Mammad Amin Rasulzade (Azerbaijani: Məmməd Əmin Rəsulzadə, Turkish: Mehmet
Emin Resulzade,Persian: محمدامین
رسولزاده; born in January 31, 1884, Novxanı, near Baku— died March 6, 1955, Ankara) was an Azerbaijani statesman, scholar, public
figure and the first and only president of Democratic Republic of
Azerbaijan (1918–1920). His expression "Bir kərə yüksələn bayraq, bir
daha enməz!" ("The flag once raised will never fall!") has become the motto
of the independence movement in Azerbaijan in the 20th century.[edit] Early life
Mammad Amin Rasulzade
received his education at the Russian-Muslim Secondary School and then at the Technical College
in Baku. In his years of study he created
"Muslim Youth Organisation Musavat", first
secret organisation in Azerbaijan's contemporary history, and beginning from
1903 Rasulzade began writing articles in various opposition newspapers and
magazines. At that time, his anti-monarchist platform and his demands for the
national autonomy of Azerbaijan,
aligned him with Social Democrats and future Communists. In
1904 he founded the first Muslim social-democrat organisation "Hummet" and became
editor-in-chief of its newspapers, "Takamul"(1906–1907) and "Yoldash"(1907). Rasulzade also published many
articles in non-partisan newspapers such as "Hayat", "Irshad"
and also "Fuyuzat"
journal.
His dramatic play entitled "The Lights in the Darkness" was staged in Baku in 1908.
Rasulzade and his
co-workers were representatives of the Azerbaijani
bourgeois intelligentsia. Most of them, including Rasulzade himself, had
been members of the Baku organization of the Russian
Social-Democratic Workers' Party (Bolsheviks) in 1905. A photograph is
extant in Soviet archives, showing Rasulzade with Prokopius
Dzhaparidze and Meshadi Azizbekov, Bolsheviks who later
became famous as two of the 26 Baku Commissars shot during the civil
war. During the First Russian Revolution (1905–1907),
Rasulzade actively participated in revolutionary developments. As the story
goes, it was Rasulzade who saved young Joseph Stalin in 1905 in Baku, when police were searching for the latter as an
active instigator of riots.
In 1909, under the
persecution from Tsarist authorities, Rasulzade fled Baku to participate in the Constitutional Revolution of
1905-1911. While in Persia, Rasulzade edited
Iran-e Azad newspaper,became one of the
founders of Democratic Party of Iran and began publishing its newspaper Iran-e
Now which means "New
Iran" and which has been described as "the greatest, most important and best
known of the Persian newspapers, and the first to appear in the large size usual
in Europe". In 1911, Rasulzade
also published his book "Saadet-e bashar" ("Happiness of Mankind") in
defense of the revolution.
After Russian
troops entered Iran in 1911 and, in
cooperation with British, assisted Qajar Court to put an end to
Iranian Constitutional Revolution, Rasulzade fled to Istanbul, then capital of Ottoman Empire. Here, in the wake of Young Turk
Revolution, Rasulzade founded a journal called Türk yurdu (The
Land of Turks), in which he published his famous article "İran Türkleri"
("The Iranian Turks").[
