Mahammad Hasan Movlazadeh Shakavi

Who was Mahammad Hasan Movlazadeh Shakavi?

Movlazadeh Mahammad Hasan Ismayil oglu Shakavi is considered a noble Azerbaijani religious leader, alim and scholar who was the first Sheikh ul-Islam of the Caucasus and the first scholar who translated Koran into the Azeri language and provided detailed commentary and interpretation.

Mahammad Hasan was born in 1854. He received his first religious education at Shaki mollakhane, which he later continued at Ganja Madrasa. After graduation from madrasah he served for a few years as mullah of Ganja Jum’a mosque. He later decided to continue his education and for this purpose traveled to Iraq where he advanced his degree in religion studies.

In 1891 he returned to the Caucasus and published the first joint Hijri and Christian calendars in Persian.

In 1893 Mahammad Hasan Movlazadeh started teaching Islamic religious law at Tiflis Muslim Religious Scholl. He later served as Ghazi of Jabrayil, Ganja, Tiflis and Kutaisi regions.

In 1908 Mahammad Hasan Movlazadeh had been elected as the First Sheikh ul-Islam of Muslims of the Caucasus.

In 1908 in Tiflis he publishes “Kitab əl-bəyan fi təfsir əl-Quran” - the two-volume edition of Koran’s translation and tafsir. This work has been re-published in Baku in 1990.