Nasib bey Yusifbeyli

Nasib bey Yusif bey oghlu Yusifbeyli (5 July 1881 – 31 May 1920), also known by the surname Usubbeyov, was an Azerbaijani publicist and statesman: founder of the Party of Turkic Federalists, finance and education minister in the first cabinet of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, and its prime minister in 1919–1920. ^{1 2} Mammad Amin Rasulzade credited him with formulating the very idea of Azerbaijan as a political entity. ¹

He was born at Ganja (then Elisavetpol) and graduated from the city's gymnasium, then enrolled at the law faculty of Novorossiya University in Odessa in 1902. ^{1 3} When the tsarist authorities closed the university over revolutionary student activity, he moved to Bakhchisarai in Crimea and from 1907 worked for Terciman, the newspaper of Ismail Gasprinsky, whose daughter Shafiga he married. ^{1 4} In 1908 he moved to Istanbul, continued his journalism and founded the Turkic Society; in 1909 he returned to Ganja. ^{1 4}

Back in Ganja, Yusifbeyli joined the Difai organisation and chaired the executive committee of the city's National Committee. ¹ In March 1917 he founded the National Party of Turkic Federalists, whose goal was a federal Russia; that June the party merged with Musavat, and he became head of Musavat's Ganja branch under Rasulzade's overall leadership. ^{1 4} He was elected to the Russian Constituent Assembly, and in the Transcaucasian Seim he was one of the two deputies of the Musavat faction's head; he travelled on delegation to Batumi and to Istanbul to request Turkish assistance. ¹

In the first Azerbaijani government, formed on 28 May 1918, Yusifbeyli was Minister of Finance and Minister of Public Education and Religious Affairs. ^{1 2} On 14 April 1919 he succeeded Khoyski as chairman of the Council of Ministers, heading the republic's fourth and fifth cabinets; under his government Azerbaijan established relations with Georgia and many European states, and in January 1920 the Entente's Supreme Council recognised Azerbaijan's independence de facto. ^{1 2} His coalition resigned on 1 April 1920 after the Socialist faction withdrew its support. ¹

After the Red Army entered Baku in April 1920, Yusifbeyli fled the city and was murdered on 31 May 1920; the Russian article places his death at Kurdamir and the Arabic article at Qarkhun village in Kurdamir district, while the Azerbaijani article records that some sources place the killing in early May. ^{1 2 4 3}

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

His confession. No consulted source names a branch or school for Yusifbeyli himself: the English, Azerbaijani and Arabic articles are silent on his religion, and the Russian article's only religion-adjacent statement is that his first ministerial portfolio covered public education and religious affairs — an office, not an attestation of personal belief. ^{1 3 2 4} Wikidata's only religion value for him is Islam in the generic, naming no school, so under the museum's two-source rule his faith is recorded unknown. ⁵