WITNESS OF THE ERA

Few historians can boast that they were able to witness an era. Not only did the outstanding scientist Sara Asurbayli witness the most difficult periods of her country, she also stood many tests. She lived a long life full of hardships and trials. Born in 1906 in the family of the Baku oilman and philanthropist Balabay Asurbayov and his wife Ismat, with the beginning of the civil war and Bolshevik terror, she and her family had to leave the country in a hurry and immigrate to Turkey. Not only they, but also most of their acquaintances left.

Immigration

Their famous relative Nariman Narimanov helped them with their departure. Even though he was a communist, he helped many, including participants in the creation of the ADR, to leave the country in the harsh 1920s. Sara xanim then recalled how they first got to Tiflis and then to Batumi by train and boarded a steamer to Trabzon, where they were suddenly caught in a storm: "... A hurricane wind came from somewhere, the sky turned black, and huge waves the size of a house rose. The old ship was bursting at the seams and it seemed that it was about to fall to bits and that the sea would swallow us. I was terrified. It seemed to me that we would all die, and then I raised my hands to heaven and prayed: Oh, great God! Do not let us die! Stop this storm!" And just imagine - the wind immediately subsided as if it had not been raging. The sea gradually calmed down and we made it safely to Trabzon."

In Istanbul, Sara Asurbayli studied at the Jeanne d'Arc French College. "The best years of my life are the ones that took place in Istanbul, Turkey. Life was calm and measured and, most importantly, no one cared about it. No one cared who we are, why we had come there, and how we lived and on what. People treated us in a calm and friendly manner," she said.

The college tuition fee was high enough, but her father was not bothered about it. The college was under the patronage of one of the Catholic monastic orders, and Balabay, a devout Muslim, was afraid that his daughter would change her religion. However, the leadership of the college assured him that spiritual subjects are not mandatory for adherents of a different faith.

The family travelled extensively in Europe. In 1914, just before the First World War, they once again came to Germany. "I once went to the concert of a violinist there. I don't remember his last name. I only remember that he was a Czech. I was learning to play the piano at home and loved music. I liked the play of the violinist so much that during the break, I asked my mother for money and bought flowers - a big bunch of red roses - together with the governess. When I handed him the bouquet after the concert, he kissed my hand as an adult young lady. I was terribly flattered. I was only nine years old and was very proud that I was already being treated like an adult," Sara xanim said.

Shattered hopes

The NEP time was a short period in Soviet history when the old order returned - private business was allowed and companies were returned to their former owners. The post-war life in the 1920s was really improving fast and no one was waiting for the harsh and cruel 1930s. "One of the reasons we returned was letters from my uncle Ali bay. He lived with his mother. He didn't have a family of his own and was very attached to us and missed us," Asurbayli told. "He wrote to my father that life in the city returned to normal, the situation is calm, totally different from 1920, when he, a man quite far removed from politics, was arrested on charges of anti-Soviet conspiracy."

However, after returning to Baku, her father was arrested on completely absurd charges of treason (the famous Article 58) and exiled to Karaganda. In turn, in 1937 he was arrested by the NKVD there and sentenced by a troika (a special commission without lawyers) to death. It was not some new charge - the NKVD was carrying out a plan of executions ordered by Stalin personally, and they were not interested in whether you are guilty or not. In 1942, Sara's husband Bahram Huseynzada was arrested. Initially, he was sentenced to death on the same charges as her father. Sara xanim went to court, looked for connections, wrote letters and hired a lawyer. As a result, in 1943, the sentence was replaced to 10 years in prison.

Many of her other relatives were reported to the police and killed. Their rich past as noblemen and previous life abroad put them all under attack and caused suspicions from the hungry, illiterate and frightened majority.

For example, Mammad Tagi Aga, uncle of Sara xanim, was a skilled physician educated in Kiev and a veteran of the First World War awarded two St. George Crosses. On hearing the word "Germany" in his recommendations on diet (when listing the countries where the diet is used), one of the patients immediately denounced him - allegedly he praised Germany where fascists were in power. And my uncle was executed.

Job

Sara Asurbayli was interested in history and architecture of her native city from childhood. In Baku, she graduated from the History and Philology Department of the Faculty of Oriental Studies of Azerbaijan State University.

For a very long time, the unofficial status of "a family member of an enemy of the homeland" did not allow her to get a job in her field. Her family was destitute. Sara xanim worked as a teacher in a secondary school and a stage designer in the theatre, did small jobs and taught foreign languages in the conservatory.

On the advice of friends, she went to a place "where nobody knew her" and successfully defended her thesis at the Leningrad Institute of Oriental Studies in 1949. Shortly after the famous 20th Party Congress that debunked the Stalin cult, the time of thaw and rehabilitation of innocent prisoners came. With the help of Samad Vurgun, who was vice-president of the Academy of Sciences, Asurbayli managed to get a job in her field. Only then, did she get the opportunity to fully fulfill herself as a historian.

In 1964 she defended her doctoral thesis at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of Georgia, and only then (she was already 60), was she able to take up historical science professionally. Initially, Sara xanim worked at the Museum of History of Azerbaijan, where she headed the department of Azerbaijan's medieval history and then as a senior research fellow at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences. She was a scientific secretary, a senior research fellow and a leading scientist at the Institute of History, and from 1993 until the end of her life, Sara Asurbayli was a senior fellow at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan.

Despite the difficult fate and very late arrival in science, Sara Asurbayli made an invaluable contribution to the study of the history of Azerbaijan and Baku in a short time.

"For me, Sara xanim is the greatest keeper of the history of Baku," historian Rizvan Huseynov says. "Perhaps, she made more than all our scientists for the study of the history and ancient architecture of Baku and found numerous sources on the Maiden's Tower and the general history of the Shirvanshahs."

She authored more than one hundred scientific papers on historical subjects, most of which were written for the Azerbaijan Encyclopedia. Sara xanim is the author of translations of Western and Eastern researchers of Azerbaijan. She is the author of "Essays on the History of Medieval Baku (8th - early 19th century)", "History of the City of Baku", "State of the Shirvanshahs (6th-16th centuries)" and other books.

The wheel of history went through the entire intelligentsia of the Soviet Union, burying many of the best people. When you read the biographies of artists, actors, directors, writers and musicians, you see that not a single family was able to avoid the Red Terror of the late 1930s. The tough time left scars on the fates of survivors. Till the end of her life, Sara Asurbayli, a person of intellectual labour, remained in good memory, and at 95, she started a book about her hard biography, which she was unable to finish. She died on 17 July 2001.