"OH, MY MUSLIM BROTHERS!"

The trajectory of Calil Mammadquluzada's life - dramatist, writer, poet, and journalist - did not differ all that much from his contemporaries. And there is some consistency to this. As a person standing at the forefront of humanism, proclaiming the supreme value of human life, he could not help but confront officials and clerics who opposed him and who represented the most backwards people to exist in that era.

A new sounding feuilleton

Calil Mammadquluzada was born on 10 (22) February 1866 in Nakhchivan. His grandfather, a mason named Huseyn Qulu, moved there from Iranian Azerbaijan and started a family. Jalil received his early education at madrassas belonging to well-known mullahs who taught children using Arabic and Persian curricula, Sharia religious texts, or Gulistan by the great poet Sa'di of Shiraz. Calil Mammadquluzada's matriculation at the Gori pedagogical seminary in 1882 proved to be a turning point in his life. In 1898, he moved to Erivan, and in 1903 he moved to Tiflis, where he began working in the editorial office of the local Azerbaijani newspaper Sarqi-Rus. In 1906, he founded the satirical magazine Molla Nasraddin and remained its editor for 25 years (with interruptions).

Many of his stories and plays were made into movies that we know from childhood. Mammadguluzada produced works of various genres, including plays, essays, short stories and satire. His first best-known work is "The Disappearance of the Donkey" (the first story in The Events in the Village of Danabas series). In it, the writer touched on issues related to social inequality. In later works (The Postbox, The Iranian Constitution, Qurban Ali bay, The Lamb), including the famous comedies The Corpses and The Madmen Gathering, he criticized ignorance, arrogance, and religious fanaticism.

Mammadguluzada’s biggest success (and headache) was the magazine Molla Nasraddin. The magazine had a great educational impact not only on our society, but also on our Persian neighbours. The publication's main strength lay in the sharpness, topicality and depth of its satirical articles. Literary critic, writer and journalist Hasan Quliyev wrote on this subject: "Of Calil Mammadquluzada's works, his satirical writing - one of the most effective literary genres - acquired a new political and social significance and achieved an artistic excellence. With masterful skill, the writer responded to all the major events of the era using artistic means of this genre."

And Mammadquluzada's words, unfortunately, remain relevant today: "Oh, my Muslim brothers! If you hear me say something funny... don't think that you are laughing at Molla Nasraddin. Oh, my Muslim brothers! If you want to know who you are laughing at, put a mirror in front of you and take a good long look at your reflection. "

One of the main topics dealt with by Mammadquluzada and his magazine was the dominance of tsarist officials, their bureaucracy and corruption. In addition, the magazine, entering into publication beginning in 1905 in Tbilisi, was the only source from which people could obtain information about the real situation in the empire. It is important to remember that in those years, Tsarist Russia was enduring an unprecedented crisis and poverty associated both with failed reforms and with the Russian-Japanese war, which did not turn out to be "small and victorious". The situation resulted in the Revolution of 1905. Popular riots then swept both Tbilisi and Baku. The Tsar's secret police went on a rampage, and the first magazine to be banned in Tbilisi was Molla Nasraddin. This despite the fact that it was published in a language not known to most of the city's population.

Names of eternity

Despite all these obstacles, the magazine continued to be published and demand only grew. Issues of  the magazine were delivered by train (commercial, not post) to Baku and then on to Tabriz.

It should be said that in Persia, the magazine was as relevant as ever. 1905 was a time of unrest and revolution in Iran; the country was on the verge of collapse. In the midst of all of this, in northern Iran, the bourgeois reformers won out and as a result, there were no obstacles to the magazine being published there. It was quite natural then for Molla Nasraddin to move to Tabriz when it became too disagreeable for local clerical and imperial circles in Tbilisi and Baku to tolerate. In 1912, the printing press in Tbilisi which printed the magazine was shut down and fined a large sum. As a result, Molla Nasraddin was nowhere to be seen for a year. Then, in 1913, the entire staff moved to Baku, where publishing began anew. But just a year later work was brought to a halt, too. Three years before the October Revolution Nasraddin was published in Tabriz. From here, issues were sent to Baku, Tbilisi and other cities within Iran, Turkey and even Egypt. In 1917,  a special resolution by the Empire's censorship committee banned the magazine from being printed or being brought in from abroad. Calil Mammadquluzada believed in the future, progress, and the triumph of the human mind. He initially welcomed the Soviet system (in the early years there was an increase in levels of education, progressive thought - everything that Mammadquluzada had dreamed about), but towards the end of his life in the 1930s, he showed growing scepticism. He resigned from the magazine, and his colleagues dispersed, some died. By the end, Molla Nasraddin was not what it once was. It became less and less topical. Shortly before his death, Mammadguluzada wrote in a letter to a friend: "I would like it if in a few years, some little boy will find an issue of Molla Nasraddin and think to himself, what idiot wrote this." That's right - his hope was that someday the magazine would lose its relevance and cease to be understood by the younger generation.

Calil Mammadquluzada died 4 January 1932 from a brain haemorrhage. In the last years of his life he wrote memoirs, which, unfortunately, he did not finish.

Today, no one knows the names of those who signed the censorship orders, who put a stop to the performances put on by the playwright. But we do remember those who worked at Nasraddin. They are the great satirical poet Mirza Alakbar Sabir, the author of the epic novel Sword and the Pen Mammad Said Ordubadi, theatre director, playwright and translator Abdurrahim bay Haqverdiyev (during the Soviet years, he was known for directing Leyli and Macnun). And Nasraddin's illustrator was Azim Azimzada.

In the play Forget Herostratus by remarkable playwright Grigory Gorin, the wife of the ruler of the city of Ephesus asks Herostratus why he burned down the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, to which he answers with the rhetorical question: "Who built the Temple of Artemis? Well, who? Don't torture yourself, you probably forgot the name of the architect. But you will always remember the name Herostratus. "In our case, we can say that the manuscripts did not burn, that art is eternal, and Herostratus was wrong. The city of Calilabad was named after Mammadquluzada.