Musavat

The Müsavat (Equality) Party (Azerbaijani: Müsavat Partiyası) (Arabic (مساواة) "equality, parity") is the oldest existing political party in Azerbaijan. Its history can be divided into three periods: Early (old) Musavat, Musavat-in-exile and New Musavat.

Early (Old) Musavat (1911–1923)

Musavat was founded in 1911 in Baku as a secret organization by Mammed Amin Rasulzade, Mammed Ali Rasulzade (cousin of Mammed Amin Rasulzade), Abbasgulu Kazimzade and Taghi Nagioglu. Its initial name was a Muslim Democratic Musavat Party. The first members were Veli Mikayiloghlu, Seyid Huseyn Sadig, Abdurrahim bey, Yusif Ziya bey and Seyid Musavi bey. Early Musavat members also included future Communist leader of Azerbaijan SSR Nariman Narimanov. This initiative was coming from Mammed Amin Rasulzade, who was then living in exile in Istanbul.

In its early years before the first world war, Musavat was a relatively small, secret underground organization, much like its counterparts throughout the Middle East, working for the prosperity and political unity of the Muslim and Turkic-speaking world. Although Musavat espoused pan-Islamic ideology and its founder was sympathetic to the pan-Turkic movement, the party supported the tsarist regime during the First World War. Russia's social democrats received the foundation of Musavat in what they considered "imperial, orientalist terms, governed by the long-standing ideological categories of Muslim backwardness, treachery and religious fanaticism", as a betrayal of historic proportions.