LUCID SEYID

In those distant times there were no bookshops here, and schools only taught people to read, write and count. This is why educational activities were particularly important and hard work. In the case of SeyidAzim Sirvani [Shirvani;1835-1888], he united within himself both the many-century-long experience of the East as well as contemporary European culture.

His path

Sirvani had every opportunity to become a member of the clergy, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. This is precisely what his family really wanted. When he was a young man, they sent him to Iraq and Egypt, where he received the spiritual title of akhund, when he had completed his studies. But, when he returned to his home town in 1855, Seyid Azim Sirvani started to show great interest in everything secular, first and foremost in literature and the sciences. In this sense, his views and even his biography coincide with what other educators of that age had to experience and interpret. When he returned and abandoned his would-be career to spite his relatives, the promising young man began to learn Russian as well to add to Persian [Dari] and Arabic. Before that, when he was in Baghdad, he had mastered the literature of the East, but once he got home, he was intent on acquainting himself with the culture of the West through Russian. Soon he was translating the poetry of Pushkin and Nekrasov into Azeri; then he opened a Russian-Azerbaijani school in Shamakhi, in which the main focus was the study of the secular sciences, as well as the Azeri and Russian languages. Schools like this began to open in other towns and cities. Besides the religious dogmas, Sirvani read his pupils the verses of ancient and contemporary Azeri poets as well as his own translations of Eastern free-thinkers and philosophers like Saadi [1210-1291], Hafiz and Omar Khayyam [1050-1123].

At that time there were hardly any translations of foreign poetry, either eastern or western, and Sirvani had to sweat his guts out to bring even a small amount of the many-century-long experience of world culture to the children. He translated a lot himself while simultaneously trying to set up a school of translation in Samaxi. "Sirvani did, according to his enemies, have a difficult character; in actual fact he was a no-nonsense person who scorned hypocrisy and sanctimoniousness, primarily that of the priesthood," the historian Tahir Ismayilov says in an interview with Regionplus. "It ended with Sirvani being driven from the very school he had founded by a group of champions of the old-fashioned conservative teaching, owing to his unreliable conversations with pupils.

Water wears away the stone

According to the historian, Sirvani's sensational, absurd dismissal, as well as his pupils' love of him and the admiration of his friends, inspired by his doggedness, led to a circle of young and mature free-thinkers being formed around Seyid Azim. As a result, Seyid Azim set up and headed the "Beyt-us-Safa" ("Home of the Pure") literary association, which brought together in it all the most progressively thinking people in the town. And then he began to maintain ties with associations in Baku, Quba, Susa [Shusha; Karabakh], and Ordubad. "That was not officially a school. People simply got together, exchanged books and opinions on what they had read, talked a lot about literature, religion, history, and the natural sciences," Ismayilov says. 

Sirvani's works in that period were gazals, rubais, kasydis and marsiyes [forms of Oriental poetry] in the style of love lyrics.

Someone might ask, "What kind of free thinking was that?" But in actual fact the greater part of the lyric poetry in that period was extremely "puritanical", insincere and significantly chaste. But Sirvani continued in the traditions of the great predecessors such as Fizuli [1494-1556], Omar Khayyam and other poets of "earthly love". Besides this, he wrote stories in verse, a number of fables, parables, epistles, as well as numerous publicistic works. These were first and foremost works of literary criticism and a textbook compiled by him on literature in the Azeri [Turkic] language.

Numerous verses by Sirvani, as well as most of his stories, fables and articles are devoted the superiority of the human mind, individuality and the struggle against dogmas. He spoke a lot about the fact that only all-round education was capable of enriching a person spiritually, but that spirituality without knowledge was only arrogance, lies and hypocrisy. Sirvani was an outstanding humanist of his age; he did not divide mankind up into religions and peoples and thought that humanistic values were for the poet considerably superior to ethnos or creed. He often repeated his two-line saying written for a farce, "Don't tell me that I am a giaour [non-Muslim] or a Muslim. He who is well educated is human".

His poem "Appeal to the Muslims of the Caucasus", in which he appealed to Muslims to master the natural science knowledge, to reject superstition and fanaticism, to take to the path of progress, of cultural revival, evoked heated arguments. Sirvani was not fighting against religion that would not have allowed him to produce intelligent attitudes and thoughts. On the contrary, as a rampant atheist, he could turn out to be an obsessed dogmatist just like his opponents.

Free-thinking

Free-thinking was Seyid Azim Sirvani's only true ideal. He translated Pushkin, assessing the latter's verses highly and only sorry that Pushkin had died when Seyid Azim himself was only two. When a monument to Pushkin was unveiled in Moscow in 1880, he wrote verses in his honour, in which he spoke of the immense significance of the Russian poet's heritage to the peoples of the East and the whole world.

His contribution to Azerbaijani satire is of great importance. In actual fact, in this connection Sirvani could be called the first Azerbaijani satirist poet. A whole pleiad of followers came in his wake, which made satire the most popular trend in the literary art by the end of the century. It was precisely Sirvani who had a great influence on the works of Mirza Alakbar Sabir, Azerbaijan's greatest poet and satirist at the turn of the century.

His verses and stories are not just topical, but scathing with regard to   his contemporaries. At times, they are gloomy and grotesque, although they do as a rule have an optimistic, moralistic ending in a traditionally didactic style. He speaks about the equality of all peoples, about the freedom of the spirit and the mind, about fairness and humanism, about tolerance towards those close to you and mutual understanding.

The features of the educational attitude of Axundov, the lyricism of Fizuli [1494-1556] and Mola PanahVaqif and the topicality and irony of Zakir are harmoniously combined in Seyid Azim Sirvani's works. His works vary in subjects and genres. Noteworthy among his fables are "A Bribe to God", "Funeral of a Dog", "Satan", and "The Khan and the Peasant".

Seyid Azim Sirvani was a poet, educator, multi-linguist, writer and pedagogue whose contribution to Azerbaijani literature cannot be overestimated. And today, across the centuries, it is difficult to imagine that a single person could confront backwardness for so long and so persistently, being of fine wit and hard-working; he would tackle any task and, in spite of the difficulties, remained a teacher for hundreds of his followers.