Essay
Siyasəti-fürusət
Not translated into English
Ali bey Huseynzade · 1908
Synopsis
A reflection on what politics ought to be, conducted through figures from Turkish, Iranian and Russian history, and setting East against West. The title plays on a word that Russian politics would understand as the art of whipping horses to death, whereas the East reads in it the art of governing. The author maintains that Russian politics rests on ignorance, hostility and the denial of other cultures, inherited from Byzantium; under a humorous and allegorical guise, it is the colonialism of tsarist Russia that is targeted.
Context
The text appeared in serial form in 1908 in three newspapers, İrşad, Tərəqqi and Həqiqət, at the time when its author was teaching at the Səadət school in Baku. It was collected in a volume only in 1994, in Baku, by Elm, and an edition prepared and annotated by Ofelya Bayramova is dated 1996; it occupies more than a hundred pages of his selected works. Specialists do not agree on its form: a long symbolic narrative for some, a political reflection for others.
Who it is for
In Azerbaijani, with no translation; a long text, which assumes some familiarity with the Russian, Persian and Ottoman empires.
Prizes and reception
One of his most extensive writings; Hilmi Ziya Ülken saw in it the first example, in Turkish thought, of a satire in the manner of the humanists.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.