Mehdi Karbalayi Mahammadali oghlu Kazimov was born in 1890 in the city of Iravan. He received his primary education in Iravan and graduated from the Iravan Teachers’ Seminary in 1910. Between 1910 and 1916, he worked as a teacher in primary schools under the Directorate of Public Schools in Iravan and later served as the headmaster of the Vanand School, Araliq Bashkend School, and the Russian-Azerbaijani Boys’ School in Iravan. Mehdi Kazimov made important contributions to the development of Azerbaijani theater in Iravan. He performed a number of roles on the theater’s stage.

In 1917, he enrolled at the Tiflis Alexandrovsk Institute but fled to Ganja in 1918 due to the oppression of Armenian Dashnaks. In Ganja, he enhanced his knowledge by attending a three-month pedagogical course organized by J. Juvarli. After the establishment of Soviet rule in Armenia, Kazimov returned to Iravan and taught at the first educational institutions established with the initiative of Azerbaijani intellectuals. In 1920, he became the director of a boys’ school in Gadabay, and in 1921, he became the head of the Education Department in Dallar. In 1922, he worked as the head of the “Minority Nationalities” department organized under the People’s Commissariat of Education of the Armenian SSR and was the acting chairman and a member of the bureau of the New Turkic Alphabet Committee in Iravan.

In 1924, Mehdi Kazimov was the initiator of the opening of the Iravan Turkish Pedagogical Technicum, the successor to the Iravan Teachers’ Seminary, and became its first director. He headed the Pedagogical Technical School from 1924 to 1933 and served as the executive secretary of the Azerbaijani branch of the Armenian Proletarian Writers’ Society from 1932 to 1933.

In November 1948, with the relocation of the Iravan Pedagogical School to Khanlar (now Goygol) in Azerbaijan, Mehdi Kazimov and his family also moved to the region. He taught Russian at the Khanlar Pedagogical School in 1949–1950 and worked as a Russian language teacher at the Azerbaijan State Pedagogical Institute (now ADPU) in 1951–1953.

Mehdi Kazimov passed away in 1954 in Baku.

Source:
Fərrux Rüstəmov. İrəvan Müəllimlər Seminariyası və onun məzunları. Bakı: Elm və təhsil, 2022