The Amazon, Singer of Sorrows Who Conquered the Shah: Muslim Poetesses Who Made Legends

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Eastern poetry is full of its geniuses. Western readers are well aware of the names of Omar Khayyam or Rudaki. But the names of the poetesses who have become famous for centuries, and the legends around their personality and life are still unknown. Mekhseti Ganjavi, Lal Dead or Robiai Balkhi shocked their contemporaries no less than our Yesenin or Tsvetaeva, and did not endure no less dramas and tragedies than Akhmatova or Mayakovsky. Only with a Muslim flavor.

Mehseti Ganjavi

There are not many monuments to women in Azerbaijan, and the monument in the city of Ganja attracts the attention of tourists. He depicts one of the brightest representatives of Persian-language poetry, a native of the city of Mekhseti Ganjavi.

Mehseti not only wrote poetry, but also traveled, having managed to live in cities such as Balkha, Merva, Nishapur and Herat. In addition, she took part in poetry meetings on an equal basis with men. And this is in the twelfth century.

Mehseti's poems are so bold - they often glorify the beauty of young masters - that many doubted whether the poetess was really or her name was used as a cover for women who dared to write poems about love and the joy of drinking wine. Several years ago, the director of the National Museum of Azerbaijani Literature, Rafael Huseynov, had to conduct a real investigation to prove that Mekhseti existed, and at the same time find out the details of her life.

Her poems were widely quoted in the Persian-speaking regions of Asia, as well as where Farsi was the second language of the educated elite.

Lal Dead

The only non-Muslim poet on this list, however, is known for using Sufi motives and stories in her work. But Grandma Lal became famous (as her nickname is translated) not for this.

Lalla lived in India in the fourteenth century. She was born into a family where Shiva was revered, and she herself honored him all her life. Her fate, it seemed, was determined to become commonplace. At the age of 12, she was married and there was nothing ahead of her, except for children and grandchildren. But one day Lalla, disillusioned with the life of a housewife, left home and began to wander along all Indian roads. And at the same time to compose poetry.

Although Lalla did not know how to write, people liked her poems so much that they were passed from mouth to mouth and have survived to this day. Basically, their theme revolves around the frailty of life. In the East, this was appreciated.

Uvaisi: Singer of Sorrow

The Uzbek poet Uvaysi was born in the 18th century in the city of Margilan. Her father took care of her future, gave a good secular education and was a thousand times right. Uvaisi was early widowed and managed to raise her children because she got a job as a teacher in a wealthy family. Her student was another classic of Uzbek poetry, the wife of the Kokand ruler Omar Khan Nadir

Alas, Uvaisi lost early not only her husband, but also her daughter Kuyash. And her son was taken into the army and sent far from home. It is not surprising that Uvaisi entered the national memory as the Poetess of Sorrow.

And she also created the Chistan genre - riddles in verse. She invented them for her students. Wrote Uvaysi and love poems. As an allusion to striving for Allah or in the truest sense of the word "love" - think what you want.

Natavan

Princess Natavan was unsuccessfully married, and there was no love in her marriage. Fortunately, her husband eventually divorced her. But her eldest son died, so she didn't feel like writing funny poems.

Legend has it that Natavan was not only gifted, but also intelligent. Once she and her husband met with Alexandre Dumas. The writer sat down to play chess with the poetess, and she won. The prize was Dumas' chess set, and Natavan kept it for a long time.

The two Natavan aunts were also famous poets. One of them, Agabadzhi, the daughter of the Karabakh Khalil Khan, was in love with her cousin. But she was married to the Iranian Shah for diplomatic reasons.

They say that all the new wives of the khan were first brought to a special hall with outfits so that they would choose a dress for themselves. Agabadzhi immediately rushed to the dress of the Shah's deceased mother and put it on. The shah was so shocked by her appearance that he did not dare to touch her as his wife. Subsequently, out of respect, he made the poetess his main wife.

Robiai Balkhi

The Persian-speaking poet Robiai was the daughter of Arab émigrés who settled in Khorasan in the tenth century. Her poems amazed with the perfection of contemporaries and aroused the envy of male poets. One of them, the famous Rudaki, read Robiai's love poem at a feast where her brother was present, and added that in this poem the girl confessed her love to a Turkic slave. The brother committed honor murder that night by locking the poetess with open veins in a bathhouse.

According to legend, with her blood she wrote the last love poem on the wall of the bathhouse. It begins with the lines:

Without you, oh handsome man, eyes are two streams …

Chanda-bibi, amazon and poet

Linguists adore Chandu-bibi, because she wrote all the poems in the most relevant, as they would say now, language and they clearly show how the Urdu language changed in the eighteenth century under the Persian influence. But she went down in history as an Amazon poet.

In early childhood, Chandu took her childless maternal aunt, a lady of the court, into her upbringing, but in fact, the aunt's lover, Prime Minister Nawab Rukn-ud-Daula, was involved in the upbringing. Perhaps the minister was a fan Delhi ruler Razii-Sultan - he taught his unnamed daughter to ride and shoot a bow. In addition, the girl received unlimited access to his rich library. By the age of fourteen, she was already a good warrior and in her youth she participated in three military campaigns in men's clothing. And even received a bow and a spear as a military award.

As an adult, Chandu-bibi, like her aunt, did not marry, but made a permanent lover, one of the military leaders. Then she also met with two or three prime ministers. She is said to have enchanted them with her rare dancing talent.

In addition, she made a court career and was the only woman in Hyderabad to rise to the title of lobster. Sandals also became the first woman in her region to compete in public poetry.

Before her death, Chanda-bibi distributed all her possessions to the poor, and her estate now houses a college for girls. Until now, the image of the Amazon poetess excites the minds of descendants.

Alas, Robiai was not the only Muslim poet to fall victim to honor killing. Already in our days, Afghan woman Nadia Anjuman died like this.