November 14. 2024. 2:00

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Khurshidbanu Natavan – The last princess of the Karabakh Khanate


Early life in Karabakh and influences

The House of Natavan in Shusha

Close and distant relatives of Natavan significantly influenced her worldview and artistic taste. The creativity, literary conversations and debates, as well as wise pieces of advice of such respected and famous personalities, as Gasim bey Zakir, Mirza Adigozal, and Ahmed bey Javanshir, strengthened the sense and passion for poetry and art in Khurshidbanu Natavan.

Mirza Fatali Akhundov, the founder of literary criticism in Azerbaijani drama and literature, played a crucial role in her life and work. Khurshidbanu’s personal acquaintance with Akhundov aroused wide interest in social issues and charitable activities.

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When Natavan was 18, she got married to the Dagestan prince Khasai Khan Utsmiev. The reason for this was tension in foreign and domestic politics. Thus, her dream of building a happy family also came to naught. Natavan expressed dissatisfaction with the humiliation of human dignity and personal dreams; in her poems, she bitterly complained about her fate and accused her era of disloyalty and betrayal.

Khurshidbanu Natavan with her son Mehdigulu Khan and daughter Khanbika

In 1864, Khasai Khan was sent into exile as a result of a conflict with Knyaz Loris-Melikov and committed suicide there in 1866. This event gave Khurshidbanu a legal reason for divorce.

Khasai Khan with his son Mehdigulu Khan

In 1870-1880, a new stage began in her life and work. The poetess contributed to disseminating knowledge and culture, and actively participated in social and cultural events. Natavan allocated a budget from her annual income to construct roads, bridges and schools. Moreover, she organised banquets and conversations where intelligentsia and representatives of various arts took part. Azerbaijani students studying in distant cities, poor scientists, poets and artists received help from Khurshidbanu. Along with Karabakh, art workers from all over Transcaucasia took refuge under her patronage. The news about Natavan’s innovations in her homeland, she was doing with pleasure and enthusiasm, spread everywhere. Natavan seriously thought about the improvement of Karabakh and the cultural appearance of Shusha. In 1873, due to Natavan’s efforts, drinking water was provided to Shusha from a distance of seven kilometres, and nowadays it is called “Khan gizi Spring” (also known as Khan’s Daughter’s Spring).

The Meeting of Natavan with Dumas

The first information about the stone road construction from Baku to the village of Shykh is also reflected in Dumas’s book. More than half of the book, consisting of 68 chapters, is dedicated to Azerbaijan. In the chapters devoted to Georgia and Dagestan, entire pages and numerous episodes talk about Azerbaijanis. Dumas was impressed by the hospitality of the locals, offering travellers free food, water and rest; he writes about the weapons of the Azerbaijanis, falconry, ram fights, and the destructive attacks of the Russian army in these places. He describes 20 cities, mountains, rivers, and forests. Carpet weaving in Guba, Shamakhi and Nukha, the colours and patterns of carpets fascinate Dumas.

In his memoirs, Dumas writes: “Two Tatar (Azerbaijani) princesses and the younger one’s husband were present in the house where I was invited that evening. I must clearly say that they welcomed us with joy because they had been waiting impatiently for our arrival. One of the princesses was the wife of the last ruler of Karabakh, Mehdigulu Khan, and the other one was his daughter. Her mother was 40, and her daughter was about 20. They were both wearing a traditional dress. The daughter looked very attractive and charming in her expensive dress. A three-four-year-old girl, dressed like her mother, was looking at us in wide-eyed amazement. Besides, a five-six-year-old boy was sitting on his grandmother’s knee, instinctively holding on to the handle of his dagger, ready for any eventuality… A French mother would never give a real dagger to her child. I was kind of surprised that it was a child’s toy for (Azerbaijani) mothers. Their father was Prince Khasai Khan Utsmiev, a 35-year-old handsome man who spoke French like a real Parisian. He wore a black suit and a gold-embroidered pointed hat. A dagger with an ivory handle and a gold sheath were hung from his waist.”

The work was published in Russian in Tiflis in 1861, and in English in New York in 1962.

The Flower Book, 1886

Monument in Waterloo, Belgium

Monument In Evian-le-Ban, France

Monument in Shusha, Azerbaijan

The death of Natavan’s son, and her literary works

“To my son Abbas

Parted with you, I burn night and day,

Like a thoughtless moth in a candleflame.

Like a rose you were destined to fade and die;

Like a nightingale mourning its rose sing I.

My heart aches with longing to see you, my star,

I roam like Medjnun in search of Leili.

I whisper your name, for your presence I sigh,

Like a grief-stricken dove on a bough sing I.

Like Farhad from the source of my happiness banned,

At the foot of the mountain of parting I stand.

Your name all these days I have chanted and sung

Like a parrot with sugar under its tongue.

Haunted with sorrow, all day I wander;

Burning with grief like a Salamander.

My heart, that once soared in a heaven of love,

Broke its wings and was dashed to the earth from above.

Blind to the light of the sun and the moon,

Like a moon eclipsed, I am shrouded on gloom.

Through my tears your image I always see,

You dried up so soon, o my cypress-tree!

Oh, would I were blind not to see you dead.

The sun now scorches the earth, your last bed.

My hopes were frustrated; you left me and died,

I did not live to see you join your bride.

Your brown eyes expectantly looked at me;

Was it only that mine your shrine should be?

I weep tears of blood, to sunlight I’m blind,

As a lost soul I wander, Abbas, my child.

The anguish of losing your gnaws at my breast,

Tears flow from my eyes without respite or rest.”

(Translated by Dorian Rottenberg)

“Beloved, how could you break the oath to me you swore?

Beloved, am I today not the same as I was before?

You seek new company, love, with other women you meet,

Have you forgotten me, the one that you once called sweet?

Yes, you have found another before whom you bare your soul;

She is receiving the joy which from my life you stole.

My life is now a nightmare of infinite, black despair.

People talk of my madness always and everywhere.

Your heartlessness, o beloved, is driving me insane.

Have pity on me, have mercy, come back to me again.

O Destiny, how cruel, how ruthless you are to me!

Who does he give his love? ‘Who can the lucky one be?

Life overflows with anguish, with tears overflow my eyes;

But he, my fickle lover, turns a deaf ear to my sighs.

Why, have you been avoiding me all this time,

Me, the unlucky slave of a lord so truly sublime?

Love, you have driven your slave to the limit of desperation,

Gossips are calling me now the victim of sinful temptation.

Have pity on me, your slave, o my lord, my Padishah!

My lamentations echo throughout the world, near and far.

You and your love make merry, carousing day and night,

And I, your unlucky victim, have forgotten what is delight.

There was a time when you wanted nobody else but me.

Now you have changed, and your old love you even refuse to see.

What was the cause, my monarch, explain to your subject, pray?

What have I done that you leave me like a flower plucked and thrown

away?

What shall I do, distraught and unhappy as I am now?

How could I ever have given my heart to you, oh how?

Make merry, my love, with my rival, feast and have a good time,

While I must weep tears of anguish because you’re no longer mine.

Chirp with your newly-found mate like two nightingales on a bough:

And I-remember what I was like, and what have I turned into now?

Kill me, let Allah give strength to your ruthless hand!

What have I done to you that such torture I have to stand?

I sigh and I weep in sorrow, pain is tearing my heart.”

(Translated by Dorian Rottenberg)

However, despite the ups and downs, Natavan never stopped creating and devoting herself to art. She was also a talented artist. Proofs of this are the paintings in her album “Flower Book” dated 1886 and kept at the Institute of Manuscripts named after Mahammad Fuzuli of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Science. On the album cover, on one side, a daffodil, a rose and the AD date “1886”, and on the other, spruce, poplar, pine and the Hijri date “1304” are woven from multi-coloured threads. The paintings are bordered with oriental ornaments. The album consists of paintings of various flowers, plants and landscapes drawn by her with watercolours and pencils. The part of her poetic works is based on the descriptions of nature. She is inspired by every flower, tree, living being and non-living being in the environment. Khurshidbanu shows her talent for describing a flower as an artist trying to depict it on canvas. Her admiration is vividly expressed in her ghazals “Carnation”, “A Nightingale” and “Lilac”, translated by Dorian Rottenberg:

“O flowering lilac, whose was the skilful hand that drew you?

O radiant –featured, was it a loving slave that drew you?

Chancing to penetrate into your palace, garden,

O poppy-cheeked, was it a skilful gardener drew you?

In this flowerbed world there were all too many plain faces:

Was that the reason why the almighty keeper drew you?

The flowers take their colours and fragrance from you,

As a flower the hand of the world’s creator drew you.

What a wealth gentleness shows in your beauty!

With her gift of fancy bestowed by God, perhaps it was

Natavan that drew you?”

Flower Book, 1886

Natavan’s poems are characterized by colourfulness, simple language, playful manner of writing and harmonious meters. She strongly influenced the literary creativity of Azerbaijani poets of the following generations in the 19th and 20th centuries who devoted their works to Natavan imitating her.

The article is prepared and translated by Narmin Hasanova of the Azerbaijan State Translation Centre.

Bibliography

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