BIOGRAPHY

Vagif occupies a prominent place in the history of Azerbaijan due to his literary and political activities. He was a great poet, the founder of new realism genre in the Azerbaijanian poetry and also a prominent statesman and diplomat, eshikagasi- the minister of foreign affairs in the Karabakh khanate.

Vagif was born in 1717 in the village of Salahly in the Kazakh district of Azerbaijan. When approximately forty years old he had to move to Shusha because of disorders in Kazakh at that time. Soon after coming to Shusha Vagif became popular and beloved among the people due to his knowledge and talents. There was even a saying: "Not every literate person can be Vagif".

When being the eshikagasi, Vagif did a lot for the prosperity and political growth of the Karabakh khanate. Also, he had outstanding deserts in organizing the heroic defense of Shusha during the invasion of shah Qajar of Persia in 1795 and 1797.

Vagif died during the disorders, which followed Qajar’s invasion of Shusha in 1797. At the time of his death his house was plundered and many of his verses were lost. However, interest to his poetry was not. Already in 1856 for the first time Vagif’s verses were collected and published by Mirza Yousif Nersesov. Soon afterwards, with assistance of M.F. Akhundov, his verses have been published by Adolph Berge in Leipzig in 1867. Thus, his heritage has been preserved.

Vagif began a new era in the Azeri poetry. In his poems he praised and gave priority to the mundane feelings and desires, rather than the abstract divine ones. This was the main characteristic that distinguished Vagif from his predecessors and made him the founder of the realism genre in the Azeri poetry. The language of the Vagif poems was qualitatively innovative as well: vivid, simple, and closely approaching to the popular speech. That’s why Vagif’s poems – koshma have had a great influence on the Azeri folklore and many of them repeatedly used in the folk music of ashuks.