Today is the birthday of the outstanding Azerbaijani poetess Khurshidbanu Natavan

August 6 is the birthday of the famous Azerbaijani poetess and public figure Khurshidbanu Natavan.

Khurshidbanu Natavan was born in 1832 in Shusha in the family of the last Karabakh khan, Major General Mekhti Gulu khan. Khurshidbanu was the only child in the family and the last heir of the Karabakh Khanate, so in the palace she was called "Durru yekta" - the only pearl, and among the people - Khan gyzy (Khan's daughter).

Natavan was raised and educated by her aunt Govhar khanum - the daughter of Ibrahim Khalil khan. She also awakened in Khurshidbanu a love for music, poetry and painting; the girl received a good home education. Besides her native Azerbaijani, she was fluent in three other languages - Persian, Arabic and Russian.

Natavan's husband was Prince Khasay-Khan Musayevich Utsmiev (1808-1867), the administrator of the Karabakh Khanate. He studied in France at the Saint-Cyr Military Academy (which, by the way, Napoleon also graduated from) and rose to the high rank of Major General.

Khasay and Natavan soon had a son, Mekhtigulu khan (1855-1900), named after his grandfather, the last Karabakh khan, and a daughter Khan-Bike (1856-1921). Subsequently, Mekhti Jr. would become famous as a poet under the pseudonym "Vefa," meaning "Faithful." Later, Mekhtigulu named his son Khasay in honor of his grandfather. Incidentally, Natavan's daughter Khan-Bike followed in her mother's footsteps: her ghazals and rubais were published in the materials of researcher Vasif Guliev, author of more than 20 books on the history and ethnography of Karabakh.

In 1869, Natavan married for the second time to Seyid Hussein from Shusha - a man of common origin, for which she was condemned until the end of her life. Historians write that Natavan's son, Mekhtigulu, left home because of this.

Most of the poetess's poems, who began writing in the 1850s under the signature "Khurshid," were lost, and only a small part of them has survived to this day. From 1870, the poetess began creating ghazals of deep content under the pseudonym Natavan.

In an album from 1886, personally created by Khurshidbanu Natavan, along with drawings of various flowers and natural landscapes executed in a graphic style, there are also images of the city of Baku, houses, bridges, roads, etc. This is clear evidence that she possessed refined taste and high artistic abilities.

In 1872, she organized and headed the literary circle "Majlisi-Uns" ("Assembly of Friends") in Shusha, which had creative connections with similar circles in other cities of Azerbaijan.

In the same year, Khurshidbanu, in order to provide the urban population with water and improve the city of Shusha, built a water pipeline from the Isa spring in the Sarybaba area, located 10 km from the city. This water pipeline is still known as "Khan gyzy suyu" (Khan's daughter's water).

She died on October 1, 1897, in Shusha. She was buried in Agdam, in the "Imaret" cemetery.

A tombstone monument was erected in Agdam, where the poetess was buried. In the center of Baku, a monument was erected in 1960, its author is sculptor Omar Eldarov. And in Shusha, a bust of Khurshidbanu Natavan was installed.