Khazar University in Baku, Azerbaijan was founded in 1991 by Professor Hamlet Isaxanli. Its founding is significant, as it is the first private university in Azerbaijan and it was founded during the country’s period of transition from 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,”[1] 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.[2]
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.[3]
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.
Despite many obstacles in its creation, the university opened in the spring of 1991 under the name "English Language Azerbaijan University," affiliated with the Institute of National Economy Management (INEM: http://www.mekteb.edu.az/aliteh/013.htm) and operating out of two rooms in the INEM building on Lenin Avenue in Baku. Later, after visiting various universities in Turkey and noting that many of their names are based on seas, Isaxanli decided to name his new university “Khazar,” after the Caspian Sea.[4]
In the fall of 1991, the university began teaching preparatory courses. Beginning from the spring semester in 1992, it operated out of a building that had previously been Baku's Kindergarten no. 240 in Ahmadli. In September 1992, the university was officially inaugurated in a ceremony at the National Opera and Ballet Theater and welcomed 200 students.
Hamlet Isaxanli also published a memoir of Khazar University’s establishment, In Search of “Khazar,” to serve as a reference. In it, he describes the process of founding a university, including the political, economic and cultural situation of the changing times in which the university began, thus giving a documented historical sketch of the situation in Azerbaijan as the rule of the Soviet Union drew to a close. Aside from laying out the events that transpired, Hamlet Isaxanli offers his thoughts on comparative higher education, university structure, administration and management.
The work was first published in “Khazar View” magazine (http://khazar-view.com/) in Azerbaijani[5] and Russian[6] and in the Journal of Azerbaijani Studies (http://jas-khazar.org/) in English.[7] The memoir was re-published by Khazar University Press in 2006 in one edition including the full text in three languages: English, Azerbaijani, and Russian.[8]