Moscow marks poet Nizami’s 870th anniversary

On September 29, the celebration's arrangements will start in Ganja. They are dedicated to the 870th birthday of poet and thinker Nizami Ganjavi who is famous for the synthesis of Turk and Persian cultures and Azerbaijani contribution to this synthesis. More than 50 guests from 20 countries were invited for participation in the arrangements in Azerbaijan.

Meanwhile, Moscow has already marked the anniversary. The ambassador of Azerbaijan in Moscow, Polad Byul-Byul Ogly, stated that “in Azerbaijan Nizami’s works has always been important. A lot of books were written about him, many dissertations were defended, and plenty of movies were shot. Till civilized and educated people live, works of this great poet, outstanding thinker and philosopher will be remembered. When I was the ministry of culture, we erected a splendid monument in Moscow in 1991. In 1991 also a big anniversary concert dedicated to Nizami was held in the Bolshoi Theater. Also the monument is standing in one of cultural centers of the world – in the Russian city of St.-Petersburg. There is a very beautiful monument and a very beautiful garden named after Nizami. We are proud that Russian intelligent people, poets, writers, critics treat respectively Nizami’s works. Azerbaijani people will never forget that in the hardest years of the Great Patriotic War in Leningrad under bombing Nizami’s anniversary was marked. Papers and invitations remained. When Leningrad was attacked Russian educated people found an opportunity to mark Nizami’s anniversary in Hermitage. Of course, such moments of history cannot be forgotten; they will always live in our memory.”

“Today we say that the mass media, television, and Internet have turned the world into a big village,” the chairman of the Azerbaijani Writers Union, Anar Razayev, says. “But 800 years before it the world became a big village in Nizami’s works. His characters are Arab lovers Leili and Medjnun, Azerbaijani tsarina Nushabe, Slavic beauties, a Chinese artist, Sassanid emperors of Iran, and Turk khagans. Shuffling times and countries, Nizami created the global picture of the modern world without leaving Ganja. He was born, spent his life and was buried in this city. But he took the whole world to Ganja and became a citizen of the whole world. He was an age mate of Moscow, because in 1948 the 800th anniversary of Nizami was marked, and the 800th anniversary of Moscow was marked parallel to it.”

“There are names in history, which shine in the sky of the world culture as bright stars,” Yugeny Sidorov, the chairman of the Moscow Writers Union, thinks. “Nizami Ganjavi is one of them. The great poet of the East, the son of Azerbaijani land, the person of all times who influenced poems and epos of next generations. Five narrative poems by Nizami can fairly be compared with Homer’s epos. What would we know about ancient Greeks, their households, their wars, their women and heroes without the Iliad and the Odyssey? What would we know about the routine and cultural world of Iranians, Azerbaijani, Armenians, Georgians, and Syrians of late Middle Ages, their shahs and servants, common people and tsars, women and warriors without Nizami? What is the most important we wouldn’t touch upon the source of love and human dignity which flows from pages of poems “Hosrov and Shirin”, “Leili and Mejnun”. The characters became nominal, eternal images of the world literature.”

“The common mortal name of the man is Abu Muhammed Ilyas ibn Yusuf. The immortal eternal heaven name is Nizami Ganjavi. It means Nizami from Ganja,” the translator of Nizami works Alla Akhundova explains. “For more than 8 centuries greatest military commanders and warriors were called by this word. And only one poet was honored with this name. ‘Nizami’, what does it mean? It is an Arab word which means “system, order, law, charter, guidance, and an accurately threaded string of pearls.” The whole educated East calls the poet a genius threader of pearl words. He played the sense of the word ‘nizami’ up in his poems.”

The tsar of poetry tsars.
I’ve reached perfection in it.
The sky, time, and space
Agree with my leadership.
A bell of great glory
Is the echo of my breath.
And my pen runs across the world
As a conquering banner.