Azernews.Az

By Amina Nazarli

History is probably the only science that is often subjected to ideological pressures of certain political forces. And a scientist needs to have a strong character and specific resistance to remain faithful to the historical truth.

The daughter of a famous oilman, hereditary nobleman and representative of the famous Ashurbayovs family Sara Ashurbeyli could go down into the Azerbaijani history as a genius historian, outstanding orientalist and talented artist.

The history remembers monumental buildings, palaces, mosques, large donations for the construction of the Shollar aqueduct as a contribution of the famous philanthropists Ashurbayovs to the prosperity of the nation.

Sovietization of Azerbaijan by nationalizing Ashurbayovs' private property and oilfields and announcing them "class enemies", the Soviet government also began to physical destruction of the male half of this noble family.

Somehow survived, 14-year-old Sara Ashurbeyli had to hide her noble origins, enduring hardship for more than 70 years.

The story of her life well mirrors the realities of Soviet Azerbaijan in the 20th century. She managed to survive the revolution, Sovietization, emigration, and homecoming, as well as terrible repression of 1930s claiming the life of her father and uncle and no less terrible World War that took the life of her only brother.

Ashurbeyli had a perfect education. She graduated from the Jeanne D’Arc College in Istanbul before entering Baku State University. She also studied European languages in Azerbaijan Pedagogical Institute, and was perfectly proficient in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, French, German, Russian and English.

Being the only person from the family who had to support her mother and two unmarried sisters, she started teaching languages, though she was paid only half a salary because of her disgraced family.

The efforts of Soviet government to distort the Azerbaijani history did not allow Ashurbeyli, the daughter of an “enemy of the people”, to carry out true researches in her field of science.

Any of her article and book always caused controversy, despite her powerful documentary base and true facts that were stronger than the pseudo-scientific arguments.

"The daughter of an oilman, Bourgeois will write the history of Azerbaijan?! Forget! Do anything else, but forget about the history! Forget forever!” they shouted at her in one of the top offices. It was a story that would be repeated over and over again throughout her life, as she was five times fired from different jobs.

"The only thing I never lost through all those years was my optimism," Ashurbeyli said, smiling while recalling hard times of her life. "When I was prohibited from working in a specific field, then I turned to a new specialty".

But Sara was strong and ambitious enough to become one of the best experts of the medieval period of the Caucasian history.

And even now, looking at the three major famous books including “The Shirvanshah's State”, “The Economic and Cultural Links between Azerbaijan and India during the Middle Ages” and "History of Baku" it is really difficult to imagine fully what these work were worth for this fragile woman with the character of “Napoleon” (her nickname given by colleagues).

Living long and difficult 95 years, the legendary women eventually succeeded in becoming immensely popular and widely recognized as an historian and as the selfless scientist who devoted her whole life to the development of the history of Azerbaijan...

Contributed by Gulnar Aliyeva, Honored Cultural Worker.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli

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