Mikayil Rafili

Mikayil Rafili was born in the village of Borsunlu of Gasim Ismayilov (now Goranboy).

His first writing experiences under the signature of Mikayil Rafizade were published in the magazine "Afkari-mutaellimin" (1919). After the establishment of Soviet power, he was a teacher and school principal in the village of Borsunlu. He entered the Azerbaijan Polytechnic Institute in Baku, was a listener and regular of classes at the Faculty of Oriental Languages ​​of the Azerbaijan State University. He worked in the editorial office of the magazine "Maarif ve Muntiyet". He studied at Moscow State University. During this period, he worked as an editor of Azerbaijani texts of laws in the Kremlin. He worked as a teacher, associate professor (1930-1935) at the Department of Russian Literature at the Azerbaijan State Pedagogical Institute, and was the deputy head of the culture department in the editorial office of the newspaper "Bakinski Rabochi". During this period, he was elected a member of the organizing committee of the Writers of the USSR, and was a member of the editorial board of the magazines "Hücum" and "Qabaqcıl" ("Udarnik"). He worked as a research fellow at the Azerbaijan branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1934-1935). He studied at the postgraduate course of the USSR Academy of Sciences (Leningrad) (1935-1936), defended his dissertation on the topic “On the relations of Azerbaijani literature with Russian culture”. He was the executive secretary of the Nizami anniversary committee. Since 1938, he has been a professor at the Azerbaijan Pedagogical Institute and Azerbaijan State University. During the Second World War, he gave speeches on the radio, in the Red Army units, and in military hospitals. His books, monographs, and research were published, and he wrote the play “Shirvanshah Ibrahim”. He was engaged in literary translation.

Doctor of Philology (1944), professor (1945) Mikayil Rafili died in 1958.