Abay Qo‘nonboyev

Abay Qo‘nonboyev was one of the founders of Kazakh classical literature, a great poet and enlightener. His real name was Ibrohim; Abay is his pen name. He was born on 10 August 1845 in what is now the Abay district (Chingiztog‘) in a wealthy cattle-breeding family and died in 1904. He studied first at a madrasa and later at a Russian school and became acquainted with the Eastern scholars — Firdavsiy, Nizomiy, Navoiy, Fuzuliy — and with Russian and Western literature. He began his work with poems and olans; he brought oral olans into written literature and composed melodies for 17 of them. Abay called the Kazakh tribes to unity and to knowledge. He wrote the dostons “Iskandar”, “Mas’ud” and “Azim rivoyati”; “Nasihatlar” (“Naqliya so‘zlar”) is his most important prose legacy. Mirtemir and Uyg‘un translated his poems into Uzbek.