Shamil Asgarov
Kurdish scholar (1929–2005)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Shamil Asgarov or Shamil Askerov[1] (Azerbaijani: Şamil Səlim oğlu Əsgərov, 1929,[2] Ağcakənd – 20 April 2005, Baku) was an Azerbaijani Kurdish scholar, poet, and researcher on the history of the Kurds in Azerbaijan. He was the leader of Kalbajar's large Kurdish community,[3] owned a 30,000 book library of books about Caucasian Kurds and their history[4] and was the founder and former director of the Kurdish Museum in Kelbajar before that town was occupied by Armenian forces and the former population forced to flee in 1993.[5] He was also editor of the Kurdish newspaper Denge Kurd published from 1991 to 2004 in Baku, Azerbaijan.[6] Shamil Asgarov translated the classic Kurdish love story Mem and Zin into Azerbaijani and was the author of 17 other books[7] among them one, Ferhenge, a Kurdish-Azerbaijani dictionary, was published in 1999 with the support of the Soros Foundation.[5]
Shamil's son, Khalid, a photographer for Reuters, documented the tale of Asgarov's harrowing escape from Kelbajar during the Armenian attacks of spring 1993 on a 2017 radio documentary for the BBC.[8]
