Nizami Ganjavi’s poem “Iskendername” in the context of Azerbaijani fairytales

Abstract

Nizami Ganjavi (1141-1209) benefited from both written sources and folk literature to revive all the features of the image he created while writing the poem “Iskendername”. The fairy tales occupy a special place among the samples of folk literature used by the poet. It is noted that in the book “Folk variants of Nizami’s works” (collected by H.Alizade, M.Tahmasib) there is 32 fairy tales and 24 of them are about Alexander. It is particularly emphasized that most of these tales were later created under the influence of Nizami Ganjavi’s poem “Iskendername”. In the article it is compared three plots of Azerbaijani fairytales (“Horn of Alexander”, “Alexander in that world”, “Greedy for the Land”) with relevant chapters of “Iskendername” poem and it is noted that on the based on them the artistic image of main character was created comprehensively. It is noted that Nizami Ganjavi in the poem managed to convey his admonishing thoughts more convincingly and effectively by way of these fairytales.