Khurshidbanu Natavan Biography

Khurshidbanu Natavan was a distinguished Azerbaijani poetess, who grew popular through her relationship-themed ghazals and ruba’yat. As the only heir of Karabakh ruling family, founded by her great grandfather, she was fondly known as the ‘daughter of the khan’ by the general public. Even though she took over the Karabakh Empire at a young age of 13 after her father’s death, she successfully established her literary career apart from managing responsibilities of developing her city, Shusha, and improving its social well-being. She composed her poems in Persian and Azerbaijani, in the form of lyrical ghazals, which is common in Persian, Arabic and Urdu poetry. Her poems were characterized by love, friendship, humanity and compassion. She, however, switched to soulful themes, like grief, misery and pain, and took over the nom de plume, Natavan, after her son’s death. Besides poetry, she was exceptionally good at pencil sketching and attractive embroidery as well. Her landscape sketches were the first-of-a-kind in European style in Azerbaijani art, which perfectly combined the concepts of the Western and Oriental art forms. Some of her known poems are ‘To My Son, Abbas’, ‘Lilac’, ‘Beloved, how could you break the oath to me you swore?’, and ‘Time has plunged me into an ocean of pain and woe…’