The bağlama or saz is a family of plucked string instruments, long-necked lutes used in Ottoman classical music, Turkish folk music, Turkish Arabesque music, Azerbaijani music, Bosnian music (Sevdalinka), Kurdish music, Armenian music. It is played in several regions in the world such as Europe, Asia, Black Sea, Caucasus regions and many countries including Syria, Iraq, Iran and Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is commonly used by the ashiks.
Azerbaijani music is the musical tradition of the Azerbaijani people from Azerbaijan Republic. Azerbaijani music has evolved under the badge of monody, producing rhythmically diverse melodies. Music from Azerbaijan has a branch mode system, where chromatisation of major and minor scales is of great importance.
Turkish literature comprises oral compositions and written texts in the Turkish language. The Ottoman form of Turkish, which forms the basis of much of the written corpus, was highly influenced by Persian and Arabic literature, and used the Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
Azerbaijani literature is written in Azerbaijani, a Turkic language, which is the official state language of the Republic of Azerbaijan, where the North Azerbaijani variety is spoken. It is also natively spoken in Iran, where the South Azerbaijani variety is used, and is particularly spoken in the northwestern historic region of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijani is also spoken natively in Russia, Georgia and Turkey. While the majority of Azerbaijani people live in Iran, modern Azerbaijani literature is overwhelmingly produced in the Republic of Azerbaijan, where the language has official status. Three scripts are used for writing the language: Azerbaijani Latin script in the Republic of Azerbaijan, Arabic script in Iran and Cyrillic script formerly used in Soviet Azerbaijan.
The culture of Azerbaijan combines a diverse and heterogeneous set of elements which developed under the influence of Iranic, Turkic and Caucasian cultures. Azerbaijani culture includes its distinct cuisine, literature, folk art, and music.
The Book of Dede Korkut or Book of Korkut Ata is the most famous among the dastans or epic stories of the Oghuz Turks. The stories carry morals and values significant to the social lifestyle of the nomadic Turkic peoples and their pre-Islamic beliefs. The book's mythic narrative is part of the cultural heritage of the peoples of Oghuz origin, mainly of Azerbaijan, Turkey and Turkmenistan. Only two manuscripts of the text were known before 2018, one in the Vatican and one in Dresden, when a manuscript was discovered in a private collection in Gonbad-e Kavus, Iran.
An ashik or ashugh is traditionally a singer-poet and bard who accompanies his song—be it a dastan or a shorter original composition—with a long-necked lute in Azerbaijani culture, including Turkish and South Azeribaijani and non-Turkic cultures of South Caucasus. In Azerbaijan, the modern ashik is a professional musician who usually serves an apprenticeship, masters playing the bağlama, and builds up a varied but individual repertoire of Turkic folk songs.
Dastan is an ornate form of oral history, an epic, from Central Asia, Iran, Turkey and Azerbaijan.
Alpamysh, also spelled as Alpamish or Alpamis, is an ancient Turkic epic or dastan, an ornate oral history, generally set in verse, and one of the most important examples of the Turkic oral literature of Central Asia, mainly the Kipchak Turks.
Ashig Alasgar was an Azerbaijani mystic troubadour (Ashik) and highly regarded poet of Azerbaijani folk songs. He was born in the village of Aghkilsa in the Goycha District of the Erivan Khanate.
Azerbaijani folklore is the folk tradition of Azerbaijani people which has developed throughout the centuries. Azerbaijani folklore is embodied explicitly in a large collection of narratives and implicitly in representational arts, such as vase painting and votive gifts.
Hamid Mammadtaghi oglu Arasly was an Azerbaijani literary critic, Doctor of Sciences in Philology, and an academic at the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences. He is acknowledged as one of the most prominent literary critics and philologists of Azerbaijan.
Khasta Qasim – was an Iranian Azerbaijani poet of Azerbaijani literature. Khasta Qasim was one of the best Azerbaijani-language poets; he was also a mystic, ashik, and philosopher in the era of Afsharid Iran, popularly known as Dada and Gasim.
Turkish hikaye is a narrative genre, which is a mixture of prose and poetry. Prose, the dominant part is narrated by an ashik and is interspersed with poems sung by the same artist to the accompaniment of saz.
Bayati is one of the oldest forms of Azerbaijani folk poetry. A bayati consists of four lines, each of which has seven syllables. The rhyme scheme is AABA. Anonymous bayati have been collected as folk wisdom in editions such as Azerbaijani: Xalqimizin deyimlari va duyumlari. Bayati can also be strung together in sequence to form longer poems, and there are several bayati dastan, epics, in which all of the verses are bayati; one example is Arzu-Qamber.
Ashiq Peri was a 19th-century ashiq regarded as the first prominent female Azerbaijani ashiq. Her poetry primarily consisted of verbal poetic duels, where she used various folk forms in Azerbaijani. Born in 1811 in the village of Maralyan in the Karabakh Khanate, she began writing poetry as a child and later moved to Shusha, the capital of the Karabakh Khanate. She often participated in local poetry contests, competing against and defeating her male counterparts, and eventually becoming the first renowned female ashiq in the region. She died young under unknown circumstances.
Armenian-Azerbaijani cultural relations are relations between two ethnic groups in terms of their language and culture.
"Shah Ismayil" is an Azerbaijani love dastan. There are collected up to 10 versions. According to some researchers, the dastan is associated with the name of Shah Ismail I, according to others - with the name of Shah Ismail II.
Ashig Ali was one of the representatives of 19th century Azerbaijani ashiq poetry.
