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Muslims of the South Caucasus and the Vanguard of Russophile Intellectualism: An Introduction to the Life and Poetry of Gasim bey Zakir Javanshir (1784–1857 CE / 1163–1236 SH)
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Hosein Habibzadeh   , Mehdi Hosseini Taghiabad * |
| Department of Regional Studies, Faculty of Law and Political Science, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran , mehdiabad@ut.ac.ir |
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Abstract: (2 Views) |
Gasim bey “Zakir” Ali bey oglu Sarijali Javanshir is one of the founding fathers of modern literature in the Muslim-populated regions of the South Caucasus in the early nineteenth century. He was the nephew of Panah Ali Khan, the ruler of the Karabakh Khanate. In this paper, the authors aim to examine the life of Gasim bey, assess his literary value and innovations in the Azeri Turkish language, and identify the principal themes of his poetry and their impact on the subsequent intellectual current. This study falls within the domain of historical research, undertaken to describe and explicate the research problem. Accordingly, it adopts a case-study approach and employs documentary and library-based analysis to address the research questions. The findings demonstrate that Zakir, while deeply attached to Shiʻi teachings, introduced several controversial practices into the literature of South Caucasus Muslims, the most significant of which were the tradition of Russophilia and the satire of religious scholars. In the years that followed, these two categories surprisingly evolved into central signifiers for the Muslim intellectuals of the South Caucasus and brought about profound transformations in the identity of the region’s people.
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| Keywords: Gasim bey Zakir, Caucasus, Karabakh, Javanshir, Intellectualism |
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Type of Study: Research |
Subject:
History Of Central Asia and the Caucasus
Received: 2026/02/21 | Revised: 2026/06/22 | Accepted: 2026/03/30 | ePublished ahead of print: 2026/06/22
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