Life
His personal name was Ilyas and his chosen pen-name was Nezami (also spelled as Nizami and Neẓāmi). He was born of an urban background in Ganja (Great Seljuq empire now present-day Azerbaijan) and is believed to have spent his whole life in South Caucasus. According to De Blois, Ganja was a city which at that time had predominantly an Iranian population. The Armenian historian Kirakos Gandzaketsi (Ca. 1200-1271) mentions that: "This city was densely populated with Iranians and a small number of Christians".
Because Nezami was not a court poet, he does not appear in the annals of the dyansties. Tazkerehs, which are the compilations of literary memoirs that include maxims of the great poets along with biographical information and commentary of styles refer to him briefly. Much of this material in these Tazkerehs are based on legends, anecdotes, and hearsays. Consequently, few facts are known about Nezami's life, the only source being his own work, which does not provide much information on his personal life.
Read more about this topic: Nizami Ganjavi
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“It is not in the world of ideas that life is lived. Life is lived for better or worse in life, and to a man in life, his life can be no more absurd than it can be the opposite of absurd, whatever that opposite may be.”
—Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982)
“The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conducted will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Above the forest of the parakeets,
A parakeet of parakeets prevails,
A pip of life amid a mort of tails.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)