Poet.
As early as in the XXth century Firidun bek Kocharli in his work “History of the Azerbaijani literature”called him “one of the respected and talented Gazakh poets”. We’d be about right if we gave him the second place after Mir Khamza Nigari among the Sufi tarikat poets of the “nakshbendi” sect. It was for the first time that Sadi effendi ibn al-Gazi, a literary critic, tried to describe Vakhidi’s life and poems in his work. It was him who compiled a poetic divan (collection of poems) after Vakhidi’s death.

Though the Transcaucasian mufti Huseyn effendi Gaibzadeh for obvious religious reasons did not include Vakhidi’s poems into his well-known four volume “Book of poems by famous poets in Azerbaijan” Firidun bek Kocharli spoke highly of him.

Gadjiragim received home education. Later he by him- self profoundly studied classic oriental literature, mastered the Persian and Arab languages. He had such a good mas- tery of the languages that he wrote nazira for the distiches by the XIII century’s Iranian poet Sadi Shirazi in the Persian language. He maintained friendly relations with the local men of pen especially with captain Mustafa aga Nasir and Iskander aga Shair and was in correspondence with many of them. He was very fond of Ibragim Hakky from Erzurum (1703-1780) who was the last great poet of Ottoman Anatolia. In 1857 he made a pilgrimage to Mecca through Is- tanbul. Upon arrival in Istanbul and on his way back from the holy places he stayed at Mir Khamza Nigari’s. This ex- traordinary man had a significant influence on deeply tal- ented Gadjiragim aga’s world view. He became a follower of nakshbendi and was appointed a tarikat naib (local per- son responsible for the affairs) by Mir Khamza in the Gazakh district.

He is said to have been a man of pro-Turkish orienta- tion, always wore Ottoman style clothes and opposed the division of Muslims into Sunni and Shiite (the followers of nakshbendi considered themselves neither Sunnis nor Shiites but “true Muslims”). They tried to reconcile Islam with music, dances and wine. He was in opposition to the official Sunni clergy and the Russian presence in the Cauca- sus. At his own expense he built the mosque and put it at the disposal of the local village people.

He died a premature death. Gadjiragim aga Vakhidi was buried at the family graveyard Baba Dervish. His grave stele has survived to the present day. The examples of his poetry have come down to us thanks to Firidun bek Kocharli. Vakhidi’s manuscript books kept in the house of his sons were publicly burnt in the 30’s of the last century during the Bolsheviks’ “cultural revolution”.