Gayaz Iskhaki is famous as a talented and original writer. He was born in 1878 in an ordinary family of mullah in a small village Yaushirma (Kutlushkino) in Chistopolsky Uyezd of the Kazan province. He could read at the age of five. At first he entered a medrese (religious school) in Chistopol and then studied in Kazan. The career of the country priest didn’t’ attract the ambitious young man and he entered the Tatar teachers’ training school without his parents’ knowledge.

Living in Kazan from hand to mouth, the seventeen-year-old boy wrote his first short story “Kelepushche Kyz” (“Tatar Milliner”). Readers liked the story so much, that its author became popular at once. This first creative work inspired Gayaz Iskhaki. He believed himself and began to write regularly no matter what happened to him, either he edited a newspaper or was in prison or lived as an emigrant.

G. Iskhaki published the newspaper “Tan” (“Sunrise”), the first socialistic edition in Tatar. Its motto as well as the motto of the author was: “One gets his right only through cruel fighting”. In a month time Iskhaki was exiled to his motherland and imprisoned in Chistopol.

It was a political auction. At that time the II Duma elections were held and Gayaz Iskhaki was in the list of candidates. Everything was done not to allow one more “problem” person to become a deputy.

The Duma was dissolved soon and G. Iskhaki was put into prison again. There in Kazan he spent six months and then was sent to the Arkhangelsk province, where he escaped from very soon. It was at that time when Iskhaki wrote “Aldym-birdym” (“Marriage Contract’) and started a story “Soldier”. In the exile he wrote “Tartyshu” (“Fighting”), a play “Mugallim” (“The Teacher”), drama and the third part of “Tlyanche Kyzy” (“The Popper Girl”), “Kuk Kapusy” (“The Sky Gate”), a pamphlet “Tormyshmy Bu” (“If It Is Life?” – “The Shakird’s Diary”, “Mullah-babai” (“Grandfather Mullah”), a novel and four short stories titled “Family Happiness” (“Familiya Sagadaty”).

In 1913 on occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Romanovs' Royal Family political prisoners were granted an amnesty, but Gayaz Iskhaki was not allowed to live in Kazan any more. He published Tatar newspapers firstly in St. Petersburg and Moscow and later in Berlin, where he lived till 1939. The writer died in Turkey in 1954.