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Mirza Ali-Akbar Sabir
Portrait of Mirza Ali-Akbar Sabir
Born	30 May 1862 Shamakhi, Russian Empire
Died	12 July 1911 Baku, Azerbaijan Democratic Republic
Occupation	Satirist and poet
Language	Azerbaijani Persian

Mirza Ali-Akbar Tahirzada (Template:Lang-az), commonly known by his pseudonym Sabir (صابر), was a satirist and poet in the Russian Empire, who played a leading role in development of Azerbaijani literature.

Biography

Sabir was born on 30 May 1862 in the city of Shamakhi, then ruled by the Russian Empire. At the time, it was the largest city in the Shirvan region. Like the majority of Muslims in the South Caucasus, Sabir's native tongue was Turkic and he was an adherent of Shia Islam. He grew up in a religious, middle-class household where they did not seem to want to give him a modern education. During the start of his adolescence, he became a pupil of the distinguished poet Seyid Azim Shirvani, who had established a modern institution where Arabic, Persian, Azerbaijani Turkic, Russian and other topics were taught. Sabir started translating Persian poetry and writing Azerbaijani poetry with the support of Seyid Azim Shirvani.

Sabir's father wanted him to work in the family's grocery store, thinking that a few years of education would be sufficient. However, he eventually allowed Sabir to continue his literary research, due to the latters strong opposition, including an attempt to flee to Mashhad by a caravan. In Shirvan's literary circles, Sabir made a lot of acquaintances and composed numerous ghazals in the style of Persian poets, especially Nizami Ganjavi. In 1885, he travelled to several cities in Iran and Central Asia, thus expanding his intellectual knowledge and later inspired to write about the locals there. Following his return home, he married and became the father of eight daughters and one son.

Due to his large family, Sabir was forced to work a lot. He made soap for fifteen years, during which time he would joke "I make soap to wash away the external dirt of my countrymen." He attempted to establish a school in the European tradition, but failed. He also received numerous anonymous and hostile letters as a result of his criticism of the conversative factions. It was reportedly the journalist Hasem Beik Vezirov who sent him some of these letters. In the journal Sada, Sabir replied to him: "I am a poet, the mirror of my age/ in me everyone sees his own face/ As it happened yesterday, ‘a person’ looked at me /Seeing none other than himself in the mirror."

In 1903, Sabir's debut poem was published in the Tiblisi newspaper Sharq-e Rus ("East of Russia"). He was unknown outside of Shamakhi at the time. In 1909, he became a writer of the Molla Nasraddin satirical magazine, which was also based in Tiblisi. During a time where classical Persian poetry was favored by the elite and writers, the Molla Nasraddin used the everyday language of the Turks of the South Caucasus, a practice which was also taking place in other satirical journals. Sabir used many pseudonyms, but was commonly known as Sabir ("patient") and Hophop ("hoopoe"). Sabir and the editor of the Molla Nasraddin, Jalil Mammadguluzadeh, were well-known proponents of using Turkic in literature.

Compared to the European avant-garde and its small circle of Turco-Persian followers, Sabir's poetry had a bigger influence on poetic innovation across the Muslim communities of South Caucasus, Iran, and Central Asia.

Sabir died on 12 July 1911 in the city of Baku.

References

1. ^ Javadi 2020.
2. Bosworth 2020.
3. Rezvani 2015, p. 154.
4. ^ Hodgkin 2023, p. 45.
5. Hodgkin 2023, pp. 42, 45.

Sources

• Bosworth, Clifford Edmund (2020). "Šervān". Encyclopaedia Iranica Online. Brill. Retrieved 7 October 2024.
• Hodgkin, Samuel (2023). Persianate Verse and the Poetics of Eastern Internationalism. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1009411639.
• Javadi, Hasan (2020). "Ṣāber". Encyclopaedia Iranica Online. Brill. Retrieved 7 October 2024.
• Rezvani, Babak (2015). Conflict and Peace in Central Eurasia. International Comparative Social Studies. Vol. 31. Brill Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-27636-9.

Further reading

• Ed. (1995). "Ṣābir". In Bosworth, C. E.; van Donzel, E.; Heinrichs, W. P. & Lecomte, G. (eds.). The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Volume VIII: Ned–Sam. Leiden: E. J. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-09834-3.

• 1862 births
• 1911 deaths
• Azerbaijani-language poets
• Azerbaijani satirists
• People from Shamakhi
• Lyric poets
• Translators from Persian
• Translators to Azerbaijani
• Poets from the Russian Empire