Nodira

Nodira (born Mohlaroyim) was born in 1792 in Andijan into the family of Rahmanqul Biy, the governor of Andijan, of the Uzbek Ming clan. Her father was an uncle of Alim Khan, the ruler of Kokand. In her youth she studied history and literature and became fluent in both Uzbek and Persian.

In 1807 (1808 in some sources) Alim Khan made his brother Umar governor of Margilan and married him to Nodira; the couple spent their first years in Margilan. When Alim Khan was killed in 1810 and Umar took the throne of Kokand, Nodira moved to the capital. Umar Khan himself wrote poetry under the pen name Amiri and gathered poets and scholars at his court, and the couple took part in poetry contests. They had two sons, Muhammad Ali (Madali Khan) and Sultan Mahmud.

After Umar Khan’s death in 1822 the fourteen-year-old Madali became khan, and in the first years of his reign Nodira in effect ran the affairs of state. She built madrasas, mosques, caravanserais and market rows, among them the Chalpak madrasa in the Guristoni Kalon cemetery and the Mohlaroyim madrasa in the Taqagarlik row, and supported calligraphers, painters and scholars. A circle of women poets, Uvaysiy and Mahzuna among them, formed around her; Uvaysiy, whom she invited to the court, is named in the sources as her teacher in poetry.

Nodira wrote in Uzbek under the pen names Nodira (“rare”) and Komila (“perfect”), and in Persian as Maknuna (“hidden”); her legacy amounts to about ten thousand lines. She wrote ghazals, mukhammases, musaddases, musammans, tarjibands and tarkibbands, as well as a firoqnoma, a verse letter of separation. She regarded Navoi, Fuzuli and Bedil as her masters and wrote mukhammases on their ghazals. The main themes of her lyric poetry are love and fidelity and, after her husband’s death, the grief of separation from him.

In 1842 Emir Nasrullah of Bukhara captured Kokand. Nodira was accused of breaking sharia and executed together with her sons Madali Khan and Sultan Mahmud and her fourteen-year-old grandson Muhammad Amin. She was buried in Kokand in the Modari Khan mausoleum; in the mid-20th century her remains were moved to a new white marble tomb.

Manuscripts of her divans are kept at the Beruni Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan; in 1962 her complete divan was found in Namangan, with 180 poems, 136 of them in Uzbek and 44 in Persian. Her work has been studied and published since the 1960s. In 1992 the 200th anniversary of her birth was widely marked in Uzbekistan, and a postage stamp was issued in her honour. Her life inspired the musical dramas “Nodira” by H. Razzoqov and “Nodirabegim” by Turob To‘la, and the film “Nodirabegim”.