Molla Panah Vagif

Molla Panah Vagif (Azerbaijani: Molla Pənah Vaqif, 1717-1797) was an 18th-century Azerbaijani poet, the founder of the realism genre in the Azerbaijani poetry and also a prominent statesman and diplomat, vizier – the minister of foreign affairs in the Karabakh khanate.

Vagif was born in 1717 in the village of Salahly in the Qazakh, but spent most part of his life in Karabakh. Soon after coming to Shusha, the capital of the Karabakh khanate at the time, Vagif became popular and beloved among the people due to his knowledge and talents. There was even a saying: "Not every literate person can be Vagif".

As vizier, Vagif did much for the prosperity and political growth of the Karabakh khanate. Also, he played an important role in organizing the defense of Shusha during the incursions of Aga Muhammad shah Qajar of Persia in 1795 and 1797.

The historian Mirza Adigezal bey records the following possibly apocryphal tale: during the 1795 siege of Shusha, which resisted stubbornly despite the overwhelming numbers of Aga Muhammad's army, the shah had the following couplet by Urfi, the Persian-Indian poet, attached to an arrow and shot behind the walls of the city:

زمنجنیق فلک سنگ فتنه می بارد
تو ابلهانه گریزی به آبگینه حصار؟‎

Lunatic! A hail of stones descend from the Catapult of heavens,
while you await wonders in walls of glass?

The shah was playing on the meaning of Shusha: "glass" in Persian(and Azeri). When the message was delivered to Ibrahim-Khalil khan, the ruler of Shusha, he called upon Vagif, his vizier, who immediately wrote the following response on the reverse of the message:

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