THE ENLIGHTENER

A rather short period in Azerbaijan's history, from the end of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century, turned out to be profuse in outstanding figures whose work in education and literature made an immense contribution to the awakening of the national awareness of the Azerbaijani people. A special place in his plethora of outstanding individuals belongs to Firudin bay Kocarli, who would have been 150 years old in January this year. He was born in Susa [Shusha] in the family of the not so prosperous Ahmad bay. He was studying at a local Russian-Tatar school when in 1879 an inspector from the Tatar branch of the Transcaucasian Teachers Seminary, Aleksey Osipovich Chernyayevskiy, arrived in Gori to select the first intake of students for this establishment which was about to open. And Ahmad bay was among those few who decided to send his son to the seminary. After graduating from the seminary Firudin bay worked for ten years as a teacher at the Erivan Upper Secondary School. He later organized a theatrical performance in Erivan of Mirza Fatali Axundov's comedy "Monsieur Jordan and the Dervish Mastalishah", which became a big cultural event in the life of the town.

In 1895 Firudin bay Kocarli was invited to the Transcaucasian Teachers Seminary in Gori. He worked here until the end of his life, in 1918 moving the Azerbaijani branch of the school to Qazax and creating the Qazax Teachers Seminary on its basis. In 1917-18 Kocarli was involved with the Provisional National Council of Muslims of Transcaucasia (later the Azerbaijani National Council), which proclaimed the independence of the Azerbaijani Democratic Republic.

Firudin bay Kocarli's artistic legacy is a great one. He was one of the first Azerbaijani scholars to raise the question of the standardization of the Azerbaijani literary language. In 1895 he published his first article - "Turkic Comedies"- and in 1904 "Letters about our literature". In 1903 in Tiflis his book "The Literature of the Azerbaijani Turks" was published in Russian and it proved to be very popular in the literary circles of imperial Russia. In it his numerous writings about the 130 works of Azerbaijani writers and poets, which until then had not been collated into a single coherent scholarly work, were chronicled with a profound knowledge of the creative work of his compatriots. The work summarized the names of Azerbaijani writers and poets who until then were virtually unknown. In subsequent years he published "Mirza Fatali Axundov" (1911) and "Gift to Children" (1912). Along with this Kocarli translated the works of Russian (Pushkin, Lermontov, Chekhov and Koltsov) and European authors into Azerbaijani. He also wrote articles full of love for the work of Nikolay Gogol, Lev Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov.

Inspired by his success and encouraged by his friends, Kocarli started work on his book "The Literature of the Azerbaijani Turks" in Azerbaijani, which by the end of 1908 had developed into a two-volume work - the first authoritative source on literary studies. However, the author's numerous attempts to get the book published were in vain. Publishers were not convinced that the book would sell, that it would pay for itself and make a profit. But people of substance were in no hurry to make the people such a generous gift as the publication of a book. As a result, it was not published until 1926, after the author's death.

In the political and social confusion caused by sovietization, Kocarli was arrested, brought to Ganca and executed at the age of 58 without trial or investigation by a special detachment of the XI Red Army. He was murdered on 4 June 1920, after the suppression of the Ganca uprising. In a document prepared by an investigator of the special branch of a division approved by Commissar Extraordinary Hamid Sultanov, Firudin bay Kocarli was accused of "coercion against the working people"…Later, Nariman Narimanov, who highly rated Kocarli's work, ordered that the person responsible for his execution be found and punished.

The first scholar to study Kocarli's legacy was the graduate student, Bakir Nabiyev, who in 1957 devoted his master's thesis to Firudin bay Kocarli. The young scholar spent a lot of time gathering his material. Seeking out Kocarli's surviving colleagues and students, visiting all the places where documents might still be found and rummaging in archives, he pieced together a picture of a man whose memory was to become sacred for his descendants. In 1960 Bakir Nabiyev (later a full member of the Azerbaijani National Academy of Sciences and director of the Institute of Literature) completed work on his monograph of Kocarli's contribution to the country's academic literature. In it he wrote about a teacher from God, about a man who became a scholar thanks to his concerned attitude to the people around him and to everything worthy of attention, due to his ability to contemplate and evaluate all that he knew about life. Bakir Nabiyev rescued from oblivion the name of a remarkable academic trailblazer. It was only after this that proper tribute was paid to Kocarli at state level and that his merits, which had been suppressed from 1920 to 1957, were appreciated.

Kocarli was married to Badisabah Kocarli (nee Velikova), a native of Qazax, who later worked as a teacher in schools in Baku, Zaqatali and Nuxa (Saki). They had no children. As he was childless, Firudin bay devoted himself to educating the younger generation and for his own sake took care of every student and concentrated on improving pedagogical science in general and simply on how to teach the unsophisticated village boys how to find their way in life, the elementary norms of communication, how to make friends and respect others…

In 2005 Firudin bay Kocarli's two-volume work "Azerbaijani Literature" became one of the first in a list of works to see the light in the series "Classical Azerbaijani Literature". Published with a print-run of 25,000 copies, it was supplied free of charge to libraries, scientific and higher educational establishments and schools where it helped everyone with a thirst for knowledge who wished to broaden their outlook, educate taste and sharpen their analytical skills. Kocarli was not only a teacher and a scholar of literary criticism. He was a remarkable writer and translator and also a social commentator who responded to all the acute problems of the life of the people and society. His articles on the enlightenment of the people, the place of women in society and religion were distinguished by his profound knowledge of the subject, the acuteness of the questions he asked, the precision and clarity of his arguments and his progressive stance. There is much to say about Kocarli, so versatile was his work.

A vivid example of Firudin bay Kocarli's public awareness work is his article which a R+ correspondent found in library archives. Kocarli's work "The Tragedy in Karbala" about the well-known events in the history of Islam was published in the Kaspiy newspaper in 1913. Firudin bay gave a precise assessment to historical events and tragedies that occurred at the beginning of the month of Muharram in year 61 AH (year 681) in the Karbala Desert, as a result of which the Imam Hussein, his family and all his accomplices were treacherously betrayed and murdered by the followers of Yazid. This clash left lasting traces in the history of Islam. At the same time Kocarli gives his own enlightened argument: "In memory of this sad event Muslims annually observe mourning during the month of Muharram. On the tenth day of this month, the day of Ashura, the most ardent of them subject themselves to all kinds of physical suffering, for example they beat themselves with chains, thrust heavy articles into various parts of their body, strike themselves on the head with a sharp instrument, and so on. Such observation of mourning runs counter to the spirit of the Muslim religion; it is a crude demonstration of fanaticism of a vulgar rabble supported, unfortunately, by a section of our clergy. Of course, it also angers the spirit of the martyr imam who sacrificed himself not for the suffering of his descendants but to ease their lot and to rescue and liberate them from delusion and the oppression of despotism."