The fairy tale of “Good and Evil” in the poem "Seven Beauties" by Nizami Ganjavi in parallel of Azerbaijan fairy tale traditions

Abstract

One of the poems in Nizami Ganjavi's "Khamsa" is the poem "Seven Beauties" that provides rich material in terms of the use of Azerbaijani folklore traditions. The main plot of the poem, as well as the tales told by the seven princesses, are related to Azerbaijani folklore sources and fairy tale traditions. Nizami Ganjavi in his poem "Seven Beauties" promoted the motives of the victory of good over evil, calling for honesty, purity, and justice about Good and Evil and in other stories, as in Azerbaijani fairy tales. One of the interesting points mentioned in the article is that the names of the heroes clearly express their characters. Their psychological identities (characters) are embodied in the actions and names of the characters of Good and Evil. Nizami Ganjavi's story about Good and Evil is obviously use of Azerbaijani-Turkish folklore elements. Despite the fact that both the whole plot of the story about Good and Evil, as well as the separate motifs in it, are firmly connected with Azerbaijani fairy tales and beliefs, Nizami creatively approached the well-known fairy tale plots and images. Belief in medicinal plants and treatment with them have taken an important place in the thinking of the Azerbaijani people. Also, Nizami reflected in his work the element of fairy girls helping the heroes whose eyes were gouged out from the Azerbaijani fairy tale tradition. We see from the masnavi that Good considered the Kurdish girl who came to his aid to be a fairy, an angel. More precisely, the Kurdish girl in the masnavi performs the rescue mission of the fairy girl in the fairy tales. With this, Nizami further Turkishized the poetic character (identity) of the Kurdish "Turkish-looking" girl with Azerbaijani-Turkish mythical features.