Zeynalabdin Taghiyev

Hajji Zeynalabdin Taghi oglu Taghiyev ( Azerbaijani: Zeynalabdin Tağıyev; Russian: Зейналабдин Тагиев ) ( born January 25, 1821 in 1823 or 1838 in Baku, † September 1, 1924 near Baku ) was an Azerbaijani industrialist and philanthropist.

Life

Zeynalabdin Taghiyev was born the son of a poor shoemaker Taghi and his wife Anakhanim in the old city of Baku ( İçəri Şəhər ). To support his family, he began to learn after the death of his mother and the second marriage of his father Maurer. At the age of 18, he was an entrepreneur. Middle of 1873, he acquired along with two companions land near the then benefiting from oil boom town of Bibi- Heybat southeast of Baku to find oil sources. His business partner sold him after some time its shares and moved back to Baku. The gains of 1877 discovered oil source Zeynalabdin Taghiyev quickly became one of the wealthiest men in the Russian Empire.

Taghiyev was married twice. His first wife was his cousin Zaynab, with whom he had three children. After her death he married in 1896, Sona, the youngest daughter of a general named Balakishi Arablinski, with his elder daughter Nurjahan Taghiyevs son Ismayil was married.

Economic activities

Taghiyev invested his fortune not only in the oil business, but also in many other projects, such as in a textile factory and in fisheries along the coast of the Caspian Sea. He arranged the building of a mosque and evening training courses for employees of the textile factory, a school for their children, a pharmacy, a first aid station and a mill. Overall him his projects cost more than six million gold rubles. He invested significant sums in textile, food, construction and shipbuilding companies and in fisheries. In the 1890s he bought the Caspian Steamship Company, renewed it, and created a fleet of ten steamboats. Taghiyev owned land in Moscow, Tehran, Bandar -e Anzali and Rasht.

Community Service projects

In spite of his life following decades of anti-bourgeois propaganda in the former Soviet Union, Taghiyev will continue to worship in Azerbaijan because of his charity.

He promoted in 1883 to build the first Azerbaijani National Theatre in 1909 and helped in his recovery after an arson attack by reactionaries.

Between 1898 and 1900, Taghiyev 184,000 rubles for the construction of the first secular Muslim school for girls in the Middle East. The personal permission for construction of the school he was in correspondence with the Empress Alexandra.

He also promoted in 1894 Mərdəkan to build a school for agriculture and in 1911 the construction of the first engineering school in the district of Baku.

As a devout Muslim, he advocated the translation of the Koran into Azerbaijani language. This was strongly opposed by the local clergy, who believed that the contents of the Koran was untouchable because of its divine origin and therefore no one has the right to translate it. Then he sent a representative from a mullah to Baghdad, the official permission for the translation of the Qur'an with brought back by the local Muslim scholars. Taghiyev requested the necessary equipment for the translation from Leipzig and financed them and their publication.

For his outstanding performance, he was twice awarded the St. Stanislaus.