Ministry of Education of the Republic of Azerbaijan Baku International Multiculturalism Centre Azerbaijani Multiculturalism Textbook for Higher Education

They are the pillars of the world.

The basic values of Azerbaijani multiculturalism can be found in many other poems of Nizami Ganjavi. For example:

You cannot take the world with tyranny, Only with justice can you gain anything…


Wisdom is everyone’s support,


Wisdom is man’s wealth and property…


Instruct your soul like Isa,


Like Musa light a candle of love.

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The prominent Azerbaijani philosopher and poet Sheikh Mahmud Shabestari writes in his Sufi work The Secret Rose Garden (Gulshani-raz) that he does not discriminate against anyone created by God. Referring to Verse 3 of the chapter Al-Mulk (Sovereignty) of the Holy Koran, the poet writes:


These are not my words, they are the command of the Koran, God’s creatures are all equal before him.

In another part of the poem the philosopher-poet writes:

All-merciful God created the idols too, think on this, All that he has created is good.

The values of multiculturalism can be traced in the work of Imadaddin Nasimi, a prominent poet of Azerbaijan in the 14th and 15th centuries. His work focuses on human factors, human values and the freedom of man. Turning his face to mankind he writes that man is more valuable than any precious stone or jewel and everything under the earth:

You who value land and precious stones,


Is not man of greater value than precious stones?

In another couplet the poet glorifies the perfect man, who is the hero of his poems:

Having gazed upon your grace and beauty,


They dared not call you God, they called you man.

Nasimi was a religious, pious man, who believed that God is everywhere so there must be no discrimination against religions and sects:

Section II

Chapter 4

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Azerbaijani Multiculturalism

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Blind man, you say that God is everywhere, Then why do you distinguish between Kaaba
and heathen temple?

Nasimi often mentions the Prophet Isa (Jesus) in his verse, recalling that the touch of his breath revived the dead. He believes that his words as a poet are as valuable, but they have no effect on those who do not believe in God:

The words of Nasimi are like the breath of the


Messiah, infidel,


But this brings you no good, for you lack the


true faith.

Multicultural ideas occupied a considerable place in the work of another great poet of classic Azerbaijani literature, Mahammad Fuzuli, whom the British orientalist E.J.W. Gibb described as a ‘poet of the soul’. Suffice it to say that the Prophet Isa occupies a special place in his longest poem on a religious topic Garden of Delights (Hədiqətüs-süəda). Fuzuli took as his source for this poem a work written in Persian by Husayn Vaiz Kashifi, Garden of Martyrs (Rövzətüs-şühəda), which does not include this section. This means that Fuzuli must have had real sympathy for the Prophet Isa to have added a special chapter to his poem devoted to him.

In his masterpiece Leyli and Majnun, the poet writes about the hero Majnun’s childhood, comparing him to the Sun and the Prophet Isa in his perfection: