WOMAN OF THE EAST

She went down in history as the first Muslim woman to become a professional orientalist. Dedicating her life to Arabic studies, he made an enormous contribution to the study of both ancient and modern Arabic literature and in fact, created a school of Arabic literature in Azerbaijan. This year marks 76 years since the birth of Aida Imanquliyeva.

The path to science

Her father was a well-known journalist, teacher and editor of Baku newspaper, Nasir Imanquliyev. He was very serious about fostering love for work and science in his daughter. As a result, Aida Imanquliyeva brilliantly graduated from high school with a gold medal. In school years, Aida chose oriental languages as her paths. She entered the Department of Peoples of the East, the same department where it was not easy to get in under the Soviets, especially for a girl. People studied there mostly not for the sake of science, but for a future career as a diplomat. Only incredible dedication and genuine interest in the profession allowed her to go through a rigorous certification commission.

"In the Soviet era which was a difficult time for highly talented people, especially women, when prominent women scientists, overloaded with the bustle of life, ran to the bazaar with a shopping bag during the break, sometimes failing to properly brush their hair, Aida stood out as a bright flower that defied the destructive environment," famous academician and physicist Cingiz Qacar said of her in an interview with R+.

Later, she attended the Institute of Peoples of Asia, and it was there that she engaged in her first serious translations. Imanquliyeva was not even 30 when she became a member of the Soviet Society of Orientalists, as well as a member of the Soviet Coordinating Council for the Study of Oriental Literature. Soon she wrote her first monographs on modern Arabic literature. She translated a lot of works of writers who had emigrated from Arab countries. With a detailed analysis of the studied materials, Imanquliyeva participated in symposiums and congresses in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Poltava, Tbilisi, Dushanbe and other cities. By 50, Aida Imanquliyeva was already the author of three books: "Michael Nucayme and the Association of the Pen", "Kahlil Gibran" and "Masters of New Arabic Literature" as well as more than seventy articles published in international scientific journals.

It is not surprising that later she became the first woman to lead the National Institute of Oriental Studies. Even in an administrative post, she did not forget her students, continuing teaching activities and research. At the time, she created a basic course on the study of modern Arabic literature, which was later used both in Azerbaijan and in the rest of the former Soviet Union. Aida Imanquliyeva also made open lectures at other universities, including Azerbaijan State University (now Baku State University). Students remembered her strictness towards themselves and others, as well as her high dedication to the beloved job. In the department of Arabic philology she was in charge of, more than 10 master's theses were defended in a short time under her direction (which is quite a lot for this discipline).

Sufism on the edge of East and West

The works of Imanquliyeva attached great importance to the study of the Lebanese prose. She often noticed how much links Azerbaijan to this country. Lebanon, judging by the work of the authors, also appeared to be on some cultural boundary between East and West. And on the example of the country, Aida Imanquliyeva, not as an Orientalist, but as a philosopher, tried to uncover the essence of interaction between civilizations and the particularities of the Eastern and Western ways of thinking that can manifest themselves only on this boundary. Islam, as noted by Aida Imanquliyeva, acquired Sufi features in the eyes of some Lebanese intellectuals, moving away from blind adherence to dogmas to high tolerance. In her writings, she translated and quoted a lot the popular medieval Arab theologian Ibn al-Arabi, a leading theoretician of Sufism. It should be noted that this part of works by Aida Imanquliyeva arouses the biggest interest among contemporaries today. Quoting the philosopher, she (a person of the Soviet atheistic era) speaks of the divine nature of the world in all its forms, saying that it is our duty to explore the world with eyes wide open because we come to know God through it. "I believe in the religion of love, wherever its caravans turn. Love is my religion and my faith!" she recalled the words of the theologian.

Memory

Unfortunately, Aida Imanquli-yeva left this world too early, at the age of 52, in the prime of her creative power. At the conference dedicated to her memory, the director of the Institute of Oriental Studies, member of parliament and professor Govhar Baxsaliyeva said of this beautiful woman: "Those who knew Aida Imanquliyeva and the students she taught were in love with her deep mind and spiritual beauty. Students admired her generosity and lectures. Her every movement expressed gentility. God was generous while creating her. The main qualities that characterize Aida Imanquliyeva were beauty, intelligence, generosity, exactingness towards themselves and the infinite love of family."

At one of the evenings in memory of Imanquliyeva dedicated to her 75th anniversary, her daughter, rector of the Baku branch of Moscow State Lomonosov University, Pro-fessor Nargiz Pasayeva, said: "The world is arranged so that a man's life belongs to the man, and life in general does not belong to him. Human life is just a moment, short, perhaps, mortal, but life is eternal and infinite. There are criteria that measure a person's life - hours, days, months and years. Human life is connected with one person, while life in general - with all mankind, with all that is on earth. Human life is understandable, because it has a beginning and an end, while life itself is not. After all, life has no beginning and no end. It has always been and will always be so, because human life is concrete, and life in general is abstract. All that is born lives according to the law of these two unities. There are people whose short life ends, but life goes on. We do not see them, cannot hear their voices, but our soul is speaking to them. Our eyes cannot see them, but their image, features and face are constantly in our minds, blood and heart, and this face will never leave us..."