couldn't be obtained on 28 August 1905. The focus was on establishing a Union (Ittifaq) to safeguard political and social rights of the Muslims. An excerpt from the speech of Alimardan bey Topchubashov clearly reflects the atmosphere of the congress: ‘We the Turkish sons have the same origin, same ancestry, and same language. From the West to the East, it used to be our ancestors’ lands. In spite of the fact that our ancestors were such a heroic nation, today, in the mountains of Caucasia, in the gardens of the Crimea, in the steppes of Kazan, in the lands of our ancestors, in our homeland we did not have the freedom to speak our own needs. Thank God.. we succeeded (in that) today’. At the same time, Topchubashov was one of the founders of Ittifaq al-Muslimin (first political party of Russian Muslims) and organized its three conferences. He headed the party's third conference and became its bureau member and chief of its Law Commission. Later he became the leader of the party's Muslim faction at the Russian State Duma, the new Russian parliament (1906). But after the First Duma was dissolved by Tsar Topchubashov was arrested for three months, lost his right to be ever a parliament member, deprived of his place at Baku Municipality and “Kaspi” newspaper. During this time Iran invited him to head one of the departments of the Iranian Ministry of Justice and reform its judiciary system, but Topchubashov rejected this offer and remained in Russian Empire to continue his struggle for the emancipation of the Muslim population. After the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was proclaimed on 28 May 1918, Topchubashov became its ambassador to Armenia, Georgia and the Ottoman Empire, and was sent to Istanbul. Then he was made minister of foreign affairs at the second cabinet and was elected the head of the Parliament in absentia on 7 December 1918, thus becoming second head of state of Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, after Mammed Amin Rasulzade. Agreeing to head the Azerbaijani Delegation at Versailles Conference, he left Istanbul for Paris. At the conference, he managed to meet US President Woodrow Wilson and achieved the de facto recognition of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in January 1920. But after the Bolshevik takeover of ADR he could not return and stayed in Paris, where he died on 8 November 1934. He is buried in the communal cemetery of Saint-Cloud (near