Uzeyir Hajibeyov was born on September 18, 1885 in the village of Agjabedi near Shusha, Nagorno-Karabakh. He was the second child of Abdul Husein, a clerk and village writer, and his attractive wife, Shirin Khanum. Much of Hajibeyov's early musical education was informal. It might be said that much of his musical instinct was acquired by osmosis, since he grew up totally surrounded by music.
Shusha had a reputation for its musical heritage and was often referred to as "the Music Conservatory of the Caucasus" because of its many talented musicians and singers. But the fact that Hajibeyov grew up in Shusha explains how at 22, in 1908, with very little formal musical education, he was capable of writing a full-length opera. "Leyli and Majnun" a tragic love story by the poet Fuzuli, would be the first of 7 operas and 3 musical comedies that he would compose. The uniqueness of the traditional modal music of "mugam" was incorporated into the Western genre of opera via the use of instruments indigenous to both traditions.
His first education he got in religious school (medrese), where he perfected Arabic and Persian. Then he studied in two-year Russian-Azerbaijan school. Here, due to his favorite teacher Mirza Mekhti Hasanzadeh, he got acquainted with the creative activity of the famous writers of the East and the West. The richness of the musical-performance tradition of Shusha influenced greatly the musical education of Uzeyir Hajibeyov. Uzeyir bek wrote: "The first musical education I got in my childhood in Shusha, from the best singers and saz -players. At that time I sang mughams and tesnifs. Singers liked my voice. They made me sing and taught at the same time." The first teacher of Uzeyir Hajibeyov was his uncle Agalar bek Aliverdibeyov, the excellent connoisseur of Azerbaijan people's music. And the first literary debut of Uzeyir Hajibeyov was in Shusha, when he was 13 he wrote a book of fairy-tales and short stories. It is called "Kitabi-mezheke" ("A book of jokes"), and he illustrated his book himself. "Kitabi-mezheke" was read by his friends. When Uzeyir Hajibeyov was 13, in 1897–1898 in Shusha the scene "Medjnun on Leyla's grave" was staged under the leadership of A. Akhverdiyev and D. Karyagdy oglu in the performance of actors-amateurs. Uzeyir sang in the choir.
