Mirza Fatali Akhundov
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Mirza Fatali Akhundov (Azeri: Mirzə Fətəli Axundov), earlier – Akhundzadeh (12 July 1812, Nukha [present name: Shaki] – 9 March 1878, Tiflis [present name:Tbilisi]), was an Azerbaijani prose writer, dramatist, philosopher, founder of the modern realist school and literary criticism. Akhundov singlehandedly opened a new stage of development of Azerbaijani literature.
[edit] Life
Akhundov was born in 1812 in Shaki in the family of wealthy landowners originally from Iranian Azerbaijan. His parents, and especially his uncle Haji Alaskar, who was Fatali's first teacher prepared young Fatali for a career in Shi'a clergy, but the young man was attracted to the literature. Akhundov's encounter in Ganja in 1832 with Mirza Shafi Vazeh, a famous Azerbaijani lyric poet and philosopher influenced the writer profoundly. It was Vazeh, who inspired him with "enlightened ideas, removing from [his] eyes the veil of ignorance". Later in 1834 Akhundov moved to Tiflis (present-day Tbilisi, Georgia), where he worked as a translator of Oriental languages. In Tiflis his acquaintance and friendship with the exiled Russian Decembrists Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, Vladimir Odoevsky, poet Yakov Polonsky and others played a large part in formation of Akhundov's europeanized outlook.
Akhundov's first published work was The Oriental Poem (1837) written on the death of the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. But the rise of Akhundov's literary activity comes in the 1850s. In the first half of the 1850s, Akhundov wrote six comedies – the first comedies in Azerbaijani literature as well as the first samples of the national dramaturgy. The comedies by Akhundov are unique in their critical pathos, analysis of the realities in Azerbaijan of the first half of XIX c. These comedies found numerous responses in the Russian other foreign periodical press. The German Magazine of Foreign Literature called Akhundov "dramatic genius", "the Azerbaijani Molière" 1. Akhundov's sharp pen was directed against everything that hindered the way of progress, freedom and enlightement, and at the same time his comedies were imbued with the feeling of faith in the bright future of the Azerbaijani people.
In 1859 Akhundov published his short but famous novel The Deceived Stars. In this novel he laid the foundation of Azerbaijani realistic historical prose, giving the models of a new genre in Azerbaijani literature. By his comedies and dramas Akhundov established realism as the leading trend in Azerbaijani literature.
In the 1920s, the Azerbaijan State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre was named after Akhundov.
[edit] Alphabet Reform
Well ahead of his time Akhundov was a keen advocate for alphabet reform, recognizing deficiencies of Arabic script with regards to Turkic sounds. He and began his work regarding alphabet reform in 1850. His first efforts focused on modifying the Arabic script so that it would more adequately satisfy the phonetic requirements of the Azeri language. First, he insisted that each sound be represented by a separate symbol - no duplications or omissions. The Arabic script expresses only three vowel sounds, whereas Azeri needs to identify nine vowels. Later, he openly advocated the change from Arabic to a modified Latin alphabet.
