Background
Tanailidi was born in the village of Bashkand (then Zangezur uyezd, Elisabethpol Governorate of Russia. Nowadays the village of Mutsk, Syunik province, Armenia) to a family of émigrés from Kars.
Tanailidi was born in the village of Bashkand (then Zangezur uyezd, Elisabethpol Governorate of Russia. Nowadays the village of Mutsk, Syunik province, Armenia) to a family of émigrés from Kars.
She first appeared on stage in 1905 as an Azeri drama trouper in Tiflis (the troupe was reorganized into the Tbilisi Azeri Drama Theatre in 1922), where she acted in plays by Hajibeyov, Jabbarli, Shakespeare, et cetera in both Azeri and Greek languages. At that time, Tanailidi was often credited as Surayya of Zangezur (Azeri: Sürəyya Zəngəzurlu). In 1917, she toured Iran along with prominent Azeri actors of the time.
Playing the part of Asya in Hajibeyov"s Arshin Mal Alan musical comedy in 1919 brought her great success.
In 1924, she settled in Baku and started working at the Azerbaijan State Drama Theatre. Later she starred in the movies Ismat (1934) and Almaz (1936).
In 1937, Pamphylia Tanailidi was accused by the Soviet government of being an Iranian spy. Tanailidi refused to plead guilty.
After a fifteen-minute trial, she was given the death sentence, and on 15 October 1937 she was executed by firing squad.
The location of her burial place remains unknown even today. In 1957, Pamphylia Tanailidi was officially exonerated. Mehriban (Goveh the Blacksmith by South Sami)
Badi ul-Jamal (Seyfalmuluk by MJ Amirov)
Azerbai (Azerbai and January by I Ashurbeyli)
Shamsa (The Tripoli War by J Jabbarli)
Kabla Fatma (The Dead People by J Mammadguluzadeh)
Emilia (Othello by West Shakespeare)
Peasant woman (Timur the Lame by H Javid)
Aouda (Around the World in Eighty Days by J Verne)
Wise woman (Ismat by M Mikayilov & G Braginski)
Fatmanisa (Almaz by J Jabbarli)
Tanailidi was fluent in five languages: Pontic Greek, Azeri, Russian, Turkish, and Georgian.
She was known as a heavy smoker.
According to poet Suleyman Rustam, among many reasons that led to her arrest, there was her preference of Iranian tobacco over Soviet tobacco, which she disliked and called "garbage".