# Sariyya Khalilova

Sariyya Khalilova was an employee of the Ali Bayramov Women's Club's sewing factory, an activist in the movement for women's liberation from the veil in Azerbaijan, and one of the first women to throw off the veil.

## Murder

Sariyya Khalilova was brutally murdered in Baku in January 1933 by her own family - her father and brother. This crime is considered a typical example of the fanatical opposition to innovative women. Sariyya Khalilova was an activist in the movement for women's liberation from the veil in Azerbaijan and one of the first women to throw off the veil.
The funeral of Sariyya Khalilova turned into a serious protest against the pillars of the old, patriarchal-superstitious way of life of women, and thousands of women attended the funeral. Workers and peasant women in factories, plants, collective farms and state farms expressed their deep anger at the murder of Sariyya and vowed to fight even more stubbornly for their rights.
Sariyya was stabbed to death by her brother at the age of 36. According to some sources, her father was also involved in this crime and to save the life of his beloved son, had no choice but to take responsibility for the murder. In his old age, he was presented to society as a terrible murderer and imprisoned.
In those days, mostly women from all large industrial enterprises of Baku wrote appeals to the leading bodies of the republic, and even to Moscow,(at that time, Azerbaijan was part of the USSR) demanding that the murderer be sentenced to death. Thus, a short trial was organized. Sariyya's father was sentenced to death and shot without hesitation in the courtyard of the Bayil prison.
The entire city and state structures knew that Saria was murdered by her own brother, Alakbar, and he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

## Memoir and filmography

The memory of Sariyya Khalilova was immortalized just 1 year later with the feature film "Ismet" (also known as "The Destruction of Custom"). This film was dedicated not only to the memory of Sariyya, but also to the first female pilot of Azerbaijan, Leyla Mammadbeyova. Thus, the director, by summarizing, reflected the fate of Azerbaijani women.
The film's director, Mikayil Mikayilov, wrote in his memoirs: “Ismet plays a special role in my career. The film was shot at a time when Azerbaijani women threw of their veils and joined public life. I was living in Icheri Sheher. One day a woman in our neighborhood burned herself. I saw it with my own eyes. Since then, I could not forget the tragedy of that woman. But I had not seen the worst case yet. There was a workshop for women at the current Palace of Happiness. I heard that a woman named Sariyya Khalilova, who was participating in the workshops, was brutally murdered by her father and brother in 1933 for throwing off her veil and going to the workshops. I also attended her funeral. There I saw that women took off their veils and threw them under their feet. About the same time, I read an article in the newspaper about Leyla Mammadbeyova, the first Azerbaijani woman pilot. Finally, I started working on the script for Ismet. I combined all of these three topics.”
Leyla Mammadbeyova said about the film: "I met film director Mikayil Mikayilov in the early 1930s after the tragic death of Sariyya Khalilova, an active public figure and one of the founders of the Ali Bayramov Women's Club in Baku. I knew Sariyya well. Although her family did not approve, she was active in the club. Her religiously fanatical relatives did not forgive her for this. Sariyya's funeral turned into a real spectacle. Her tragic death - the brutal murder by her father and brother - shocked all of us, including Mikayil. He decided to convey this story to the audience through a film. But in one film he combined the fate of two people: Sariyya's and mine."
The activities of the first women's club named after Ali Bayramov and the organization of Sariyya Khalilova together with Jeyran Bayramova, who founded this club, were reflected in the documentary film "Ten Years of October", filmed in 1927.

## Sources

* Oktyabrın on illiyi (film, 1927)
* İsmət (film, 1934)
* Əli Bayramov adına Qadın klubu