Mammed Amin Rasulzade

Mammed Amin Rasulzade (31 January 1884 – 6 March 1955), in full Mahammad Amin Akhund Haji Molla Alakbar oghlu Rasulzade, was an Azerbaijani politician and journalist, founder of the Musavat movement and chairman of the Azerbaijani National Council. ^{1 2} On 28 May 1918 the National Council he headed proclaimed the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, the state whose founding he is remembered for. ¹ His words on raising the republic's flag — "The flag once raised shall never fall!" — became the motto of Azerbaijan's independence movement. ¹ After the republic fell in 1920 he lived the rest of his life in exile and died in Ankara. ¹

He was born at Novkhany, near Baku, on 31 January 1884, the son of the akhund Haji Molla Alakbar Rasulzadeh. ^{1 3} From 1903 he wrote for opposition newspapers and magazines, and he created the secret Muslim Youth Organisation Musavat, described in the English article as the first secret organisation in Azerbaijan's contemporary history. ¹ The Musavat (Equality) party, founded in 1911, became under his leadership the leading party of Caucasian Muslims, and from 1915 he published its newspaper Açıq Söz ("Open Word"). ¹ After the February Revolution the party was legalised and merged with the Turkic Federalists; after October 1917 he headed the Muslim faction in the Transcaucasian Seym, and in May 1918 that faction reorganised as the Azerbaijani National Council, which elected him its head unanimously. ¹ On 28 May 1918 the Council proclaimed the independent Azerbaijan Republic, and Rasulzade also initiated the establishment of Baku State University. ¹

After the republic's collapse in April 1920 he directed resistance from hiding at Lahij, was arrested in August 1920, and was released — the English article records — because he had earlier hidden Stalin from the police; he was transferred to Russia. ¹ From late 1922 he was active in exile in Istanbul, and from 16 September 1923 he edited the journal Yeni Kafkasya ("New Caucasus") there, until the Turkish government banned it in 1927 at Moscow's demand. ^{2 1} The suppression of the émigré publications in 1931 coincided with his expulsion from Turkey; he went to Poland in 1938 and Romania in 1940. ¹ In 1947 he returned to Ankara, and in 1953 he addressed Azerbaijanis through the Voice of America, expressing his hope that the country would one day be independent again. ¹ He died at Ankara on 6 March 1955 and was buried in the Cebeci Asri Cemetery. ^{1 4 3}

His writings include the 1923 Istanbul book on the Azerbaijan Republic's past, formation and present state, Əsrimizin Siyavuşu ("The Siyavush of Our Century", 1923) and İstiqlal məfkurəsi və gənclik ("The Idea of Independence and Youth"), all published in his Istanbul exile. ² His exile journals — Yeni Kafkasya (1923–1927), Azəri Türk (1928) and Odlu Yurd (1929) — carried the independence cause to the Azerbaijani emigration. ^{2 1} His pamphlet on Pan-Turkism and the Caucasian problem stated his view that Pan-Turkism was a cultural movement rather than a political programme. ¹

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

The 1942 contacts. The English article records that in 1942 the leadership of Nazi Germany contacted Rasulzade while forming national legions from the peoples of the Soviet Union, that Hitler tried to recruit him as leader of a German-sponsored Caucasus, and that at a meeting in May 1942 he attempted to form a strategic alliance with Germany in order to restore Azerbaijan's independence. ¹ The museum reports this exactly as the article reports it, with its citations; it is a record of his exile politics, stated without a verdict. ¹

His religion: what the sources do and do not say. No consulted article — English, Azerbaijani, Russian, Turkish, Persian or Arabic — names any religious affiliation for Rasulzade himself. ^{1 2 4} Wikidata's only religion value is Shia Islam (Q9585), a single structured-data value with no article behind it. ³ His father was an akhund, which is family background; the Musavat programme and his national ideology are politics; and the Caucasus milieu is context. ¹ None of these can carry a faith value under the two-source rule, so his faith is recorded as unknown, with the single Wikidata value preserved here and in his data record. ³

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
• Revisions of this article must be dated, and must name the source that changed each fact.