Maksud Sheikhzade

Born Oct. 25 (Nov. 7), 1908, in Agdash, in what is now the Azerbaijan SSR; died Feb. 19, 1967, in Tashkent. Soviet Uzbek writer. Honored Art Worker of the Uzbek SSR (1964). Azerbaijani by nationality. Member of the CPSU from 1960.

Sheikhzade graduated from the Baku Pedagogical Institute in 1933 and taught the history of Uzbek literature at the Tashkent Pedagogical Institute from 1938. He first published his works in 1929. In the collection The Third Book (1934) he introduced free verse into Uzbek poetry. His poems employed motifs from contemporary life, and his civic lyric poetry was especially topical. He was the author of the collection of patriotic poems For What Are We Fighting? (1942) and such narrative poems as Zhenia, The Third Son, and Aksakal, which were devoted to the Great Patriotic War (1941–45). The drama Dzhalaliddin (1941) dealt with the struggle against the Mongol invasion in the 13th century. In 1958, Sheikhzade published the lyric philosophical Poem About Tashkent (Russian translation, 1959), and in 1961, the collection of lyric poems Years and Roads. The tragedy Mirza Ulug Beg (1964; Russian translation, 1966) is devoted to the famous 15th-century Uzbek astronomer. Sheikhzade translated the works of A. S. Pushkin, M. Iu. Lermontov, Shakespeare, V. V. Mayakovsky, and N. S. Tikhonov into Uzbek.

Sheikhadze was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor and several medals.