Ziyadkhan Aliyev was born in Shamkir.

He studied at the Azim Azimzadeh State Art School (1974) and the Art History Faculty of the I. Repin St. Petersburg Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1976–1982).

He worked as a research assistant and head of the Western European and Russian Art Department at the Azerbaijan National Art Museum (1980–1993). During those years, thanks to his research, the authorship of the paintings and graphic works of the French Barbizon artist Jules Dupre, the Russian impressionist Konstantin Korovin, the Dutch artist Frans Hals, the Flemish artist Pieter Klass, the artist Ganbar Karabakh and the architect Ziver bey Ahmadbeyov was determined as a result of accurate attribution. He defended his dissertation on “Romanticism in the Creativity of Sattar Bahlulzadeh” and received a PhD in Art History. For a long time he taught art history at the Azerbaijan State Pedagogical University and the Azerbaijan State University of Culture and Art. He was a professor at the Department of Art History at the Azerbaijan Academy of Arts. He is the author of dozens of books, catalog texts, and hundreds of articles.

Honored Artist (2006), Doctor of Philosophy in Art History, Professor Ziyadkhan Aliyev died in 2025.