Musa Zalilov (Jalil) was born on February 2 (15), 1906 in the village of Mustafino in the Sharlyk district of the Orenburg region (at that time the Orenburg province), where in 1919 he founded a children's organization that joined the struggle for Soviet power. He was the sixth and youngest child in the family. His parents are Tatars. Rahim and Mustafa Zalilov (Jalilov) soon after Musa's birth decided to move to a provincial town, where life was much easier than in the village. Rahima was the daughter of a mullah who arranged for Musa to study at the Husainiya madrasah. After the revolution, the theological educational institution was reformed and became the Tatar Institute of Public Education. Growing up, Moses realized that religion was not his way. The result of his education was a technical certificate, which he received at the Faculty of the Pedagogical Institute. He actively visits the library in Orenburg, where literature in Tatar and Russian is presented, and gets acquainted with the best works of that time.
On October 2 (old style), 1906, the meeting of the Orenburg Muslim Charitable Society decided to apply for the opening of a free library in the city, for which a commission was elected. Having received the governor's permission, the commission began collecting books and money from the population, ordered furniture, and rented a private building in Sytny lane. And soon the library was opened in a solemn atmosphere. In the early years, the library received 17 newspapers and magazines in the Tatar language and 6 newspapers and magazines in Russian. The subscription was expanded and supplemented with public funds. Students clean the room themselves, put books and inventory in order, and public assistants provide services to students. In August 1908, the charitable society purchased a two-story house in Solyanoy Lane for 25 thousand rubles for the library. Although slowly, the library stock is growing. According to the census of 1910, there were 1,510 books in it, and the library named after9700 people. The library is not only engaged in the issuance of literature, it conducts extensive cultural and educational work among the Tatars, Bashkirs, and Cossacks of the city. Meetings with famous people are often organized, popular lectures are given, and reader conferences are held. Sewing and sewing courses, music and drama clubs are organized in the library.
During these years, the library was visited by writers Shakir Mukhammedov, Zakir Ramiyev (Dardmend), Shamun Fidai, H. Yamashev, leading folk artists Fatima Kamalova, Mazit Ildar and others. In 1917-1919, he was the head of the Department. The library was headed by the famous Tatar writer Sharif Kamal, who did a lot to complete the library with literature. His influence on the students was enormous. It was during these years that Musa Jalil became an active reader of the library. During these years, the library, like all Tatar literature, has been going through dramatic events in its development.
At the same time, in the newspaper of the political department of the Turkestan army "Kyzyl Yuldus", he publishes his first poem, in which he calls on the defenders of Orenburg to feats in defense of the working people. In February 1920, he joined the Komsomol. He lived and worked in Orenburg for several years. After graduating from the art school, he served in special forces units, fought banditry. After graduating from the tatrabfak, Jalil worked as an instructor in the Orsk district Committee of the Komsomol, then in the Orenburg Provincial Committee of the Komsomol. The first poetry collection "Let's go" was published in 1925 in Kazan.
The works of M. M. Jalil of the 1920s include the glorification of the Heroes of the Revolution and the Civil war (the poem "The Roads Traversed", 1924-1929), romantic images of ordinary builders of socialism (collection "Order-bearing Millions", 1934; Collection "Postmen", 1938, published in 1940). At the end of 1927 He was elected a member of the bureau of the Tatar-Bashkir section of the Central Committee of the All-Union Lenin Komsomol Committee (KOMSOMOL). In 1931, he moved to Moscow, where he graduated from the literary Faculty of Moscow State University. Until 1932, he was the editor-in-chief of the Tatar children's magazine, headed the department of literature and art in the central Tatar newspaper "Communist".
In 1935, the first translations of his poems into Russian were published. In the 1930s, Jalil also translated into Tatar the works of poets of the peoples of the USSR Shota Rustaveli, Taras Shevchenko, Pushkin, Nekrasov, Mayakovsky and Lebedev-Kumach. As a playwright of the Tatar State Opera, he wrote four librettos for Tatar operas. In 1939 and 1940, he served as chairman of the Union of Writers of the Tatar ASSR.
The outbreak of the Great Patriotic War detained him in Kazan, where he headed the writers' organization of Tatarstan. Since July 1941, he has been at the front as a political instructor, an employee of the editorial office of the newspaper "Courage" of the 2nd shock Army in the Volkhov direction. In one of the battles, Musa Jalil was seriously wounded and captured. He ended up in a Nazi concentration camp. Soon, for participating in the preparation of the uprising of prisoners of war, he was imprisoned in the Moabite prison, then in the prisons of Spandau, Plettsensee. In prison, he continued to write poetry imbued with ardent love for the Motherland, his colleagues, and fellow citizens. In German captivity, he actively participated in the activities of an underground group of Tatar prisoners of war, was its ideological inspirer. On behalf of this group, he worked in the Tatarische Mittelstelle organization (Tatar mediation, Berlin), created by the Germans to conduct propaganda work among Tatar prisoners of war and use them in the war against the USSR; conducted cultural and educational work among prisoners of war forcibly enrolled in the legion, and destructive work against the Nazis.
On August 10, 1943, he and his comrades were arrested by the Gestapo and sent to the Moabite prison in Berlin. He was in a cell with Belgian patriot and resistance fighter Andre Timmermans and Polish prisoners. In prison, Jalil learns German to communicate with his prisoners. In prison, he wrote down poems written in the same place in homemade notebooks. He and his group of 12 people were sentenced to death on February 12, 1944 and executed by guillotine in Berlin's Plettsensee prison on August 25. His body has not been found.
Jalil's first notebook was kept by Abbas Sharipov, and then by Nigmat Teregulov. Sharipov was also in Moab prison and received letters from Jalil and Abdullah Alish when prison guards were hiding from the bombings. The second notebook is kept in the hands of the Belgian chamberlain Andre Timmermans. These notebooks were transferred to the Union of Writers of the Tatar ASSR in 1946 and 1947. They were published in the form of two books called "Moabite Notebooks". The widow of Jalil Amin Zalyalov handed over the original to the National Museum of Tatarstan for safekeeping. One of the notebooks was delivered in 1946 by Turkish citizen Kazim Mirshan to the Soviet Embassy in Rome. However, this notebook was lost in the archives of SMERSH, and its search since 1979 has not yielded any results. These notebooks are written in Arabic script.
In 1953, the Moabite Notebooks were published in Kazan, and a Russian translation was also published in Literaturnaya Gazeta with the assistance of its editor Konstantin Simonov.
Jalil was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union Star in 1956 and the Lenin Prize for Literature in 1957 for The Moabite Notebooks. Musa Jalil Street appeared in Orenburg in 1965. A monument to Musa Jalil was erected near the Kazan Kremlin; a museum in his apartment was opened in Kazan in 1983. His poetry was popularized in the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries. Soviet Tatar composer Najib Zhiganov wrote an opera poem "Jalil" based on the poet's life. The premiere of the song in the Tatar language took place in Kazan in 1957, and was later recorded by conductor Boris Khaykin for Moscow radio. In 1968, the film "Moabite Notebooks" was made about the poet. The symphonic poem "Musa Jalil" by the Soviet Tatar composer Almaz Monasypov, written in 1971, is dedicated to the poet. The minor planet NGC 3082, discovered in 1972 by Soviet astronomer Tamara Mikhailovna Smirnova, is named in his honor. The monument to the Soviet poet, hero of the Soviet Union Musa Jalil was unveiled on June 22, 1996 in the city of Orenburg. The monument is located in Orenburg on Postnikov Street.