Alimardan bey Topchubashov

Alimardan bey Alakbar bey oghlu Topchubashov (4 May 1862 – 8 November 1934) was an Azerbaijani politician and lawyer. He led the Muslim faction in Russia's First State Duma in 1906, chaired the early All-Russian Muslim congresses that founded the Ittifaq al-Muslimin party, and after 1918 served the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic as foreign minister and then as speaker of its parliament, heading its delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. ^{1 2}

His birth year is genuinely disputed: the Azerbaijani article's lead and the English article's lead give 4 May 1862, while the English article's biography reports that archival data gives 4 May 1863, the Russian article's lead agrees on 1863, and 1859 and 1865 are also claimed by some authors. This record follows 1862, with the split stated rather than merged. ^{1 3}

He was born at Tiflis into a family originally from Ganja, lost both parents as a small child, and was raised by his grandmother. After the Tiflis Gymnasium he studied law at St Petersburg University, graduating in 1888; during his studies he was expelled for involvement in secret student organisations and then reinstated after the intervention of professors. The English article records that he was offered the chance to remain at the university and teach law if he would convert to Christianity, and that he refused and returned to Tiflis, where he worked as a clerk, investigator and judge at the district court. ¹

He married Pari Malikova, daughter of Hasan bey Zardabi, the founder of the first Azerbaijani newspaper. In 1897 the oil magnate Zeynalabdin Taghiyev bought the Kaspi newspaper and made Topchubashov its editor-in-chief, and from the Baku City Duma, where he sat from 1902 to 1905, he became one of the leading political voices of the Muslims of the Russian Empire, campaigning for the political equality of all subjects of the Crown and an end to discrimination against Turkic and Muslim peoples. ¹

At the first All-Russian Muslim Congress of August 1905 he helped found the Union of the Muslims of Russia, Ittifaq al-Muslimin, and he presided over its second congress in January 1906, which adopted the union's regulations. When the First State Duma opened on 27 April 1906, the Muslim faction in it was led by Topchubashov. After the Tsar dissolved the Duma, he was among the deputies who signed the protest manifesto at Vyborg; he was arrested for three months, stripped of his right to sit in parliament, and removed from the Baku municipality and from Kaspi. Iran later invited him to head a department of its Ministry of Justice and reform its judiciary, an offer he declined in order to continue his work in Russia. ¹

After the February Revolution of 1917 he chaired the Congress of the Muslims of the Caucasus at Baku in April 1917, the first such national congress in a century, as he said in his opening address. ¹

When the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was proclaimed on 28 May 1918, Topchubashov became its ambassador to Armenia, Georgia and the Ottoman Empire and was sent to Istanbul; he was then made minister of foreign affairs in the second cabinet, and on 7 December 1918 he was elected head of the parliament in absentia, becoming the republic's second head of state after Mammed Amin Rasulzade. He left Istanbul for Paris to head the Azerbaijani delegation at the Versailles conference, met President Woodrow Wilson, and achieved de facto recognition of the republic in January 1920. ^{1 2}

After the Bolshevik takeover he could not return home. He stayed in Paris, publishing books, brochures and journals to present Azerbaijan to foreign readers, and died there on 8 November 1934. He was buried in the communal cemetery of Saint-Cloud, near Paris, beside his wife Pari, who died in 1947. ¹

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