the greatest Persian poets. He was patronised by a variety of regional rulers, one of whom sent him a slave to be the first of his three wives and the mother of his only son.
I first encountered Nizami via a huge mural while working in Ganja in 2004. Then a run down, rather seedy place with not at all the look of the nation’s second city, Ganja was not improved by the cold, wet autumnal weather.
Intrigued by what I heard of the local poet I visited the imposing if brutalist mausoleum the Soviets had built to house his remains on a rather desolate site above a motorway.
Later in Baku I learned more about him in the Nizami Museum of Azerbaijani Literature.
It holds many of the paintings by Mikail Abdullayev that illustrate a rather unusual book which I found in a dusty, second-hand store near the Maiden Tower in Baku’s walled Icheri Sheher (Old City).
Written in Azeri, Russian and English it includes a classic piece of Soviet era academic hagiography – worth a read despite the somewhat idiosyncratic ‘typos’ that crop up throughout the volume. I do hope the proof-reader managed to quit the USSR before anyone noticed.
It included some Nizami’s great tales, told in rhyming verse, many derived from much older traditional Arabic and Persian legends. It was his embellishments that were to inspire other writers across Europe and Asia.
The British Museum houses a rare Islamic portrayal of the Prophet Mohammed ascending to heaven which was used to illustrate a 16th century edition of Nizami’s work for the then Shah of Iran.
charming could have done with quoting his work .