Nazira Tradition and “Leyla and Majnun” Love Poem in the Kazakh Literature

Abstract

Many works of the eastern poets were devoted to love theme. The most spread “Leyla and Majnun†is a love story originated in Arabic, later significantly expanded  to Persian and got its fictional peak in Turkic literature. Poets frequently wrote on this theme. The actual reason is “nazira, nazirashylyk†tradition which is the source of love tradition. Poets wrote their poem lines in Arabic aruz style. That nazira tradition took its continuation in Kazakh steppes in the end of XIX century and in the beginning of the XX century but  not exactly in its poem style . It is obvious from the Kazakh writers’ works that the object of written literature was love poems and were written in rhymes. Love poems did not leave the Kazakh poems indifferently. That’s why, poets tried to introduce the eastern poem to Kazakh nation. Kazakh poets were good as eastern poets in terms of the above mentioned theme. After that new works with different styles peculiar to poets were coming out in the literature. This article deals with nazira tradition in the Kazakh literature and “Leyla and Majnun†poem which is written in nazira tradition. Along with it, we try to evaluate the role of nazira tradition as the witness of historical events.

 

Keywords: Kazakh literature, nazira tradition, Leyla, Majnun, love poem ;