Hamid Arasli

Hamid Arasli was born in Ganja.

He studied at the Ganja madrasah, the Ganja Darulmuellimi Seminary (1922-1926), and the Language and Literature Faculty of the Azerbaijan State Pedagogical Institute (1929-1931, graduated early).

He worked as a teacher, director at the Nabiagali village school, and deputy director of the Ganja education department (1931-1932). In 1932, he came to Baku and, while studying for a postgraduate degree, worked as the director of the oriental department of the library organized under the Azerbaijan branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In those years, he began collecting oriental manuscripts and creating the Manuscripts Fund and became the director of the fund he created. He began his scientific work in 1935. In 1938, he was dismissed after discovering examples that did not correspond to Soviet ideology among the manuscripts kept in the fund. He worked as an editor in the Fiction Department of “Azernashr” (1938-1939). Since 1938, he began teaching “History of Medieval Azerbaijani Literature” at the Philology Faculty of Azerbaijan State University. In 1939, he headed the Department of Medieval Literature at the Nizami Institute of Azerbaijani Literature and Language, and in 1957, the Department of Textual Studies. In 1943, he defended his dissertation on “Azerbaijani Literature in the 13th-16th Centuries” and received the scientific title of Candidate of Philological Sciences. In 1944, he was appointed head of the Department of Near Eastern Literature at Azerbaijan State University. In 1954, he defended his doctoral dissertation on “History of Azerbaijani Literature in the 17th-18th Centuries”. For many years, he was engaged in scientific research, taught at higher educational institutions, and prepared textbooks for secondary and higher educational institutions. He published books on "Kitabi Dede Gorgud", "Koroglu" epics, ashug literature, Khagani, Nizami, Fuzuli, Nasimi, Saib Tabrizi.

Honored Scientist of Uzbekistan (1968) and Azerbaijan (1979), professor (1955), academician Hamid Arasli died in 1983 and was buried in the Alley of Honor.