In Search of Khazar

Khazar University in Baku, Azerbaijan was founded in 1991 by Professor Hamlet Isaxanli. It was founded during the country’s period of transition from the Soviet Union Soviet to independent rule.

For several years in the late 1980s, Hamlet Isaxanli did personal research on universities all around the world and spent time observing the education system in Azerbaijan. In the summer of 1990, he organized his ideas into an article called “Thoughts on Science and the Education System,” which was published in Russian in the "Bakinskiy Rabochiy" newspaper and then in Azerbaijani in the "Communist" newspaper. He realized that in his mind, a model for a new university in Azerbaijan was forming.

According to Isaxanli, success in the education sector would be achieved either by reforming existing institutions or by founding a new one, based jointly on West European and American models and on the local situation and traditions of Azerbaijan. He felt that founding a private university was a real possibility because of the growing signs of pluralism in the political and economic systems at that time, opening the possibility that something new would also be accepted in the education system. Isaxanli also felt that the new private university would be a good model for Azerbaijan, because it could make use of the experience of Western higher educational institutions but also take into account the specific needs and patterns of Azerbaijan.

In the fall of 1990 he drafted detailed plans for a university and presented them to the Prime Minister of Azerbaijan, Hasan Hasanov, with the support of Saleh Mammadov, Doctor of Economics. On December 20, 1990, after receiving the approval of the Ministry of Education (at that time, R. Feyzullayev) and the Minister of Finance (then Bedir Garayev), Hasanov signed the resolution.

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Wikipedia