Evidence points to the fact that Chamanzaminli was the primary core author of the famous romance novel Ali and Nino[1] first published in 1937 in Austria under the pen-name of Kurban Said.

Many of the historical references in the novel can be traced back to the period of time when Vazirov was a high school student in Baku, as revealed in his diaries.

He managed only to set it up only briefly for a few months before the Bolsheviks took control of Baku, leaving him without job, salary, guidance as to what to do—essentially, without a passport and without a country.

Vazirov then left for France to join his younger brother Mir Abdulla, who was studying at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris and from which he graduated in 1925.

In Paris where thousands of émigrés had fled in desperation after the collapse of the Russian Empire, Vazirov was unable to find a job in his field.

Eager and willing to work and support his wife Bilgeyiz Ajalova and three children (Orkhan, 1928–2010), Fikrat (1929–2004) and Gulara (who was probably born around 1932 and who died shortly after World War II), he wrote a letter to Mir Jafar Baghirov, First Secretary of the Communist Party.

A few weeks later, realizing that no answer was forthcoming, in desperation, Chamanzaminli wrote Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, providing a review of his literary career up to that point in his life.

But authorities eventually managed to track Vazirov down in Urgench, Uzbekistan, in 1940, at the Pedagogical Institute where he was helping to establish the Russian Department and they arrested him.

None of his family members were allowed to visit him during this time but transcripts of the "interrogations" show that he never admitted to the Soviet government's false accusations, nor did he implicate any fellow Azerbaijanis in an attempt to get his own sentence reduced.

Condemned on fabricated charges, Vazirov was sentenced to eight years of labor camps, which he served at Unzhlag at Sukhobezvodnaya railway station, Gorky Oblast, Russia.

[17] Extensive research[18] by Azerbaijan International magazine into the authorship of the novel Ali and Nino, which was published under the pseudonym Kurban Said, points to the following conclusions: (1) The core author of the novel "Ali and Nino" is Azerbaijani writer and statesman Yusif Vazir Chamanzaminli (1887–1943) as evidenced from the content of his diaries, autobiographical essays, short stories and articles.

[22] (2) The fingerprints of Lev Nussimbaum (1905–1942), who wrote under the penname of Essad Bey, can be traced in the folkloric and legendary material in the novel (although much of it is neither culturally or ethnically reliable).

[26] (3) Essad Bey took materials about Tbilisi and Persia directly from Georgian writer Grigol Robakidze (1882–1962) ("Das Schlangenhemd," Snake Slough, 1928).

[28] (4) Austrian Baroness Elfriede Ehrenfels (1894–1982) registered the work with German authorities, claiming that the pseudonym Kurban Said belonged to her,[29] though evidence of her involvement in the actual writing of the novel has yet to be proven.

He adopted it in remembrance of the kindness of three brothers from a small remote village in Iran called "Chaman Zamin" which means "green or verdant meadow".

However, literary works that are kept at the Baku Institute of Manuscripts show that Yusif Vazirov used at least 15 different pseudonyms to protect his identity starting as early as 1904 when he was only 17 years old.

Often the names he chose hold symbolic meaning, such as "Badbakht" (Unlucky One), "Hagg Tarafdari" (Protector of Justice), "Musavi" (Equality), "Stradayushiy" (Sufferer), "Sarsam," (Crazy One).

[33] In 1911, Vazirov wrote under the name "Ali Khan Chamanzaminili"[34] for the folktale "Malak Mammad" that he published in literary form for the first time.