Early years Nariman Narimanov was born on 14 April (2 April O.S.) 1870 in
Tiflis,
Georgia, then part of the
Russian Empire into an ethnic
Azerbaijani family. The Narimanov family were middle-class merchants and were able to send their son to the
Gori Teachers Seminary, from which he graduated. Nariman Narimanov moved to
Baku in 1891. During this period, he was involved in cultural, educational, literary, and political activities. In 1894, he established the first public national reading room for the Turkic-Muslim community in
Baku. The library of the reading room included works from Eastern, Russian, and European literature, and it was enriched with newspapers, magazines, and books donated from cities such as Istanbul,
Sofia,
Cairo,
Tehran,
Tabriz, and others. In addition to his journalistic writings, Narimanov also prepared textbooks for students of the
Azerbaijani and
Russian languages. In 1896, Narimanov began teaching at the real school in Baku and carried out various studies in the field of humanities. In 1902, he passed an external exam and received a diploma from the Baku Boys’ Gymnasium named after Alexander III. In the same year, Narimanov enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine at the Imperial Novorossiya University in Odessa and formed a theater group composed of students during his university years. He later returned to Baku and served as the chairman of the founding commission of the First Congress of Muslim Teachers. In 1906, he went back to Odessa to complete his education. Between 1907 and 1908, his work
Nadir Shah was performed in major theaters in the Volga region, Turkestan, the South Caucasus, and Tehran. He went on to attend medical school at
"Imperial Novorossiya University" (present-day "Odessa University"), graduating in 1908.“Bahadır and Sona” is regarded as the first national novel in Azerbaijani literature, while “Nadir Shah” is considered to have laid the foundation for the first historical tragedy in Azerbaijani literary tradition. During the 1905 Revolution, Narimanov joined the
Bolshevik party, took an active part and led the student movement in
Odessa. He subsequently became one of the organizers of the Social Democratic Party. For these activities, Narimanov was arrested in 1909 and sentenced to five years' internal exile in
Astrakhan. . After the
October Revolution of 1917, Nariman Narimanov became the chairman of the Azerbaijani social democratic political party,
Hummet (Endeavor), the forerunner of the
Communist Party of Azerbaijan.
Sergo Ordzhonikidze described Narimanov as "the greatest representative of our party in the East". During the
Ezhovshchina of the late 1930s, Narimanov was posthumously denounced along with all other members of Hummet for their alleged
nationalism. Narimanov was survived by his wife Gulsum and by his son Najaf, who joined the
Red Army in 1938 and graduated from the
Kiev Higher Military Radio-Technical Engineering School in 1940. He became a member of the Communist Party in 1942. During the
Great Patriotic War, he was the commander of a tank division and took part in the
Battle of Stalingrad and the
Battle of the Dnieper before being killed in action near
Volnovakha in
Ukraine. • : Monuments in
Baku,
Ganja and
Sumgayit, cinema,
metro station, schools,
raion,
village streets in
Baku also in
Imishli (city) and
Ganja,
Azerbaijan Medical University, Central Park as well as villages of Narimanly in
Shamkir and
Geranboy and Narimankend in
Bilasuvar,
Gobustan,
Gədəbəy and
Sabirabad regions of Azerbaijan,
Nariman Narimanov Stadium. • : a village in the village hall of Aleksichskom Khoiniki district, Gomel region. • : a street (changed its name into Kutaisi in 1932), a museum in
Tbilisi (not active anymore), culture center, school, monument and street in
Marneuli. • :
Kostanay Airport (Narimanovka). • :
Narimanov, Astrakhan Oblast, a
khutor in Leninskoye Rural Settlement of
Zimovnikovsky District of
Rostov Oblast, a settlement in
Nurlatsky District of the
Republic of Tatarstan, a village in Narimanovsky Rural Okrug of Tyumensky District of Tyumen Oblast, raion in Baskhortostan, avenue and the area in
Ulyanovsk, culture center in
Shatura, streets in Volgograd, Chernyanka Belgorod regions,
Kostroma and
Moscow, street near railway of
Voronezh. Narimanov's name once given to
Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies. • : a street in Bayramali. • : an alleyway in
Odesa, a street in
Kharkiv, a village in
Kirovohrad Oblast. • : a city Payarik was once called as "Narimanovka". A city in Taskhent oblast. Senatoruim. ==Further reading==