Fatali Khan Khoyski

Fatali Khan Iskandar Khan oghlu Khoyski (7 December 1875 – 19 June 1920) was an Azerbaijani lawyer and statesman: a deputy of the Second State Duma of the Russian Empire and the first chairman of the Council of Ministers — prime minister — of the independent Azerbaijan Democratic Republic. ^{1 2} Across the republic's two years he also held the interior, defence, justice and foreign portfolios. ^{1 3}

He was born at Nukha (present-day Shaki) into the noble family of Iskandar Khan Khoyski, an officer of the Russian Army; the family, of the Dunbuli tribe and the khans of Khoy, took its surname from his great-grandfather Jafar Qoli Khan, whom Tsar Alexander I appointed Khan of Shaki after the Russo-Persian war of 1804–1813. ^{1 2} He finished the Ganja Classical Gymnasium in 1893 and graduated from the law faculty of Moscow University in 1897 with a first-class diploma, then entered judicial service, holding court posts at Kutaisi, Zugdidi and Sukhumi. ^{1 2}

In 1907 Khoyski was elected to the Second State Duma from the Elizavetpol Governorate, sitting as an independent deputy in its Muslim faction and as a member of the Constitutional Democratic Party, and he spoke against the government's resettlement policy. ² After the February Revolution of 1917 he took part in the First Congress of Caucasus Muslims at Baku and in the All-Russian Muslim Congress at Moscow, chaired the Baku City Duma from October 1917, and served as people's education commissar under the Transcaucasian Commissariat and then as justice minister of the Transcaucasian federation. ² On 27 May 1918 he was elected chairman of the executive committee of the Provisional National Council of Azerbaijan. ^{2 1}

When the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was proclaimed on 28 May 1918, Khoyski formed its first government as chairman of the Council of Ministers, holding the interior ministry himself until 17 June 1918. ^{1 3} His first cabinet resigned on 17 June amid disputes over officials' oil dealings, and he formed the second government, taking the justice portfolio as well; he later served as defence minister (November–December 1918) and twice as foreign minister (26 December 1918 – 14 March 1919, and 24 December 1919 – 1 April 1920). ^{2 3} He remained prime minister until 14 April 1919, when Nasib bey Yusifbeyli succeeded him. ^{1 3} As foreign minister he repeatedly refused the Soviet commissar Georgy Chicherin's requests to open a front against Denikin's White movement, answering that the republic would not meddle in Russia's internal affairs; in his last letter Chicherin warned him of the coming invasion by the 11th Red Army. ¹ Khoyski moved his family to Tiflis before the Red Army entered Baku on 28 April 1920. ¹

On 19 June 1920 Khoyski was shot dead near the central Erivansky Square in Tiflis by Aram Yerganian, in the Armenian Revolutionary Federation's Operation Nemesis; the Azerbaijani article names Misak Grigoryan as a second gunman. ^{1 2} The ARF held him responsible for a major role in the September 1918 killings of Armenians in Baku. ¹ His burial ceremony was arranged by the Persian consulate in Tiflis, and he was buried in the city's old Muslim cemetery beside the playwright Mirza Fatali Akhundov. ^{1 2}

This section sets out positions as reported in the sources; it is not a verdict by the museum.

His confession. The Azerbaijani and Russian articles state the same thing in the same terms: the Azerbaijani article says that "by religious belief, Fatali Khan Khoyski was a Shia Muslim", and the Russian article that "by confession, Fatali Khan Khoyski belonged to the Shia Muslims". ^{2 4} Both articles, however, cite one and the same source for the statement — the documentary volume Fətəli Xan Xoyski: həyat və fəaliyyəti: sənəd və materiallar (Baku: Azərbaycan, 1998), the Russian article at page 21 — so the museum's two-source rule treats them as a single source family, and his faith is recorded unknown, with the attestation preserved here and in his data record: one genuinely independent second source would change the record to Shia (Twelver) under the museum's mapping rule. ^{2 4} The Russian article further reports that the prayers performed over him at birth were those required by the Shia board of the Caucasus — a family rite, reported here as the article reports it. ⁴ The English and Arabic articles make no statement about his religion in their text, and Wikidata carries no religion value for him at all. ^{1 3 5}