Saiyido Nasafi

Born in Nasaf, now the city of Karshi, Uzbek SSR, date unknown; died between 1707 and 1711 in Bukhara. Tadzhik poet.

Saiyido Nasafi studied in Bukhara and spent most of his life there. He lived in poverty, shunning the life of a court poet. Working as a weaver to support himself, he was well acquainted with the life and needs of craftsmen and wrote a number of poems about their work (for example, “Kasyda the Baker”). His poetry, written in several genres, condemned the despotic tyranny and civil strife that plagued Middle Asia in the 17th century. In the allegorical narrative poem The Legend of the Creatures, the poet exposed the vices of those with power and showed preference for the worker-ant over the lion-king. Saiyido Nasafi, who added new dimensions of meaning to traditional poetic images, had an important influence on the development of urban literature, especially the shakhrashub genre.