Haj Ghorban Soleimani was a celebrated Iranian dutar (دوتار) player and vocalist. He was also the pioneer of a new model of the ancient stringed Azeri instrument the gopuz. Soleimani was born in 1920 in Aliabad, a small village in the north of Ghuchan in northern Khorasan. Of Turkish origin, he has lived all his life in Aliabad whose inhabitants are in majority Turkish speaking. A musician as well as a farmer, capable of singing in Persian and Turkish, Soleimani is the perfect example of the bakhshi.