Irène Mélikoff

Irène Mélikoff (İren Məlikova; Ирен Меликофф; 7 November 1917 – 8 January 2009) was a Russian-born French Turkologist with Azerbaijani ancestry.

Life
Mélikoff's ancestors had been major industrialists in Baku, but she was born in the Russian capital. The family fled revolutionary Russia soon after the Communist takeover within weeks of her birth, arriving in France in 1919, when she was just two. There she graduated in Oriental languages from Sorbonne University in Paris. She gained her doctorate there in 1957.

Mélikoff married Faruk Sayar, the son of the Turkish mathematician Salih Zeki Sayar, in 1940 and moved to Turkey in 1941 with her husband. Returning to France in 1948, she conducted research in the field of Turkology and wrote famous works. Her research has covered Turkey, the Balkans, Azerbaijan, Iran and Central Asia. She was the head of the faculty of Turkology and Iran at the University of Strasbourg. Mélikoff has been elected a member of many international scientific organizations, including well-known societies such as Asia Society and Ernest Renan Society.

She long headed the Turkic and Iranian Studies Institute at Strasbourg University and was one of the co-founders of Turcica magazine as well as chairwoman of the Turkic Development Group. She was the author of a number of publications on Turkic studies — particularly on Sufism, the Alevis and Bektashis in Turkey - and received more than ten prestigious awards for her contribution to Oriental studies. She was an honorary doctor at Baku State University.

Mélikoff was editor-in-chief of Turkika, the only Turkology magazine published in Western Europe, also visited Tabriz in Iran and collected rich material about her beloved Shah Ismail Khatai. The prominent scientist praised Azerbaijani literature and its prominent representatives, and expressed her admiration for MF Akhundov's work.

She died from a serious illness in January 2009 in Strasbourg.

Relations with Azerbaijan
In an interview, she expressed her love for Azerbaijan and said that she first came into contact with Azerbaijan in 1968 while in Central Asia. At that time, she communicated with Azerbaijanis who came to the scientific conference. She also studied the history and literature of Azerbaijan.

After the Soviet Army's massacre in Baku on January 20, 1990, Melikoff rallied in Paris with many members of the Azerbaijani exile.

Family
Her father was the Azerbaijani oil tycoon, merchant, intellectual and philanthropist Iskander bey Malikov, and her mother was the Russian ballerina Yevgenya Nikiferovna Mokshanova. In 1940, she married Farooq Sayar, the son of the Turkish mathematician Saleh Zaki Sayar. The marriage later ended in divorce. From this marriage, she had three daughters, Sonya, Ladin and Shirin Laura.

Following in her mother's footsteps, her daughter Shirin Malikova specialized in Azerbaijani literature and received a doctorate. In October 2019, she was awarded the Jubilee Medal of the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan by the Permanent Representative of Azerbaijan to the Council of Europe.