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 Mirza Sadikh Asad oglu (Sadikhjan) (1846-1902) - an outstanding musician, creator of the Azeri tar, the most revered national musical instrument. Tar is a central musical instrument when performing mugam, an original improvisational classical folk music popular in Azerbaijan as well as in Caucasus, and Middle East. It is also widely used in Azeri classical music.
Sadikhjan was born in 1846 in a poor family in Shusha. In his childhood Sadikhjan had a beautiful voice and wanted to be a folk singer. But he lost his voice when he was eighteen and started to learn play on various musical instruments. After trying several instruments he decided to play tar and soon became a virtuoso player. From this time people began to call him "Sadikhjan"-"dear Sadikh" ('jan' means darling, spirit in Azeri).
Sadikhjan travels a lot throughout the Caucasus, Central Asia and Iran. In 1880 he, together with two other famous Shushavian musicians – singer Haji Husi and kemancha player Ata Bagdagul-oglu were invited to Tabriz, Iran to the wedding of the son of the Iranian shah. In this wedding, which turned into an unofficial competition of singers and musicians Haji Husi was recognized the best singer and Sadikhjan was recognized as the best tarist and was awarded with the highest order of Iran – “Shir-i Khurshid”.
In approximately 1870-1875 Sadikhjan totally renewed the Persian tar, which he played so far and had small neck and five strings. He changed the shape of the neck, threw out unnecessary tones and brought the number of the strings from five to eleven. Besides, before Sadikhjan, people played tar holding it on their knees. Sadikhjan abolished this primitive manner and for the fist time presented the play on tar nestled to the breast.
These important renovations to the construction and style of performance on old Persian tar, introduced by Sadikhjan have greatly expanded the performing capabilities of tar and made the mughams performed on this instrument sound brighter and more colorful. Soon these novelties introduced by Sadikhjan were accepted throughout the whole Caucasus and Central Asia . The new tar he created, the Azeri tar, decisively replaced the archaic five-string Persian tar.
Sadikhjan was also a talented composer. He wrote some new parts to the already existing mugams, such as “Orta Segah” and “Bayati-Shiraz”. Sadikhjan was one of the organizers of musical spectacle “Leyli and Majnun” in 1897 in Shusha. Great composer U.Hajibeyov later wrote that he became inspired to writing the first Azeri opera (“Leyli and Majnun”) after having watched this play.
Sadikhjan died in Shusha at the age of 56. He left may disciples after himself, prominent tar players among them including both the Azeris (Meshadi Zeynal, Meshadi Jamil Amirov, Gurban Pirimov) and the Armenians (Arsen Yaramishev, Tatevos Arutyunyan, Bala Melikov).
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