| Abbasgulu Bakikhanov | |
| Native Name: | Abbasqulu Bakıxanov |
| Native Name Lang: | az |
| Birth Place: | Amirjan, Baku Khanate, Qajar Iran[1] |
| Death Place: | Wadi Fatimah, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia |
| Father: | Mirza Muhammad Khan II |
| Family: | Bakikhanovs |
| Other Names: | Qodsi (pen name) |
| Occupation: | writer, historian, journalist, linguist, poet and philosopher |
| Known For: | Father of Azerbaijani historiography |
Abbasgulu agha Bakikhanov (Azerbaijani: Abbasqulu ağa Bakıxanov) (Amirjan – January 1847, Wadi Fatimah, near Jeddah), Abbas Qoli Bakikhanov,[2] or Abbas-Qoli ibn Mirza Mohammad (Taghi) Khan Badkubi[3] was an Azerbaijani writer, historian, journalist, linguist, poet and philosopher. He was son of the third khan of Baku Mirza Muhammad Khan II. Served as an officer in the Imperial Russian Army and participated in the Russo-Persian War of 1826–1828, he later retired and settled in Quba.
Also known by his pen name Qodsi (Azeri: Qüdsi), many Azerbaijani scholars view Bakikhanov as among their first thinkers and historians. He is credited with being the first person that wrote a "scholarly monograph on the history of greater Shirvan"; the area that would later make up most of the Republic of Azerbaijan. His Qanun-e Qodsi, was the first Persian grammar manual published.
Bakikhanov was the son of the 3rd khan of Baku, Mirza Muhammad Khan II and a Georgian woman named Sofia.[4] Started his education life in 1801 and was educated in Persian by several mullahs of his time like Muhammad Bakuvi and Haji Muhammad Gulkhani (d. 1808).[5] In 1813, seven years after the loss of the khanate's sovereignty, the family moved to Quba, where over the next ten years, he learned Arabic, Turkish, and Russian, followed later by French and Polish.[6] In 1818, he established the first Azeri literary society Gulistan-i Iram.
He enlisted in the Russian army on and began serving as an interpreter and based in Caucasus Viceroyalty office in Tiflis on . He worked in this position for 25 years.
Bakikhanov took active part in campaigns against rebellious Dagestani principalities. He was also a member of the Russian diplomatic mission in charge of negotiating border issues between Russia and Persia in the 1820s. In 1823, he helped gather ethnographic information for the Description of the Province of Karabakh. In 1828, he was among the Russian military command under General Paskevich that took part in peace negotiations with Persia, which resulted in signing the Treaty of Turkmenchay. He convinced Khan Ehsan of Nakhchivan, as well as a number of Kurdish leaders of Persia to ally with Russia. In 1829 he was awarded the 4th Degree Medal of St. Vladimir for participating in the siege of Kars in the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-1829. He met Alexander Pushkin in Erzurum, 1829, acting as his interpreter. During this time, he also established friendly relations with Nikita Pankratiev as well as Dmitry Bibikov, then Minister of Internal Affairs.
He was tasked with cataloging seized books from Ottoman libraries from Akhaltsikhe, Erzurum and Bayazet. During this time he also found and translated Derbendname (Book of Derbent) by Mulla Muhammad Rafi, which was deemed as less quality work by Vladimir Minorsky.[7]
Dissatisfied with viceroy Georg Andreas von Rosen who questioned his loyalty, he decided to leave military service and tried to seek a career in Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He traveled to Warsaw in 1833 to meet and get support from his former superior Ivan Paskevich, who was now serving as viceroy of Congress Poland. Here, he complained about treatment of Caucasian Muslims by Yermolov and Rosen and sent a protest note. He eventually made it to Saint Petersburg after receiving news from Karl Nesselrode in May 1834 but left only two months later, reportedly under pressure of Rosen.
He retired in 1835 and returned to the village of Amsar near Quba.[8] He continued to write for several newspapers, including Tiflis Gazzette . In 1837 he was summoned to Tiflis for investigative committee on Quba revolt. He wrote the article Wahhabis on the request of mujtahid of Tiflis for Encyclopedic Lexicon, first Russian encyclopedia in 1839.
He was recalled to military duty in 1842 by Yevgeny Golovin, then Commander-in-Chief in the Caucasus and was promoted to rank of colonel.
Bakikhanov's religious views were generally liberal due to major European influences. He criticized fanaticism among the religious masses and the Obscurantism of the clergy. He promoted the Islamic culture in the region and in Russia as a whole. His ultimate goal was to establish a Muslim college in Baku and an Oriental languages school in Tbilisi. In 1832, he came up with a project for establishing a major educational institution for Muslims, where subjects would be taught in Russian, Persian, and Azeri. He went further, and wrote a number of textbooks through which students were expected to study. The project was sent to the governor of the Caucasus for approval but was disregarded. Bakikhanov also translated several fables by Ivan Krylov into Azeri, one of which survives. His greatest accomplishment in the field of education was writing Qanun-e Qodsi, the first Persian grammar manual published in history.
In 1845, Bakikhanov went on a hajj. On his way to the holy Islamic sights, he was warmly received by Mohammad Shah Qajar and was awarded the Shir-e Khorshid, the highest-ranking Persian medal for the second time. There he also visited Isfahan, Yazd, Shiraz, and Kermanshah. From there he changed his route to Ottoman Empire on the suggestion of Moisey Argutinsky-Dolgorukov, who was stationed in Qajar Iran at the time. In Constantinople, Bakikhanov had an audience with Abdulmejid I in October 1846, who showed interest in some of his academic writings, particularly in Asrar al-Malakut, of which he was presented a copy. It was reported by Allgemeine Zeitung that this meeting also had a diplomatic character as it was for the first time a Muslim was representing a non-Muslim country.[9] From there, Bakikhanov went to visit Alexandria, Cairo, Mecca and Medina. On his way from Medina back to Damascus he caught cholera and died in the small town of Wadi Fatimah in Hejaz (present-day Saudi Arabia) in 1847. His exact time of death or burial site has not been established, but his death was reported on 2 February 1847 by the Russian consul in Syria to Mikhail Ustinov, Russian ambassador to Ottoman Empire.[10]
He also authored scientific essays, collected poems, articles, translations of various works into Azeri and Russian, etc.
According to Ahmedov, Bakikhanov understood Allah as a kind of transcendental essence of the world, revealed in an infinite number of attributes. Sharing the messianic idea of Mahdism, Bakikhanov pointed out that Ali and his direct descendants personify the creed and power of the prophet. Direct communication from Ali is interrupted only on the twelfth imam; the last imam did not die, but was ascended to heaven by Allah.
Bakikhanov believed that Allah doesn't directly cause a person's happiness or unhappiness; instead, He provides opportunities for self-salvation or error. A person, through intelligence and knowledge, can strive for salvation, and Allah will assist and guide him. However, if a person neglects these gifts, Allah leaves him in error. Bakikhanov reconciled freedom of action with divine predestination mechanically: Allah creates actions in line with each individual's free choice. He also preached the concepts of hope (tawakkul) and contentment (rida), reflecting a Sufi influence in his views. Citing Rumi, Bakikhanov condemned the pursuit of external benefits, excessive fear of death, temptation (nafs) as desire for the forbidden and illicit, and the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Despite this, Bakikhanov was not an advocate of asceticism. He criticized both wickedness (fisq) and hermitage (zuhd), believing that both the hermit and the wicked deceive people with their sophisms and tricks.
According to him, the individual who wants to achieve individual perfection must be in a society, whether to get rid of disgraces or to protect virtues. In fact, according to him, religion comes after the public interest in ordering moral principles. For him, religion had a nature that confirms the principles that become evident by considering the public interest and the order of the world, rather than directly mentioning what is good.
In 1826, Bakikhanov married Sakina (b. 1807) his paternal cousin and grandnephew of Fatali Khan, daughter of Kalb Huseyn agha, with whom he had two daughters including Zibün Nisa Begüm (b. 1831) and Tughra Khanum (b. 1839) - both of whom married to their cousins Hasan agha and Ahmad agha.[12]