Hanafi Zeinally

Hanafi Baba oghlu Zeynalli (; 1896 – 13 October 1937) was an Azerbaijani Soviet folklorist, literary critic, literary scholar, teacher and orientalist. He headed the educational and literary department of the Azerbaijan State Publishing House, collected examples of Azerbaijani folklore, and has been described as one of the pioneers of Azerbaijani folklore studies.

Biography Teachers and poets of Baku, 1916. Hanafi Zeynalli is among the figures in the second and third rows.

Hanafi Zeynalli was born in 1896 in Mardakan, near Baku, into the family of a blacksmith and farrier. He lost his parents at an early age, but continued his education. He studied at a madrasa and later graduated from a Russo-Muslim secondary school. In 1916, he graduated from the Secondary Polytechnic School in Baku and was admitted to the Imperial Technical Vocational School, but was unable to continue his studies after the February Revolution of 1917.

In 1917, he was a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, and from 1919 he was a member of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks).

From 1922 to 1927, Zeynalli studied at Azerbaijan State University. He later worked at the Department of the History of Azerbaijani-Turkic Literature of the university's Faculty of Oriental Studies, at the Azerbaijan Pedagogical Institute, and from 1930 at the Department of the History of Azerbaijani Literature of the Azerbaijan State Pedagogical Institute. In 1930, he received the academic title of associate professor.

Folklore studies Zeynalli collected and published examples of Azerbaijani oral literature and wrote theoretical articles on folklore. In 1926, he published Azərbaycan atalar sözləri və məsəllər , which included nearly 4,000 proverbs and sayings. In the introduction to the book, he discussed the origins and genres of folk literature, dividing oral literature into verse and prose forms, and examined the similarities and differences between proverbs and sayings.

His article Hüseyn Cavidin yazdığı "Peyğəmbər" haqqında mülahizələrim discussed questions of literary criticism, literary history and the specific nature of literature. Zeynalli also wrote on Javid's plays, including Sheikh Sanan, Sheyda and Maral. According to literary scholar Mammad Jafar, Zeynalli was one of the first Soviet critics to give an objective assessment of Javid's work.

Arrest and execution

Hanafi Zeynalli was arrested on 27 January 1937 on accusations of counter-revolutionary activity. He was accused of maintaining contacts with people associated with national ideology and the statehood of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, including Nazim Efendi, Ismayıl Hikmet, Khəlil Fikrat and Bekir Çobanzade. He was also accused of including counter-revolutionary and nationalist ideas in his works. Before his arrest, he had been dismissed from his position at a research institution.

During the investigation, Zeynalli signed several statements and later withdrew them. According to Репрессированная тюркология, the interrogations were conducted by Galustyan, who was himself later executed. Xalq qəzeti states that the statements used against him included accusations of distributing anti-Soviet literature, belonging to a clandestine nationalist organization, recruiting others into it, and supporting the separation of Azerbaijan from the Soviet Union.

The Military Collegium sentenced him to death, and the sentence was carried out in Baku on 13 October 1937.

On 30 March 1957, Hanafi Zeynalli was posthumously rehabilitated by a decision of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union.

Family Zeynalli was married to Sayyara Sattar qizi Zeynalli, who was born in Baku on 1 October 1907 and received higher education. They had two children, Azer, born in 1930, and Zemfira, born in 1933. In 1937, Sayyara Zeynalli was arrested as the wife of a so-called "traitor to the motherland" and sentenced to eight years' imprisonment and exile. After her release, she lived in Zagatala. In 1956, she was fully rehabilitated by a decision of the Supreme Court of the Azerbaijan SSR.