National monument

Baku/ 07.09.19 / Turan: A sculptural monument to the famous oil industrialist-philanthropist Haji Zeynalabdin Tagiyev will be erected in Baku. The competition for the best design of the monument won the project of the sculptor Khanlar Ahmedov. It is planned to install the monument in front of the Icheri Sheher metro station. The monument to Tagiyev has long been expected, given his role and deeds.Nothing was said about this person in the Soviet period, like about all other industrialists and philanthropists of the 19-20 centuries.

Zeynalabdin Tagiyev is a man from the lower strata who made capital on the Baku oil boom at the end of the 19th century. In the following years, with his own money, he carried out a water supply in Baku with clean mountain water from the town of Shollar in northern Azerbaijan. This water is still the best drinking water entering the capital. You can imagine the cost and technical complexity of the work in those years, taking into account the length of the water supply system of 200 km. At that time, water for drinking in Baku was carried in wineskins in the streets or extracted from a well - kahriz.

The first school for girls, the publication of newspapers, books, the construction of a theater, a textile factory, vineyards, a gardening school, the training of Azerbaijani students in European universities - all with Tagiyev"s money. Tagiyev died in 1924, almost in poverty, in a summer residence in Mardakan.

The image of the Tagiyev was ripening in the minds of people for a century, and his monument is unlikely to suffer the fate of the Soviet statues of revolutionaries. -0-