Ismayil Daghistanli

Ismayil Daghistanli (Ismayil Hajiyev) was born in the village of Zarna, Gakh region.

He studied at the Baku Theater Technical School (1926-1930).

He began his stage career in 1925 in the drama society under the Nukha (Sheki) central workers' and peasants' club. Since 1927, he has performed in mass scenes on the stage of the Drama Theater as an intern. Since 1930, he has worked intermittently at the Drama Theater and the Yerevan Drama Theater (1936-1937). He was a director and actor of the Azerbaijani theater he organized in Derbent (1932-1933). Since 1938, he has created a series of classical images on the stage of the Azerbaijan National Drama Theater. He became famous as a performer of the roles of Lenin on the Azerbaijani stage. He was awarded the Stalin Prize (1948) for the role of Kirov in the play "Morning of the East" (Envar Mammadkhanli), the State Prize for the role of Boyuk Bey in the drama "The Song Remained in the Mountains" (Ilyas Efendiyev) (1972). In the last years of his life, he worked as the head of the department at the Azerbaijan State Institute of Arts. Several of his books about actors and theater were published. The pseudonym "Daghistanli" was suggested to him by his teacher Abdurrahim bey Hagverdiyev.

Laureate of the State Prizes of the USSR (1948) and Azerbaijan (1972), Honored Artist (1940), People's Artist (1949), People's Artist of the USSR (1974) Ismayil Daghistanli died in 1980 and was buried in the Alley of Honor.