Gasim bey Zakir

Gasim bey Zakir ( _az. Qasım bəy Zakir) was Azerbaijani poet of 19th century and one of the founders of the critical realism and satirical genre in Azerbaijani literature.

Life

Zakir was born in 1784 in a noble family in Shusha, the capital of Karabakh khanate. His family belonged to the Javanshir ruling clan of Karabakh. Zakir's grandfather Kazim-agha was the brother of Panah Ali Khan, the founder of Karabakh khanate and of Shusha.

Zakir’s childhood and youth comes to the period of upheavals in Azerbaijan, which turned into a battlefield between czarist Russia and Qajar Iran. When Karabakh finally became part of the Russian Empire, Zakir served in the Caucasian Muslim cavalry and distinguished himself in warfare, and was rewarded for his courage by the Czar.

From the 1830’s Zakir, who spent his life mostly in the battlefields, settled down and began to run his household. For his straightforward and generous nature he was highly esteemed among the people. However, Zakir had many enemies too, whom he earned mainly because of his satirical verses. In his satirical poetry and fables Zakir lashed out at the vices then rampant in society, at the hypocrisy and bigotry of the clergy, at the venality of the Tsarist officials, the greed of merchants and the cruelty of the landowners. Zakir had been constantly persecuted for his satire. In 1849, under pretext that Zakir gave refuge to his relative who was in odds with the Russian government, he was exiled from Karabakh to Baku, his son and nephew being exiled to the inner parts of Russia and family being left alone in Shusha. Only after several months did Zakir with help of his friends, writer M.F. Akhundov, Georgian kniaz I. Orbeliani, and the governor of Baku M. Golyubyakin manage to return back home, whereas his son and nephew lived in exile for three years. Zakir lived in need and under the police surveillance till his last days. Only in 1857 the authorities decided to allocate a pension for him “for his deserts before the Russian State”. But when this pension reached Shusha, the great poet has already departed.

Today Zakir’s literary legacy has been preserved in verses ranging from sharply critical satire to the tender lyrics praising pure and passionate love. [http://www.literature.aznet.org/literature/]