Azerbaijan, Baku, Aug. 21 /Trend D.Khatinoglu/
Tiles with poems in the Persian language in Nizami Ganjavi's mausoleum in Azerbaijani city of Ganja will be replaced with analogous poems, but in the Azerbaijani language, the Director of Nizami Ganjavi Centre of Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (ANAS) Khalil Yusifli told Trend on Wednesday.
According to him, the tiles with poems in Persian were placed in the mausoleum of the world-famous Azerbaijani poet in 1997, and they do not have any historical value.
The poem, consisting of four couplets, is a praising of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and is included into 'Leyli and Mejnun' poem. These four couplets were taken from the second part of the poem, consisting of 110 couplets, Yusifli added.
The centre's director said that these four couplets were translated into Azerbaijani, approved by ANAS and will be placed instead of the version in Persian.
The poems were translated by Khalil Yusifli. Along with these poems, Nizami Ganjavi's poems dedicated to his native city of Ganja, which were translated into Azerbaijani, will be also placed in the mausoleum.
According Yusifli, sometimes people visiting the mausoleum, seeing poetry in Persian, mistakenly believe that Nizami Ganjavi was a Persian poet.
This step is taken to ensure that everyone knows that Nizami is a representative of Azerbaijani literature, he said.
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Asia-Pacific Affairs Seyyed Abbas Araqchi previously expressed regret for the replacement of poems in Persian.
Several Iranian media outlets described this as a distortion of Nizami Ganjavi's personality. Some Iranian litterateurs believe that Nizami was born in Iran's Qom city. However, this idea is not accepted in Iran itself. Since the 12th century and to this day all historians and authors of memoirs emphasize that Nizami was born in Azerbaijani city of Ganja.
There is not an historical document, which put this fact under question. In Iran, as elsewhere in the world, this poet (his full name Jamaleddin Ilyas ibn Yusuf Nizami Ganjavi) is called Nizami Ganjavi (Ganjavi means, from Ganja). In his works Nizami also repeatedly stressed that he was born in Ganja.