Jalil Mammadguluzadeh
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Jalil Huseyngulu oglu Mammadguluzadeh (Azeri: Cəlil Məmmədquluzadə; Persian: جليل محمدقلی زاده; spelled: Jalil Mohammad Gholizadeh) (22 February 1866, Nakhichevan – 4 January 1932, Baku) was an Azerbaijani satirist and writer of Iranian descent.[1]
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[edit] Life
Mammadguluzadeh was born in Nakhichevan into an Iranian merchant family from Khoy.[1] In 1887, he graduated from the Gori Pedagogical Seminary and for the next 10 years was involved in teaching at rural schools in Bash-Norashen, Ulukhanli, Nehram and other towns and villages of the Erivan Governorate.[2] Mammadguluzadeh was a strong activist of the language unification movement. He condemned many of his contemporaries for corrupting the Azeri language replacing its genuine vocabulary with the newly-introduced Russian, Persian and Ottoman Turkish loanwords, often alien and confusing to many readers. Later he became deeply involved in the process of romanization of the Azeri alphabet. In 1898, he moved to Erivan and in 1903, – to Tiflis where he became a columnist for the local Sharqi-Rus newspaper published in the Azeri language. In 1906, he founded the Molla Nasraddin satirical magazine. Frequent military conflicts and overall political instability in the Caucasus forced him to move to Tabriz, Iran, where he continued his career as a chief-editor and columnist for Molla Nasraddin. He eventually settled in Baku in 1921.
In 1907, Jalil Mammadguluzadeh married Azerbaijani philantropist and feminist Hamida Javanshir. He died in Baku, in 1932. A drama theatre in Nakhichevan, a street in Baku, the city of Jalilabad (former Astrakhan-Bazaar) and the town of Jalilkand (former Bash-Norashen) were named after him.
[edit] Molla Nasraddin
In 1905, Mammadguluzadeh and his companions purchased a printing-house in Tiflis, and in 1906 he became the editor of the new Molla Nasraddin illustrated satirical magazine.[3] The magazine was Mammadguluzadeh's greatest contribution to Azeri culture, further pursuing the development of critical realism among the Azeri literati. The magazine accurately portrayed social and economic realities of the early-20th century society and backward norms and practices common in the Caucasus. In 1921 (after Molla Nasraddin was banned in Russia in 1917), Mammadguluzadeh published 8 more issues of the magazine in Tabriz, Iran.[4] After Sovietization, the printing-house was moved to Baku, where Molla Nasraddin was published until 1931. Mammadguluzadeh's satirical style influenced the development of this genre in Iran.[1]
[edit] Literature
Jalil Mammadguluzadeh wrote in various genres, including short stories, novels, essays, and dramatics. His first significant short story entitled The Disappearance of the Donkey (part of his Stories from the village of Danabash series), written in 1894 and published in 1934, touched upon social inequality. In his later works (The Postbox, The Iranian Constitution, Gurban Ali bey, The Lamb, etc.), as well as in his famous comedies The Corpses and The Madmen Gathering he ridiculed corruption, snobbery, ignorance, religious fanatism, etc.[5]
In addition to his native Azeri, he was also proficient in Persian and Russian languages. After Molla Nasreddin, Mammadguluzadeh published several other stories including "Freedom in Iran". [1]
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d (Persian) Molla Nasraddin and Jalil Mammadguluzadeh by Ebrahim Nabavi BBC Persian. 6 July 2006
- ^ (Russian) Mammadguluzadeh, Jalil by Hasan Guliyev. Литературный Азербайджан
- ^ Language and Alphabet Transitions. Azerbaijan International. #8.1. Summer 2000
- ^ Famous Personalities of Nakhichevan: Jalil Mammadguluzadeh. Shexsiyyeter.nakhchivan.az
- ^ (Russian) Mammadguluzadeh, Jalil, an entry from the Great Soviet Encyclopædia
[edit] External links
- The Postbox by Jalil Mammadguluzadeh (a short story, written in 1903 and published in the Sharqi-Rus in 1904). Azerbaijan International. #7.1. Spring 1999
- Maybe They'll Give It All Back by Jalil Mammadguluzadeh (written in the late 1920s). Azerbaijan International. #7.1. Spring 1999
