The first presentations of Mahsati Ganjavi's works in European literary criticism. True and false views
Ilaha Mammadova

The article deals with the first researches of Mahsati Ganjavi, a prominent representative of the 12th century Azerbaijani literature, by French, English, German, Czech Orientalists and the first translations of rubaiyat into foreign languages. The article also discusses true and false sides of these studies.Information about Mahsati Ganjavi in European oriental studies was first published in French in 1841. During the first years of French rule in Algeria, Alfonso Baron Russo published a book called "Parnasse Oriental". Later, information about Mahsati Ganjavi was found in the works of Paul Horn, a professor at the University of Strasbourg, and Edward Brown, a professor at the University of Cambridge. Some quatrains of Mahsati Ganjavi are also translated in these books. Czech orientalist Jan Ripka published his book "History of Iranian Literature" in 1968. He introduced Mahsati Ganjavi as a beautiful and talented master of rubaiyat, as well as a contemporary of Omar Khayyam and Nizami. In the early twentieth century, the information about Mahsati Ganjavi was briefly given by European orientalists. However, one of the largest books published in Europe on Mahsati's legacy is "Die Schöne Mahsati", published in German in 1963 by Swiss researcher Fritz Meyer. The greatest merit of Fritz Meyer's work is that for the first time all the quatrains mentioned in the sources named after Mahsati have been collected here and given their scientific-critical text. The book contains 257 rubaiyat and about 30 poems.

Keywords: Mahsati Ganjavi, Rubaiyat, Frits Meyer, European Orientalists