Background
Sakina Akhundzadeh was home-schooled by her father who was a poet writing under the pen-name Fada.
Sakina Akhundzadeh was home-schooled by her father who was a poet writing under the pen-name Fada.
She was the first known female playwright and dramatist in Azerbaijani literature. Her later attempts to establish secular education in Quba ended in a tragic way: religious fanatics retaliated by killing Akhundzadeh"s husband. lieutenant had opened only because the Azeri oil magnate Zeynalabdin Taghiyev had funded it, and it is said that the school was named after he had written a letter to Czarina Alexandra.
The local theatre was also funded by Taghiyev.
She began her career as a playwright upon founding a drama club at that school and adapting her plays to stage performance by the students. Her first play entitled Elmin manfaati ("The Benefit of Science") was staged for the first time in 1904.
This was a time of change, in 1901, Baku had seen the first female actresses appearing without veils. Following a more liberal approach by the Czarist government, freedoms such as the first magazine written by and for women was in seen in 1911.
Sakina was to be acknowledged as the first feminist playwright, with many of her plays dealing with the plight of Azeri women.
In 1911, Huseyn Arablinski staged Akhundzadeh"s remake of Namık Kemal"s play Zavallı çocuk (Bakhtsiz ushag in Azeri, "The Unfortunate Kid"), which soon began being performed in amateur theatres outside the Caucasus. She continued to work with Arablinski until his death in 1919, as well as with Abbas Mirza Sharifzadeh in 1917–1922. Finally in 1917, Akhundzadeh"s Zulmun natijasi ("The Consequence of Evil".
Based on Léo Delibes"s opera Lakmé) was staged at the Taghiyev Theatre in Baku (nowadays Azerbaijan State Theatre of Musical Comedy).
The performance was a great success and brought fame to Akhundzadeh leading to her being recognized as the first female Azeri playwright in history. Sakina Akhundzadeh was also known for writing fiction.
In 1918, she published her novel Shahzadeh Abulfaz va Rana khanim. The novel also contained poetic verses composed of 260 hemistiches.
