Nizami Ganjavi

Nizami Ganjavi, whose full name was Jamal ad-Dīn Abū Muḥammad Ilyās ibn-Yūsuf ibn-Zakkī, lived from about 1141 to 1209. He is widely regarded as the foremost romantic epic poet in Persian literature, known for introducing a colloquial and realistic style to the Persian epic tradition. His legacy is honored in Afghanistan, the Republic of Azerbaijan, Iran, the Kurdistan region, and Tajikistan.

Born into a Persian family in the city of Ganja, then part of the Seljuq empire and now in the Republic of Azerbaijan, he was given the personal name Ilyas and later adopted the pen name Nizami (or Nezami). He appears to have spent his entire life in the South Caucasus. At that time, Ganja had a predominantly Iranian population, as noted by the Armenian historian Kirakos Gandzaketsi, who observed that the city was densely populated with Iranians and a small number of Christians. Because Nizami was not a court poet, he is absent from dynastic records. The tazkerehs—literary memoirs compiling biographical information and commentary—mention him only briefly, and much of that material is based on legends and hearsay. As a result, few confirmed facts about his life exist, with his own poetry serving as the main source.

Nizami was orphaned early and raised by his maternal uncle, Khwaja Umar, who provided him with an excellent education. His mother, Ra'isa, was of Kurdish origin. His father, Yusuf, is mentioned once in Nizami's poetry, along with his grandfather Zakki. Some interpret the word Mu'ayyad in the same verse as a title for Zakki, while others see it as the name of his great-grandfather. Some sources suggest his father may have come from Qom. Nizami is variously described as a Persian and/or Iranian.

He was married three times. His first wife was an enslaved Kipchak woman sent to him by Fakhr al-Din Bahramshah, the ruler of Darband, as part of a larger gift. According to Iraj Bashiri, she became Nizami's most beloved wife. She died after he completed "Khosrow and Shirin," leaving their only son, Mohammad, who was seven at the time. Nizami later mentions his son in "Layli and Majnun," noting that the boy was then fourteen and "the apple of my eyes." In "Haft Peykar" (Seven Beauties), he advises his son to take on more responsibility as the father grows frail. Some late-20th-century writers claimed this wife was named Afaq, but Vahid Dastgerdi appears to have first proposed that name. Said Nafisi and a recent source have challenged this interpretation, arguing that "Afaq" in the verse simply means "horizon" rather than a proper name. Nizami's two other wives also died prematurely, each death coinciding with the completion of an epic, leading the poet to lament, "God, why is it that for every mathnavi I must sacrifice a wife!"

Though not a philosopher like Avicenna or a theorist of Sufism like Ibn 'Arabi, Nizami is regarded as a philosopher and gnostic who mastered various fields of Islamic thought, synthesizing them in a manner reminiscent of later Hakims such as Qutb al-Din Shirazi. Often called Hakim ("the Sage"), he was both a learned poet and a master of lyrical and sensuous style. His prodigious learning is evident in his poems, which show familiarity with Arabic and Persian literature, oral and written popular traditions, and diverse fields including mathematics, astronomy, astrology, alchemy, medicine, botany, Koranic exegesis, Islamic theory and law, Iranian myths and legends, history, ethics, philosophy, esoteric thought, music, and the visual arts. His strong character, social sensibility, and knowledge of oral and written historical records, combined with his rich Persian cultural heritage, allowed him to unite pre-Islamic and Islamic Iran into a new standard of literary achievement. He created a bridge not only between pre-Islamic and Islamic Iran but also between Iran and the ancient world.

The recent discovery of the anthology *Nozhat al-Majales* contains Persian quatrains from Nizami and 115 other poets from northwestern Iran—including Arrān, Sharvān, and Azerbaijan, with 24 poets from Ganja alone—during the same era. Unlike other parts of Persia, where poets were often scholars, bureaucrats, or secretaries, many poets in the northwest came from working-class backgrounds and frequently used colloquial expressions. The anthology thus reflects the social conditions of the time and demonstrates the full spread of Persian language and culture in the region, as seen in the common use of spoken idioms and the diverse professions of the poets. The influence of the northwestern Pahlavi language, the spoken dialect of the region, is also clearly observed in these poems.