Muhammad Rizo Ogahiy and his ghazals

Muhammad Rizo Ogahiy was born on 17 December 1809 in the village of Qiyot near Khiva in the family of the mirab Erniyozbek; his father died when he was young and he grew up under the care of his uncle, the poet Munis, studying Arabic, Persian and history at school and madrasa. After Munis died in 1829, Ollaquli Khan appointed him mirab – a responsible post in water-short Khorezm. In 1839 he completed “Firdavs ul-iqbol”, begun by Munis, and in 1844 finished “Riyoz ud-davla”. In 1845 he injured his leg on a trip and was left bedridden, and also lost his wife; in 1857 he was forced to leave the post of mirab, but did not stop writing: he composed historical works such as “Zubdat ut-tavorix” and “Jome’ ul-voqeoti sultoniy” and translated “Qobusnoma”, “Guliston”, “Haft paykar”, “Yusuf and Zulayho” and others into Uzbek. He died in 1874. His poetry is collected in the divan “Ta’viz ul-oshiqin” (“Amulet of Lovers”): nearly twenty thousand lines in over twenty genres, more than 1300 of them in Persian.