Azerbaijani literature

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Azerbaijani literature (Azerbaijani: Azərbaycan ədəbiyyatı, آذربایجان ادبیاتی) is written in Azerbaijani, a Turkic language, which is the official state language of the Republic of Azerbaijan, where the North Azerbaijani variety is spoken. It is also natively spoken in Iran, where the South Azerbaijani variety is used, and is particularly spoken in the northwestern historic region of Azerbaijan.^[1] Azerbaijani is also spoken natively in Russia (especially Dagestan), Georgia and Turkey. While the majority of Azerbaijani people live in Iran, modern Azerbaijani literature is overwhelmingly produced in the Republic of Azerbaijan, where the language has official status. Three scripts are used for writing the language: Azerbaijani Latin script in the Republic of Azerbaijan, Arabic script in Iran and Cyrillic script formerly used in Soviet Azerbaijan.

The earliest development of Azerbaijani literature is closely associated with Anatolian Turkish, written in Perso-Arabic script. Examples of its detachment date to the 14th century or earlier.^[2][3] Several major authors helped to develop Azerbaijani literature from the 14th century until the 17th century and poetry figures prominently in their works. Towards the end of the 19th century, popular literature such as newspapers began to be published in Azerbaijani language. The production of written works in Azerbaijani was banned in Soviet Azerbaijan Stalin's "Red Terror" campaign targeted thousands of Azerbaijani writers, journalists, teachers, intellectuals and others and resulted in the changing of the Azerbaijani alphabet into one with a Cyrillic alphabet.

Modern Azerbaijani literature is almost exclusively produced in the Republic of Azerbaijan and despite being widely spoken in Iran, Azerbaijani is not formally taught in schools nor are publications in Azerbaijani easily available.