The poet Dulat Babatayuly lived in the nineteenth century, and it was he who sang these disturbing historical decades. He saw firsthand how the tsarism colonized the Kazakh land and oppressed the Kazakh people, and he resisted to it as he could.
Dulat Babatayuly was born in the town between Balkhash and Ayaguz. Dulat well knew the Arab language and was educated person for the time. With his help now we have Akhtamberdy-zhyrau's poetic works, the poet of the XVII century. And the most remarkable that Dulat Babatayuly was the first Kazakh poet whose poems were published in the typographical way and published as a book. The first collection «Өсиетнама» («The book of moralities») prepared for the edition by Seyilula Mauliken, was published in Kazan in 1880. It contains about eight hundred lines of verses of Dulat. Along with it, Dulat's verses were collected by the person named Baydilda (1839-1919), and, except them, there were Gabbas Baydildaula and Shakir Abenuly that kept manuscripts with Dulat's poems. So, more than 1500 lines of verses of Dulat reached nowadays, having become priceless spiritual heritage.
There are images of reality, social contradictions in the Kazakh steppe after khanate elimination when the power was transferred to sultans and volost governors are shown in the Dulat’s poems. Dulat represents a difficult life of the people, condemns violence of imperial colonialists. In the works Suleymenge, «Barakka», Kenesbayga and others the poet criticizes actions of imperial officials, convicts their defects.
At the time of the Soviet power Dulat's poems were called antinational, hostile, singing of rich life and the purposes of feudal lords, intentionally distorting their sense and value. In the 1940-1950th years the works of Dulat became object of literary disputes. On plenum of the Central Committee of CPSU and the scientific conference devoted to the main problems of the Kazakh literature (1959), Dulat was given an assessment of the conservative poet. The decision not to study his creativity at high schools was made. Therefore M. Auezov in the novel «Way of Abay» deduces his instructor under an assumed name Barlas.
Dulat was one of those people who rose against colonization of the Kazakh land with his affairs and verses. In the poem «Aktan zhas» he wrote that the land which earlier Kazakhs protected from the Dzhungars, came into the hands now to colonialists. In the long poem Espembet the same subject is developed. However the imperial administration does not recede from the aggressive plans. Among the Kazakh people there are the selling governors toadying colonialists. There became a lot of such who takes bribes and dreams only to grow rich. Dulat states the most rigid assessment.
Abay attentively studied Dulat's verses and used his some motives. For example, in the poem «Here I became a volost manager» Dulat's subject «Here is volost manager laughs».
Dulat entered new system of a versification in the Kazakh poetry - a rhyme « а а а b ». This rhyme accepted and further developed in the verses of Abay.
Dulat was the first poet in the Kazakh poetry who composed satire. Four-five satirical poems which have reached us introduced new forms in the Kazakh verses. His verses «A siskin and a quail», «The black crow wants food», Hairdresser speak about it.
There are the reflections, interesting images, unusual turns of a word in Dulat's poems and it makes him very interesting as a poet. For example, characterizing a person with difficult character, he compares him with «a tree which has stiffened from a frost». In general Dulat's poems are didactic and instructive. They were estimated already by time. It is difficult to find among his contemporaries such poets who would represent images of the nature so picturesquely and would characterize a person so figuratively.
The scientific assessment of Dulat’s creativity is connected with K.Omiraliyev's researches that collected and prepared for printing all his works. Compositions of the akyn were printed in different years, in different collections and anthologies. In 1991 the collection of works by Dulat «Zamana sazy» was published. Many works of the poet are stored in hand-written fund of the Central scientific library of Academy of Sciences of Kazakhstan.
Dulat Babatayuly served honest to his people, and in 1874 died. Not every poet can reach such height to be the teacher to the great Abay.
