Azerbaijani literature (, ) is written in Azerbaijani, a Turkic language, which is the official state language of the Republic of Azerbaijan, where the North Azerbaijani variety is spoken. It is also natively spoken in Iran, where the South Azerbaijani variety is used, and is particularly spoken in the northwestern historic region of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijani is also spoken natively in Russia (especially Dagestan), Georgia and Turkey. While the majority of Azerbaijani people live in Iran, modern Azerbaijani literature is overwhelmingly produced in the Republic of Azerbaijan, where the language has official status. Three scripts are used for writing the language: Azerbaijani Latin script in the Republic of Azerbaijan, Arabic script in Iran and Cyrillic script formerly used in Soviet Azerbaijan.
The earliest development of Azerbaijani literature is closely associated with Anatolian Turkish, written in Perso-Arabic script. Examples of its detachment date to the 14th century or earlier. Several major authors helped to develop Azerbaijani literature from the 14th century until the 17th century and poetry figures prominently in their works. Towards the end of the 19th century, popular literature such as newspapers began to be published in Azerbaijani language. The production of written works in Azerbaijani was banned in Soviet Azerbaijan Stalin's "Red Terror" campaign targeted thousands of Azerbaijani writers, journalists, teachers, intellectuals and others and resulted in the changing of the Azerbaijani alphabet into one with a Cyrillic alphabet.
Modern Azerbaijani literature is almost exclusively produced in the Republic of Azerbaijan and despite being widely spoken in Iran, Azerbaijani is not formally taught in schools nor are publications in Azerbaijani easily available.
The two traditions of Azerbaijani literature
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.
The standard poetic forms—for poetry was as much the dominant genre in the written tradition as in the folk tradition—were derived either directly from the Persian literary tradition (the qəzəl غزل; the məsnəvi مثنوی), or indirectly through Persian from the Arabic (the qəsidə قصيده). However, the decision to adopt these poetic forms wholesale led to two important further consequences:Tanpınar, 2–3 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 ədəbiyyatı), dîvân (ديوان) being a Persian originated Azerbaijani word referring to the collected works of a poet.
Azerbaijani folk literature
Azerbaijani folk literature is an oral tradition deeply rooted, in its form, in Central Asian nomadic traditions. However, in its themes, Azerbaijani folk literature reflects the problems peculiar to a settling (or settled) people who have abandoned the nomadic lifestyle.One example of this is the series of folktales surrounding the figure of Keloğlan, a young boy beset with the difficulties of finding a wife, helping his mother to keep the family house intact, and dealing with the problems caused by his neighbors. Another example is the rather mysterious figure of Nasreddin, a trickster who often plays jokes, of a sort, on his neighbors.
The epic tradition The Turkic epic has its roots in the Central Asian epic tradition that gave rise to the Book of Dede Korkut. The form developed from the oral traditions of the Oghuz Turks influenced Azeri literature. Turkic epics like Alpamysh are popular among Azerbaijanis."Alpamysh" entry in Bol'shaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya (the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, third edition)
The Book of Dede Korkut was the primary element of the Azerbaijani epic tradition in the Caucasus and Anatolia for several centuries. Concurrent to the Book of Dede Korkut was the so-called Turkic Epic of Köroğlu, which concerns the adventures of Rüşen Ali ("Köroğlu", or "son of the blind man") as he exacted revenge for the blinding of his father. The origins of this epic are somewhat more mysterious than those of the Book of Dede Korkut: many believe it to have arisen in sometime between the 15th and 17th centuries; more reliable testimony,Belge, 374 though, seems to indicate that the story is nearly as old as that of the Book of Dede Korkut, dating from around the dawn of the 11th century. Complicating matters somewhat is the fact that Köroğlu is also the name of a poet of the aşıq/ozan tradition.
Folk poetry
The folk poetry tradition in Azerbaijani literature, as indicated above, was strongly influenced by the Islamic Sufi and Shia traditions. Furthermore, as partly evidenced by the prevalence of the still existent aşıq/ozan tradition, the dominant element in Turkic folk poetry has always been song. The development of folk poetry in Turkic —which began to emerge in the 13th century with such important Turkish writers as Yunus Emre, Sultan Veled, and Şeyyâd Hamza—was given a great boost when, on 13 May 1277, Karamanoğlu Mehmet Bey declared Turkish the official state language of Anatolia's powerful Karamanid state;Karamanoğlu Mehmet Bey's declaration is as follows: Şimden gerü dîvânda, dergâhta, bârgâhta, mecliste ve meydanda Türkçeden başka dil kullanılmayacaktır ("From this day forward, no language other than Turkish will be used in the court, in the tekke, in the palace, in the government, or in public") Selçuk Üniversitesi Uzaktan Eğitim Programı (SUZEP). As a measure of the extent of the influence against which Karamanoğlu Mehmet Bey was fighting, his declaration itself contains three words of Arabic origin (دیوان dîvân or "court", مجلس meclis or "government", and ميدان meydân or "public") and two of Persian origin (درگاه dergâh or "təkyə" and بارگاه bârgâh or "palace"). subsequently, many of the tradition's greatest poets would continue to emerge from this region.
There are, broadly speaking, two traditions of Azerbaijani folk poetry: the aşıq 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 (təkyəs) of the Sufi religious orders and Shia groups.
Much of the poetry and song of the aşıq/ozan tradition, being almost exclusively oral until the 19th century, remains anonymous. There are, however, a few well-known aşıqs 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 aşıqs; Dadaloğlu (1785–1868), who was one of the last of the great aşıqs before the tradition began to dwindle somewhat in the late 19th century; and several others. The aşıqs were essentially minstrels who travelled through Anatolia performing their songs on the bağlama, a mandolin-like instrument whose paired strings are considered to have a symbolic religious significance in Alevi/Bektashi culture. Despite the decline of the aşıq/ozan tradition in the 19th century, it experienced a significant revival in the 20th century thanks to such outstanding Turkish figures as Aşık Veysel Şatıroğlu (1894–1973), Aşık Mahzuni Şerif (1938–2002), Neşet Ertaş (1938–2012), and many others.
The explicitly religious folk tradition of təkyə literature shared a similar basis with the aşıq/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 aşıq/ozan tradition, however, is that—from the very beginning—the poems of the təkyə tradition were written down. This was because they were produced by revered religious figures in the literate environment of the təkyə, as opposed to the milieu of the aşıq/ozan tradition, where the majority could not read or write.
The explicitly religious folk tradition of təkyə literature shared a similar basis with the aşıq/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 aşıq/ozan tradition, however, is that—from the very beginning—the poems of the təkyə tradition were written down. This was because they were produced by revered religious figures in the literate environment of the təkyə, as opposed to the milieu of the aşıq/ozan tradition, where the majority could not read or write. The major figures in the tradition of təkyə literature are Turkish people like: Yunus Emre (1238–1321), who is one of the most important figures in all of Turkish literature; Süleyman Çelebi, who wrote a highly popular long poem called Vesîletü'n-Necât (وسيلة النجاة "The Means of Salvation", but more commonly known as the Mevlid), concerning the birth of the Islamic prophet Muhammad; Kaygusuz Abdal, who is widely considered the founder of Alevi/Bektashi literature; and Pir Sultan Abdal, whom many consider to be the pinnacle of that literature.
16th-19th century
The two primary streams of Azerbaijani written literature are poetry and prose. Of the two, poetry—specifically, Divan poetry—was by far the dominant stream. Moreover, until the 19th century, Safavid prose did not contain any examples of fiction; that is, there were no counterparts to, for instance, the European romance, short story, or novel (though analogous genres did, to some extent, exist in both the Turkish folk tradition and in Divan poetry).
Divan poetry
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 müraat-i nəzir / تناسب tənasüb) and opposition (تضاد təzad)—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 cəhan; عالم aləm) — the rosegarden (ﮔﻠﺴﺘﺎن gülüstan; ﮔﻠﺸﻦ gülşən) the ascetic (زاهد zahid) — the dervish (درويش dərviş)