Book review: "Azeri intellectuals and national and ethnic identity" authored by Ali Murshidizad

Ali Murshidizad, a Shahid University member, published a book entitled “Azeri intellectuals and National and Ethnic Identity" in 2001. In this book, the author has tried to discuss the events and cultural, social, and political events about Azerbaijan in the eighty years leading up to the date of writing of the mentioned book and to investigate the ethnic issues in the state of Azerbaijan and its various aspects. Also, in this book, he introduced the famous Azerbaijani intellectuals in these eighty years and briefly presented their points of view about ethnic and national issues. It is regrettable to say that Mr. Morshidizad was not able to do right due to being trapped in the prison of extreme nationalist ideas and he went astray by defining dry and artificial frameworks and did not provide an analysis that is in line with fairness and justice and based on fundamental rights.
In this paper, his point of view, extracted from the book " Azeri intellectuals and National and Ethnic Identity", has been studied as an example of the type of thought and literature of the Persianists and anti-Turkish school of nationalism during the Islamic Revolution.
Ali Murshidizad does not have a prominent position among the contemporary Iranian anti-Turkists. Still, the contents of his book contain the most fundamental aspects of the thoughts and beliefs of Persianists and anti-Turkish nationalists in Iran, and it offers a relatively complete review of identitarian and Persianist Azerbaijani personalities to the readers of the book.