Muhammadsharif Gulxaniy: life and work
Muhammadsharif Gulxaniy was a fable writer and poet who lived and worked in Kokand in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, until about the 1820s. Because he was fiery and passionate he chose the pen name “Gulxaniy”; later he also used “Jur’at” in his poems. He lived mainly in Kokand and Namangan. To earn a living he stoked the fire in a bathhouse and in 1801–1810 served as a soldier of the Kokand khan Amir Olimxon; he learned classical literature by reading on his own. When Amir Umarxon came to the throne he drew him into the circle of court poets. Gulxaniy wrote poems and humorous works that appealed to ordinary people. Of his work, 12 ghazals in Uzbek and Tajik, a qasida dedicated to Umarxon and the “Zarbulmasal” have survived. The hard life of his soldiering years is reflected in one of his ghazals.
“Pen-name dictionary”: pupils find pen names of poets such as Navoiy (Foniy), Muqimiy, Gulxaniy and write their meanings from a dictionary.