Choban-Zade, Bekir Vagap Ogly

Born Jan. 9 (21), 1893, in the village of Argyn in the Crimea; died Apr. 18, 1938. Soviet Crimea Tatar poet and Turkic scholar.

Choban-zade studied at the Sultanî Lycée in Istanbul from 1909 to 1914 and graduated from the University of Budapest in 1918. He became a doctor of philology in 1920 and was a professor at the universities of Budapest and Lausanne in 1919 and 1920. In 1919 he was a prominent member of the Hungarian Commune.

Choban-zade returned to his homeland in 1920 and joined the Crimean Central Executive Committee in 1921. He became a professor at the Crimean University in 1922 and the University of Azerbaijan in 1924. In 1935 he became a member of the Azerbaijan branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and the Paris Linguistic Society.

Choban-zade was the author of several books of poetry, including narrative poems, and many works on the history of the literature and folklore of the Crimean Tatars and other Turkic peoples. He helped create a Turkic alphabet based on the Latin alphabet.