Heyran Donboli

Heyran's divan (collection of poetry) encompasses 3588 couplets, the ones in Persian being 333 ghazals, 68 quatrains, 16 masnavis, 8 musammats, 2 mixed poems, 3 story poems, 5 odes, and 2 ode-ghazals. The remaining are 41 poems in Azerbaijani Turkic, which comprises mixed poems, ghazals and limerick. Contrary to her writings in Azerbaijani Turkic, no extensive study has been made of her Persian writings. Heyran was a supporter of the Bazgasht-e adabi, a literary style and movement that emerged in 18th-century Iran, which advocated for the return of the Khorasani and Iraqi styles in Persian literature. The center of the style was in Isfahan, but it was also supported in Azerbaijan, which Heyran helped popularize. An example of her poetry is from the following; "How long will you enslave me in your shackles? Is there a God to undo your shackles? I know not what I have done that Fate Would have me fall in your trap headlong straight" A female poet like Heyran was a rarity in Qajar Iran. Around 97% of the population was illiterate, while the remaining 3% could read and write Persian to a limited extent as well as usually understand the Quran. Girls attending home schools was not typical, and the opportunity to do so was limited to court girls and households with clergy members. In both the public sphere and society, women were sidelined. Only women from a family of nobility or government officials had the chance to study or pursue a career in poetry during the Qajar era. Living in a male dominated society, women found it difficult to communicate their emotions and experiences, even through poetry. Heyran's poetry is unique due to expressing the emotions of women, something that is uncommon among poetry written by female poets. She uses her own life to illustrate in the poem the circumstances under which women lived in a society where they were expected to serve only in the home and to help others. Heyran's poems are primarily about love; half of them depict the sorrow of a female poet recounting events from her life which she describes as uninteresting. Her writings about the lover and the beloved is a type of poetry that became popular in Safavid Iran. Communication between the lover and the beloved was marked by aggression, blame, and abuse as the lover felt inferior to the beloved and sought attention from the latter. Her poems are written in a straightforward language; they lack any hidden meanings or philosophical ideas, and because they do not contain several meanings, they are simple to understand. She makes use of commonly used rhetorical devices and figurative language like metaphors, similes, and allusions. She rarely uses figures of speech that are hard to understand. Grammatical errors can be found in her Persian poetry. According to Karachi, Heyran's usage of repetitious, and occasionally outdated vocabulary may be due to her mother tongue being Azerbaijani Turkic. She adds that Heyran also has poems of high quality, and considers her to be one of the most successful female poets of the Qajar era.