Maxtumquli

Maxtumquli is a great poet of the Turkmen people, born in 1733 in the village of Hojigovshon on the Atrak River. His father Davlatmamad was an educated man who wrote poems under the pen name “Ozodiy”. Maxtumquli studied at madrasas, including ones in Bukhara and Khiva, and learned goldsmithing; from the age of nine he began to compose songs, sometimes using the pen name “Firog‘iy”. He travelled to Afghanistan, Iran, India, Azerbaijan and to places such as Samarkand and Tashkent. His output exceeds ten thousand lines; it contains the life of the people, calls for unity and moral advice, and he died in 1791.