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| Bunyadov researched ancient and medieval Azerbaijani historiography, specializing on ] and Azerbaijan during the ] rule, concentrating on the events from the 7th-19th centuries AD <ref>Some of Bunyadov's research is discussed by Western journalists such as Yo'av Karny. Highlanders: A Journey to the Caucasus in Quest of Memory, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001; and, Thomas De Waal. Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War, New York University Press, 2004.</ref> | Bunyadov researched ancient and medieval Azerbaijani historiography, specializing on ] and Azerbaijan during the ] rule, concentrating on the events from the 7th-19th centuries AD <ref>Some of Bunyadov's research is discussed by Western journalists such as Yo'av Karny. Highlanders: A Journey to the Caucasus in Quest of Memory, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001; and, Thomas De Waal. Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War, New York University Press, 2004.</ref> | ||
| Bunyadov has been internationally criticized for unethical academic conduct associated with revisionist research of issues dealing with Armenia and Armenians. In view of British journalist Tom de Waal, “Buniatov's academy reissued thirty thousand copies of a forgotten racist tract by the turn of the century Russian polemcisit Vasil Velichko” ... "Later Buniatov began a poisonous quarrel for which Caucasian Albanians themselves should take none of them blame. (Their true history has not become any clearer as a result). Buniatov’s scholarly credentials were dubious. It later transpired that the two articles he published in 1960 and 1965 on Caucasian Albania were direct plagiarism. Under his own name, he had simply published, unattributed, translations of two articles, originally written in English by Western scholars C.F.J. Dowsett and Robert Hewsen.” <ref> Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War by Thomas De Waal (Aug 25, 2004) , pages 152-153, 143 </ref> American historian George Bournoutian suggests: “During the 1980s and 1990s, that is, since the recent political and military conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, many new editions of these earlier translations have been published by the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, or by other state-sponsored publishers, in which most references to Armenia and Armenians have been altered or deleted. In his edition of the Russian translation of an eighteenth- century history of Karabakh by the Armenian patriarch of the Holy See of Gandzasar in Karabakh, Academician Ziya M. Buniatov has blatantly and systematically replaced the noun Armenian with Albanian. Several travelers' accounts have also been subject to the same tampering by Buniatov. For one example, in Buniatov's new edition of the account of the German traveler Johann Shiltberger of his wanderings through Karabakh in the early fifteenth century, Buniatov has deleted critical references to Armenia and Armenians, particularly in those parts of the text which depict an Armenian presence in Karabakh. Buniatov has boldly omitted chapters 63 through 66 of the manuscript, some twenty pages in all, which deal with Armenia and the Armenians, and has altered some of the text which he has maintained in his edition.” . In view of Russian historian and political scientist Victor Schnirelman: "Buniatov purposefully tried to cleanse … Azerbaijani lands of Armenian history." Israeli journalist and political commentator Yo'av Karny notes sardonically: “The Albanianness of the Caucasus, Buniatov argued, had fallen victim to a conspiracy led by three elements who were interested in taking the Caucasus away from its indigenous population. It took a while to expose the conspiracy—some eight hundred years to be precise—but Buniatov had finally revealed the conspirators: the Arabs, the Armenians, and the czarist Russians.” <ref>Yo'av Karny. Highlanders: A Journey to the Caucasus in Quest of Memory, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001,page 379</ref> | |||
| Bunyadov is also known for his article ''Why Sumgait?'' <ref>''"Why Sumgayit? (situational analysis)", January 1989, http://www.irs-az.com/gen/n5/n5_6.htm</ref> The article established a precedent of using nationalist ] and ] of living and historical individuals in official academic Soviet press by a high-caliber Soviet scholar. The publishing of the article coincided with the announcement of criminal verdicts by Soviet courts against several Azerbaijani persons who actively participated in the anti-Armenian pogrom in the city of ], in February 1988. In those events dozens of ethnic Armenians were killed or maimed, and the entire Armenian population of Sumgait—around 14,000 people—fled the city in panic. The basic theme of the text is a ] about the origin of the pogrom. According to Bunyadov, the Sumgait events were masterminded and executed not by Azerbaijanis but by undetected Armenian agent-provocateurs as a step toward re-establishing a giant “Greater Armenia.” Bunyadov ridicules this imaginary “Greater Armenia,” which he depicts as stretching from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, by contending that Armenia has for centuries been merely a geographic concept. At the helm of that secret and evil plan, says Bunyadov, stood several prominent representatives of Armenian intelligentsia, clerical circles and Soviet administrators with Armenian roots. He collectively condemns them as “dashnaks”—a term commonly designating the Armenian anti-Soviet party that was expelled from the USSR in the 1920s. Bunyadov then continues by making more false statements about these and other individuals. For example, Bunyadov attacks Armenian spiritual leader, Vazgen I - ] of All Armenians, by falsely calling him a “private friend of Marshall Ion Antonescu” and a protégé of “international Armenian mafia;” he untruly portrays the prominent Armenian poetess Silva Kaputikian as daughter of a leader of the Dashnak party; and labels Armenian military leader Andranik Ozanian, whose image was tolerated in the USSR, a “one-eared bandit.” Accompanying Bunyadov’s claims are mockery and contempt advanced with an apparent intent to cause readers to develop an extremely negative, unethical or unappealing perception of targets of his insinuations. The article also revealed Bunyadov’s antipathy to several internationally renowned Soviet human rights activists and dissidents, e.g. Academician ], who tried to advance Gorbachev’s policy of ] and supported ]’s request to secede from Azerbaijan. Not surprisingly, while referring to the article "Why Sumgait?," Tom de Waal calls Bunyadov “Azerbaijan’s foremost Armenophobe.” “Buniatov concluded” – writes Waal – “that Sumgait pogroms had been planned by the Armenians themselves in order to discredit Azerbaijan and boost Armenian nationalist cause.” <ref> Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War by Thomas De Waal (Aug 25, 2004), page 42</ref> | |||
| Bunyadov is also known for his article ''Why Sumgait?'' <ref>''"Why Sumgayit? (situational analysis)", January 1989, http://www.irs-az.com/gen/n5/n5_6.htm</ref> | |||
| ⚫ | On other issues, Ziya Bunyadov academic credentials received positive comments from fellow colleagues. At least one of such opinions is known. Soviet/Russian orientalist and journalist Farid Seyful-Mulukov noted: ''"He was an outstanding scholar. Qoran translation requires excellent knowledge of Arabic language and only few dare to embark upon that job. Ziya Bunyadov managed to do excellent translation of the Holy Book."'' <ref>Zerkalo, 14 March 2007</ref> | ||
| Tom de Waal calls Bunyadov “Azerbaijan’s foremost Armenophobe.” “Buniatov concluded” – writes Waal – “that Sumgait pogroms had been planned by the Armenians themselves in order to discredit Azerbaijan and boost Armenian nationalist cause.” <ref> Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War by Thomas De Waal (Aug 25, 2004) , page 42</ref> | |||
| ⚫ | Soviet orientalist and journalist Farid Seyful-Mulukov noted |
||
| ==Footnotes== | ==Footnotes== | ||
Revision as of 22:53, 21 March 2007
Ziya Musa oglu Bunyadov (Azeri: Ziya Bünyadov) (24 December 1921, Astara – 21 February 1997, Baku) was an Azerbaijani historian, academician, and Vice-President of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan. As a historian, he also headed the Institute of History of the Azerbaijani Academy of Sciences for many years. Bunyadov was a World War II veteran and Hero of the Soviet Union.
Life
Ziya Bunyatov was born on December 21, 1923 in the town of Astara. After finishing the secondary school, he joined Baku military school. In 1942, he was sent to World War II to fight on the Caucasus front, near the town of Mozdok. The Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star), the official newspaper of the Soviet Army, wrote about Bunyadov in 1942: "sly, swift as a tiger, the intelligence officer Ziya Bunyadov, who under the improbable conditions, in the most complex situation could clearly orient himself, bring precise data about the number, the armament and the dislocation of the enemy. He was valued in the battalion for the romantic soul and the literary erudition".
Ziya Bunyadov showed heroic effort in the battle over Pilitsa bridge in Poland on January 14, 1945, resulting in 100 Nazi fatalities and 45 Nazi prisoners taken. For this deed, on February 27, 1945, by the decree of the Supreme Soviet (Parliament) of the Soviet Union, Ziya Bunyadov was awarded the highest military honor, the Hero of the Soviet Union medal. Besides this highest title, for his participation and heroism in World War II, Ziya Bunyadov was also awarded the honorary Red Banner, Red Star, Alexander Nevsky, and 2-nd degree Patriotic War Soviet orders and honorary Soviet medals "For the Defense of Caucasus", "For liberation of Warsaw", "For liberation of Berlin" and "For the Victory Over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945". For a year after the end of war, Lieutenant Ziya Bunyadov was the deputy military commendant of the Pankow district of Berlin.
After the war, Ziya Bunyadov completed the Moscow Institute of Orientalism and in 1954 defended his doctorate dissertation. Dr. Bunyadov returned to Baku and started working at the Institute of the History of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan SSR. Here he grew from a position of a research associate to become a chief scientist, head of the Insitute of History, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences and then finally full academician and vice-president of the Academy of Sciences. He was the author and editor of numerous monographs, books and articles on the history of Caucasus.
On February 21, 1997, Ziya Bunyadov was murdered at the entrance to his apartment in Baku. Though the official state investigation placed the resposibility on a group of Islamic extremists, many of whom received life sentences, the culprits and circumstances of Bunyadov's murder remained mysterious.
Academic Career
Bunyadov researched ancient and medieval Azerbaijani historiography, specializing on Caucasian Albania and Azerbaijan during the Arab caliphate rule, concentrating on the events from the 7th-19th centuries AD
Bunyadov has been internationally criticized for unethical academic conduct associated with revisionist research of issues dealing with Armenia and Armenians. In view of British journalist Tom de Waal, “Buniatov's academy reissued thirty thousand copies of a forgotten racist tract by the turn of the century Russian polemcisit Vasil Velichko” ... "Later Buniatov began a poisonous quarrel for which Caucasian Albanians themselves should take none of them blame. (Their true history has not become any clearer as a result). Buniatov’s scholarly credentials were dubious. It later transpired that the two articles he published in 1960 and 1965 on Caucasian Albania were direct plagiarism. Under his own name, he had simply published, unattributed, translations of two articles, originally written in English by Western scholars C.F.J. Dowsett and Robert Hewsen.” American historian George Bournoutian suggests: “During the 1980s and 1990s, that is, since the recent political and military conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, many new editions of these earlier translations have been published by the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, or by other state-sponsored publishers, in which most references to Armenia and Armenians have been altered or deleted. In his edition of the Russian translation of an eighteenth- century history of Karabakh by the Armenian patriarch of the Holy See of Gandzasar in Karabakh, Academician Ziya M. Buniatov has blatantly and systematically replaced the noun Armenian with Albanian. Several travelers' accounts have also been subject to the same tampering by Buniatov. For one example, in Buniatov's new edition of the account of the German traveler Johann Shiltberger of his wanderings through Karabakh in the early fifteenth century, Buniatov has deleted critical references to Armenia and Armenians, particularly in those parts of the text which depict an Armenian presence in Karabakh. Buniatov has boldly omitted chapters 63 through 66 of the manuscript, some twenty pages in all, which deal with Armenia and the Armenians, and has altered some of the text which he has maintained in his edition.” . In view of Russian historian and political scientist Victor Schnirelman: "Buniatov purposefully tried to cleanse … Azerbaijani lands of Armenian history." Israeli journalist and political commentator Yo'av Karny notes sardonically: “The Albanianness of the Caucasus, Buniatov argued, had fallen victim to a conspiracy led by three elements who were interested in taking the Caucasus away from its indigenous population. It took a while to expose the conspiracy—some eight hundred years to be precise—but Buniatov had finally revealed the conspirators: the Arabs, the Armenians, and the czarist Russians.”
Bunyadov is also known for his article Why Sumgait? The article established a precedent of using nationalist hate speech and character assassination of living and historical individuals in official academic Soviet press by a high-caliber Soviet scholar. The publishing of the article coincided with the announcement of criminal verdicts by Soviet courts against several Azerbaijani persons who actively participated in the anti-Armenian pogrom in the city of Sumgait, in February 1988. In those events dozens of ethnic Armenians were killed or maimed, and the entire Armenian population of Sumgait—around 14,000 people—fled the city in panic. The basic theme of the text is a conspiracy theory about the origin of the pogrom. According to Bunyadov, the Sumgait events were masterminded and executed not by Azerbaijanis but by undetected Armenian agent-provocateurs as a step toward re-establishing a giant “Greater Armenia.” Bunyadov ridicules this imaginary “Greater Armenia,” which he depicts as stretching from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, by contending that Armenia has for centuries been merely a geographic concept. At the helm of that secret and evil plan, says Bunyadov, stood several prominent representatives of Armenian intelligentsia, clerical circles and Soviet administrators with Armenian roots. He collectively condemns them as “dashnaks”—a term commonly designating the Armenian anti-Soviet party that was expelled from the USSR in the 1920s. Bunyadov then continues by making more false statements about these and other individuals. For example, Bunyadov attacks Armenian spiritual leader, Vazgen I - Catholicos of All Armenians, by falsely calling him a “private friend of Marshall Ion Antonescu” and a protégé of “international Armenian mafia;” he untruly portrays the prominent Armenian poetess Silva Kaputikian as daughter of a leader of the Dashnak party; and labels Armenian military leader Andranik Ozanian, whose image was tolerated in the USSR, a “one-eared bandit.” Accompanying Bunyadov’s claims are mockery and contempt advanced with an apparent intent to cause readers to develop an extremely negative, unethical or unappealing perception of targets of his insinuations. The article also revealed Bunyadov’s antipathy to several internationally renowned Soviet human rights activists and dissidents, e.g. Academician Andrei Sakharov, who tried to advance Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost and supported Nagorno Karabakh’s request to secede from Azerbaijan. Not surprisingly, while referring to the article "Why Sumgait?," Tom de Waal calls Bunyadov “Azerbaijan’s foremost Armenophobe.” “Buniatov concluded” – writes Waal – “that Sumgait pogroms had been planned by the Armenians themselves in order to discredit Azerbaijan and boost Armenian nationalist cause.”
On other issues, Ziya Bunyadov academic credentials received positive comments from fellow colleagues. At least one of such opinions is known. Soviet/Russian orientalist and journalist Farid Seyful-Mulukov noted: "He was an outstanding scholar. Qoran translation requires excellent knowledge of Arabic language and only few dare to embark upon that job. Ziya Bunyadov managed to do excellent translation of the Holy Book."
Footnotes
- Some of Bunyadov's research is discussed by Western journalists such as Yo'av Karny. Highlanders: A Journey to the Caucasus in Quest of Memory, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001; and, Thomas De Waal. Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War, New York University Press, 2004.
- Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War by Thomas De Waal (Aug 25, 2004) , pages 152-153, 143
- Yo'av Karny. Highlanders: A Journey to the Caucasus in Quest of Memory, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001,page 379
- "Why Sumgayit? (situational analysis)", January 1989, http://www.irs-az.com/gen/n5/n5_6.htm
- Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War by Thomas De Waal (Aug 25, 2004), page 42
- Zerkalo, 14 March 2007
Selected Publications
- З. Буниятов. «Азербайджан в VII-IX веках». 1973. Баку
- З. Буниятов. «Государство атабеков Азербайджана: 1136-1225». 1984. Баку
- Yo'av Karny. Highlanders: A Journey to the Caucasus in Quest of Memory, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001
- Thomas De Waal. Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War, New York University Press, 2004
Links
- Short biography in Azerbaijani
- In memoriam book by Buniyadov's wife
- More on Tahira Bunyadova's book
- Arif Yunusov, "Islam in Azerbaijan", 2004
- Full biography in Russian