Fuzuli chose a pen name meaning presumptuous so nobody else would share it
Muhammad bin Suleyman (1483 to 1556), known as Fuzuli, wrote in Azerbaijani, Persian and Arabic while Iraq passed between Aq Qoyunlu, Safavid and Ottoman rulers. He never left Iraq, never won the court post he wanted, yet his ghazals and his Leylī va Macnūn were admired from Anatolia to India.
His chosen name can mean either presumptuous and superfluous or exalted and virtuous. In his Persian collection he explained that he took it precisely because no one else would dare. His early years are poorly documented. Most likely he was a Shia of Turkic Azerbaijani descent belonging to the Bayat tribe, and while some contemporaries called him Fuzuli of Baghdad, other sources place his birth in Najaf, Hilla or Karbala. His father is said to have served as a mufti in Hilla, suggesting a learned household, and as a boy he studied literature, mathematics, astronomy, Persian and Arabic, drawing early inspiration from the Azerbaijani poet Habibi.
Politics kept shifting around him. The Aq Qoyunlu held Iraq from 1470 until Shah Ismail I of the Safavids conquered it in 1508, by which time Fuzuli was already a well-liked young poet; his earliest known piece was a Persian eulogy to the Aq Qoyunlu prince Alvand Mirza. After 1514 he found a patron in Ibrahim Khan Mawsillu, the Safavid governor of Baghdad, and dedicated his first known Azerbaijani poem, a couplet narrative called Hashish and Wine, to Ismail I. When Mawsillu was killed by his own nephew in 1527, Fuzuli moved to Hilla or Najaf and worked as a custodian at the Imam Ali Shrine, still short of money. Most of his poetry was written after the Ottomans took over, which is why he is sometimes counted as an Ottoman poet.
He longed to see Tabriz, Anatolia and India but never travelled beyond Iraq, and he complained that none of his patrons truly satisfied him. He died of plague in 1556 and was buried at Karbala.
His reputation rests above all on his Azerbaijani ghazals and his retelling of the tragic romance of Leyli and Majnun. Critics single out his intensely felt expression and his mystical symbolism, shaped by Persian masters such as Nizami, Jami and Hafez and by Azerbaijani predecessors Habibi and Nasimi. He is credited with raising Azerbaijani as a literary language and with blending Azerbaijani, Persian and Arabic traditions, and Shia and Sunni outlooks too. He remains widely read in Azerbaijan, Turkey, Iran and Iraq.
Source: Fuzuli (poet)
