Usurping Sayat-Nova

All the information in Armenia we have about Sayat-Nova’s father we draw from manuscripts (Matenadaran, manuscript no 4270, page 100b, 10838a) and from his Davtar (Collection of songs), which is stored in the Yeghishe Charents Museum of Literature and Art of Armenia (Sayat-Nova’s files, no 1). In the latter, in one of the Turkish songs the poet mentioned his father being from Adana. Later his father moved to Aleppo and then to Tiflis. And in his other song in Turkish, by the poet’s own hands it is written, as if in advance giving the answer to future Turkish-Azerbaijani “academicians,” that “Sayat-Nova dini Sakhi inkar etmaz – ermanidur” – “Sayat-Nova does not betray the true faith – He is Armenian!” (Davtar, p. 62).

Bagirov’s article states that “Sayat-Nova is a pseudonym, and his real name and surname is Harutiun Sayadyan. He was born, lived and died in Tbilisi. Writing in Azerbaijani, Armenian and Georgian languages … he played a great role in the development of Turkic, Armenian and Georgian verse.”

It is clear that this author is intentionally or unintentionally fooling himself. We can say (in addition to the poet’s own statements) the following: for some reason, the “Turk” Mahtesi Karapet migrated from Adana to Aleppo (where there was a historically large Armenian community, then one of the cultural centers of Armenians in the East), then to Tiflis, settled in Armenian-populated quarter Havlabar and there he married an Armenian woman, Sara. His son, Harutiun (which in Armenian means resurrection, possibly born on Easter week), grew up in the Armenian-speaking environment of Havlabar, learned to read and write in an Armenian parish school, was a poet and musician in the same Armenian environment and mastered various musical instruments. Then he served at the court of Georgian king Heraclius II.

He composed in Georgian, and it was with his arrival that the Persian language used for performances at the royal court was replaced by Georgian. At the same time, he actively participated in ashugh competitions and composed in Turkish, since it was a common language in the ashugh environment; some quatrains in Persian have also survived. Much later, he recorded his works with his own Armenian lettering (some songs in Georgian letters). Sixty-eight of his works have been preserved in Armenian, 35 in Georgian and 121 in Turkish (all of them were published in Armenian letters in the collection Sayat-Nova’s Poetic Heritage, Yerevan, 2016, compiled by Henrik Bakhchinyan).

It should be noted that the Turkish language that the poet and ashugh Sayat-Nova used and recorded in his Davtar in Armenian lettering, was the dialect of the Airumlu tribe and in the 18th century it was not called Azerbaijani.

Let us also emphasize that it is the themes and motives of Armenian poems, reflecting the drama of life, that elevate Sayat-Nova’s works above the flowery, decorative poetry in the Georgian and Turkish languages, with the influence of Persian (Oriental) poetry. As he said: “Not everyone can drink my source: my water is special! Not everyone should honor my writings: my words have a special meaning!”