Khurshidbanu Natavan

In 1850, she married Khasay Khan Utsmiyev, with whom she had two children – son Mehdigulu Khan ‘Vafa’ Utsmiyev (1855) and daughter Khanbike Khanum Utsmiyev (1856).

Upon her refusal to accompany Khasay to Dagestan, she returned to Shusha and remarried Seyid Huseyn in the 1860s. The couple had five children.

Her 15-year-old son, Abbas, died due to tuberculosis in 1885.

Natavan was born as Khurshidbanu Natavan Mehti Quli Khan Qizi on August 6, 1832, in the fortified town of Shusha (present-day Nagorno-Karabakh), Azerbaijan, to Mehdigulu Khan Javanshir, the last ruler of the Karabakh Khanate.

Being the only child of her parents, she was referred to as the ‘daughter of the khan’ by the general public and ‘one pearl’ in the palace as she was the last successor of the Karabakh ruling family.

She completed her education in Shusha and became well-versed in various European and Oriental languages as well as in music.

She inherited the responsibilities of social and cultural development of Karabakh at an early age, after her father’s death in 1845.

She invested highly in popularizing the horse breed, Karabakh, which eventually came to be known as the best horse in Azerbaijan, especially those from her stud.

A horse named ‘Khan’, from her stud, won a silver medal at an international show, conducted in Paris in 1867.

In 1869, a Karabakh horse named ‘Meymun’ clinched a silver medal, while another horse ‘Tokmak’ won a bronze and ‘Alyetmez’ got a certificate and was included in the Russian Imperial stud, at an All-Russian exhibition.

She established the first literary society in Shusha and went on to sponsor several more across Azerbaijan, the most popular of them being Majlis-I Uns (Society of Friends) which became a renowned poetic group in Karabakh.

Her focus on making a unique and distinct composition led to the creation of a needlework-embellished album cover for the Islamic calendar, in 1866.

After losing her 15-year-old son, Abbas, to tuberculosis in 1885, she authored an elegy ‘To My Son, Abbas’ as a tribute to the inseparable mother-son relationship, which became one of her most noted poems.