Academician Hamid Arasli made valuable contributions to the development of literary studies in the republic with his numerous studies. He gained a wide reputation as an influential specialist and deeply erudite scholar with a special position in the field of ancient and medieval Azerbaijani literature. Systematization and creation of a complete picture of the history of Azerbaijani literature is one of his important scientific achievements.
February 23 is the birthday of prominent literary critic, Doctor of Philology, Academician Hamid Arasli.
Hamid Arasli, who was born in Ganja in 1909, received his first education in the madrasa near the Shah Abbas Mosque. In 1929, he came to Baku and was admitted to the Faculty of Language and Literature of the Azerbaijan State Pedagogical Institute. In 1932, in addition to studying at a post-graduate course in Baku, he headed the Eastern branch of the library organized under the Azerbaijan branch of the EA of the former USSR. He began the important work of creating the Manuscripts Fund by collecting Eastern manuscripts and soon became the director of the fund he created. Since 1935, he started scientific creativity. Three years later, among the manuscripts stored in the fund, they discovered examples that did not correspond to the Soviet ideology and fired him. Then he was appointed as an editor in the Fiction Department of "Azernashr" and taught the history of medieval Azerbaijani literature at the Faculty of Philology of Azerbaijan State University (now Baku State University). In 1939, he headed the departments of Medieval Literature and Textual Studies at the Nizami Institute of Azerbaijani Literature and Language in 1957.
The scientist paid special attention to the scientific-theoretical interpretation of the intricacies of our classical poetry both in his researches and in his textbooks, and did his best to educate the generations in the spirit of national Turkism and correctly interpret the issues related to our ancestry.
H. Arasli carefully followed the research conducted on our literature not only in the former Soviet space, but worldwide, he was sensitive to the considerations that harmed the antiquity of our literature and culture, he opposed the unfair opinions and biased opinions about Azerbaijani literature and its representatives, and he defended the truth to the end. H. Arasli's exceptional service was in systematizing and studying our literary history in a scientific direction. In the first volume of the history of "Comprehensive Azerbaijani literature" published in 1943-1944, he gave a literary and cultural picture of the stages of development of our literature from the oldest periods to the 17th century and created full portraits of our artists.
One of his important contributions to our literary history is the three-volume "History of Azerbaijani Literature" published in 1960. In these books, the author clarified the influence of artists such as Gazi Burhaneddin, Nasimi, Kishvari, Khatai, Fuzuli, who played an important role in the formation of our native language literature, on our history of artistic and social thought. Among our poets, I. Hasanoglu, G. Burhaneddin, I. Nasimi, Sh. I. Khatai, Kishvari, Habibi, Fuzuli, Govsi, Saib, Masih, Fedai, Vidadi, Vagif and others, valuable scientific and theoretical summaries are also available. It belongs to Arasli.
He was a consistent researcher of Muhammad Fuzuli and a well-known publisher far from Azerbaijan. There are more than 20 articles devoted to the various problems of the poet's life and creativity, and the conclusion of many years of research - the monograph "The Great Azerbaijani Poet Fuzuli" published in Russian and Azerbaijani languages.
Literary scholar Nasimi is considered one of the first researchers. He wrote the essay "The Selfless Poet", scientific articles and introductions to the publications of Nasimi's works.
H. Arasli was very productive as a textual scholar. His activity in this field constitutes a separate stage in our science of textual studies. Alim has repeatedly published the works of Mahsati, Nasimi, Khatai, Fuzuli, Saib, Govsi, Vidadi, Vagif and other prominent poets in different years. Thanks to his research in this field, close familiarity with the classical heritage, and his ability to work with manuscripts, he made corrections on the texts and revised the dictionary and commentaries.
Alim's work "History of Azerbaijani literature in the 17th-18th centuries" published in 1956 is considered as one of the achievements of our literary studies. In this work, he determined the main essence of those centuries, which are understood as the stage of decline of our literature, which is little studied and therefore not correctly characterized, on the basis of primary sources. H. Arasli is known as one of the scientists who created modern Azerbaijani folklore studies. He has done a lot of work in the field of oral folk literature and research of our folklore. In the book "History of Azerbaijani literature of the XVII-XVIII centuries" and the works "Creation of Ashiq", the life and creativity of Gurbani, Sarı Ashıq, Ashıq Abbas Tufarganli, Ashıl Gasım, Ashıq Alasgar and other classical ashığs, "Asli va Karam", "Aşıq Garib", " He gave original scientific opinions about the epic "Shah Ismayil" and "Koroglu".
The scientist also showed a great interest in the literary heritage of other Eastern nations, studied the legacy of the Eastern poets Firdowsi, Jami, Hafiz, especially the great Uzbek poet Alishir Navai, who are related to Azerbaijani literature and our classics, and became famous as the author of preliminary studies on the relations of medieval Azerbaijani literature. Throughout his life, H. Arasli worked selflessly for the training of highly qualified personnel, not only in Azerbaijan, but also in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tatarstan, he supervised post-graduate students, doctoral students, dozens of scientific
husband, doctor, trained up to 50 candidates of sciences.
The outstanding scientist died in 1983 in Baku.
It should be recalled that according to the Decree of President Ilham Aliyev dated February 11, 2019, the 110th anniversary of the Academician Hamid Arasli was celebrated at the state level.
