Mirza Fath 'Ali Akhund-zada (dramatist, 1812–1878)

Mirza Fath 'Ali Akhund-zada (1812–1878) was the first writer of original plays in a Turkish idiom, the Azerbaijani (Adhari) Turkish of the Caucasus. ¹

He was the son of a trader from Persian Azerbaijan and was born at Sheki, now Nukha. The Encyclopaedia of Islam gives 1812; Caferoglu gives 1811. A relative gave him a good literary and philosophical education, which drew him closer to liberal ideas than the Islamic theology he had meant to study. After lessons from a religious teacher at Ganja (Karabakh) he trained at the newly opened Russian intermediate school for Muslims at Sheki. In his youth he wrote in the style of Persian poetry, including an elegy on Pushkin's death. ¹

The advance of the theatre at Tiflis under the military governor, Prince Vorontsov (1844–48), gave him his push towards drama; he worked in Vorontsov's chancellery as an oriental interpreter. Between 1850 and 1857 he wrote six comedies and a historical-satirical narrative in Adhari Turkish. The plays include the Story of Molla Ibrahim Khalil the alchemist (1850); the Story of Monsieur Jourdan, a herbalist, and of the famous magician Mostali Shah (1850); the Adventures of the vezir of a khan (1850); the Story of the bear that caught the robber (1852); the Adventures of the miser (1852–53); and the Story of the attorneys in a lawsuit (1855). The narrative, of 1857, is given in the article as "The betrayed stars". ¹

In the plays and the narrative he put progressive ideas against feudalism, the corruption of justice and the superstition then widespread in the Caucasus. He also urged loyalty to the Russian authorities, to ease the passage of the Transcaucasian Muslims into modern life. Several plays were published in Russian in the official journal Kavkaz and performed in Russian at Tiflis and St Petersburg; pupils of the Azerbaijani state schools gave the first performances in the original language at the end of the 1870s. A complete edition appeared at Tiflis in 1859, and a second in 1938 for the 125th anniversary of his birth. ²

His plays were translated into Persian and into several European languages. He was called the "Caucasian Gogol" or the "oriental Molière". He also wrote treatises on political science against absolutism and theocracy, and two memoranda on an alphabetical system of his own design, meant to make the Islamic languages, especially the Turkish ones, easier to write and better suited to progress. ³