BIOGRAPHY

Qatran Tabrizi was a poet of whom his contemporaries wrote: "All poets are drops in the ocean, and Qatran is the ocean". He lived at the end of the X and beginning of the XI centuries. Details of his life story are not known. All information we have is that he was born in Shadiabad near Tabriz, that as a young man he went to Ganje, where he earned fame at the palace of the Shaddadies and then returned home and died there.

As a literary tradition in the medieval Islamic Orient, Tabrizi wrote in Persian, although his contemporaries insist that there were also works in Azeri-Turkish. Nasir-i-Khosrov, a well-known Persian poet, and contemporary of Qatran Tabrizi write about him in his Safar-nameh: "In Tabriz I met a poet named Qatran. He wrote good poetry, but did not know Persian well. He came to me bringing the Divans of Manjik and Daqiqi (Persian medieval poets), which he read with me questioning me about every passage in which he found difficulty. Then I explained and he write down the explanation. He also recited to me some of his own poems". Other contemporaries of Qatran Tabrizi also consecrate separate notices to Qatran but are meager in biographical details as well. Qatran’s another contemporary, eminent medieval poet Rashiduddin Watwat used to say: "I consider Qatran as incontestably the master of poetry in our time, and regard the other poets as being so rather by natural genius than by artistic training". And it is certainly true, that with Qatran Tabrizi, poetry becomes infinitely more sophisticated than with most of his predecessors. He cultivated the more difficult verse forms, such as murabba (foursome), mukhammas (fivesome) and double-rhyme (dhu’l-qafiyatayn). In this latter device Qatran was especially skillful and though imitated by some later poets, is surpassed by few. Double rhyme artifice is very difficult to imitate in other languages’ translation and it is the special characteristic of all his verse. That’s why, for full evaluation of his merit his verses must be left to those who can read them in original.

We have inherited Qatran Tabrizi’s Persian language legacy, the most noteworthy of which are his historical poems about the wars fought in the XI c., his poetry describing the earthquake in Tabriz and his love and philosophical ghazals. His great lyrical divan numbers more than 18.000 distiches. Its importance is due partly due to its poetical value and partly to the elucidatory evidence it provides concerning contemporary events, persons and customs. That’s why Qatran’s works has aroused the interest of historians for in many cases he has perpetuated the names of members of regional dynasties of Azerbaijan and the Caucasus that would have otherwise fallen into oblivion.