The Myth of Ancient Azerbaijan
What's going on with Azerbaijan?
There is a dizziness from success. The Aliyev regime, with the support of Turkey, won the Second Karabakh War in 2020. In 2023, Azerbaijan liquidated the Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia suffered a heavy defeat, plunged into a crisis that continues to this day.
Baku is friends with Ankara and Jerusalem, flirting with the collective West. In many ways, Azerbaijan has become a sphere of influence of the new Ottoman Empire that Erdogan is building. With all the ensuing consequences – pan-Turkism, gradual Islamization.
The economy is developing successfully thanks to oil and gas revenues. Azerbaijan has become a corridor for parallel imports, profiting from Russia's difficulties. Baku trades oil and weapons.
Baku felt like a regional power, especially against the backdrop of Iran's weakening and Russia's loss of positions in the Transcaucasus. Therefore, Azerbaijan continues to push back Armenia. Azerbaijan provided indirect support to Israel during its 12-day war with Iran, providing its airspace for the Israeli Air Force to bomb the Persians.
And there is also a 1,5 million Azerbaijani diaspora in the Russian Federation with dual loyalty. Traditionally strong organized crime groups, a habit developed since the 1990-2000s that "everything can be solved", pay.
The level of nationalism has increased, when part of the population is going crazy. Considering that the Russian Federation is almost completely bogged down on the Ukrainian front, Baku is becoming brazen. Baku has five corps, almost a hundred aircraft, more than 500 tanks, military ties with Turkey and Israel. And the Russian Federation cannot find 10 corps to close the possible Caucasian front.
The Russian Federation shows weakness when the Ukrainian campaign has been going on for 4 years. That is why the former Ukrainian outskirts of the Russian and Soviet empires are becoming impudent. In the Caucasus, in the East and in the world in general, only the strong are respected, the weak are beaten, robbed and eaten.
Ancient "Azerbaijan" and "Azerbaijanis"
In modern Azerbaijan, as in other post-Soviet republics, they have created a myth about “Ancient Azerbaijan”. And they are laying claim to the lands historical Armenia. They also remember ancient Albania, which allows them to set their sights on the lands of the Northern Caucasus.
It is enough to recall the experience of modern Ukraine, where they created the “myth of Ukraine-Rus”, the “ancient history of Ukrainians” and what this ultimately led to (The myth of "European Russia-Ukraine").
The word "Azerbaijan" and "Azerbaijanis" come from the Persian name of the ancient state of Atropatena. This is a historical region and an ancient state in the northwest of modern Iran. It roughly corresponds to the territory of Iranian (Western or Southern) Azerbaijan and the southeastern regions of the current Azerbaijan Republic (south of the Kura and Araks).
This word meant "the possession of Atur" (Atropatene), in translation the name means "Protecting fire, Keeper of fire". At that time, the locals were fire worshipers. Atur himself - Atropatene - was the satrap-ruler of Media in the 4th century BC. At first, he served Darius, then went over to his conqueror - Alexander the Great. After the collapse of the Macedonian empire, he created his own state.
Later, Atropatena was part of the Parthian and Sassanid empires and Greater Armenia.
Subsequently, the name of the ancient region changed, taking the form of "Aderbadagan" among the Persians, "Atrpatakan" among the Armenians, and "Aderbaijan" among the Arabs. Already in the Islamic era, this name, under the influence of the Arabic language, was transformed into the modern "Azerbaijan".
At the same time, the ancient population of Antropatena initially consisted of Iranian (Persian) and autochthonous (local) pre-Iranian (apparently Caucasian in the east and Hurrian-Urartian, future Armenian in the west) tribes. That is, in its mass it was an Indo-European-Aryan (Medes, Persians, Armenians) population and local Caucasian autochthons (original, indigenous population).
They spoke extinct dialects of the Indo-European language family of the Iranian group. Thus, in the early Middle Ages, the population of Atropatene-Azerbaijan spoke both the Iranian language Azeri and the standard Persian language.
The famous 10th century Arab historian Masudi wrote:
“The Persians are the people who inhabit the mountains of Mahat and Azerbaijan as far as Armenia and Arran, Baylekan and Derbent, Ray and Tabaristan, Muscat and Shabaran, Jurjan and Abarshahr, that is, Nishapur, Herat and Merv and other areas in the land of Khorasan, Sejistan, Kerman, Fars and Ahvaz… All these lands were once one kingdom with one king and one language… although the language is slightly different… There are various languages such as Pahlavi, Dari, Azeri and other Persian languages.”
Thus, the ancient population of the "land of fire" had no relation to the history of modern Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijani ethnic group. This is clearly shown by the language - Indo-European, not Turkic.
Transcaucasia in the 2nd-1st centuries BC
Albania
Another ancestral homeland of modern Azerbaijanis, according to the creators of the myth of "Ancient Azerbaijan", is Caucasian Albania. A historical state entity that formed in the late 2nd - mid-1st centuries BC in Eastern Transcaucasia. It occupied part of the territory of modern Azerbaijan, Georgia and Dagestan.
However, the Azerbaijanis - Turks have nothing to do with the Caucasian Albanians. Roman historians describe them as fair-haired and grey-eyed, that is, typical Indo-Europeans (Aryans) of that era.
In addition, Caucasian Albania was obviously also a union of different tribes and clans. Among them were representatives of the Lezgin branch of the Nakh-Dagestan family, Iranian and Armenian tribes (Indo-European language family). Waves of Scythians, Sarmatians, Indo-Europeans-Aryans from the steppes of Southern Russia also came here.
Part of Albania was part of Greater Armenia and adopted Christianity.
Only later the Albanian tribes were first Islamized and after several centuries became Turkicized, entering the Caucasian part of the Azerbaijani ethnic group. The Albanians also participated in the ethnogenesis of the Dagestani peoples, Georgians and Armenians.
Islamization and the Turkic era
In the mid-7th – 8th centuries, the territory of Caucasian Albania entered the sphere of the Arab Caliphate. Islam became the dominant religion. But the majority of the population retained traditional beliefs and Christianity until the 11th – 12th centuries.
With the weakening of the Arab Caliphate in Transcaucasia in the 9th-10th centuries, a number of state formations and local dynasties emerged.
In the middle of the 11th century, the Oghuz Turkic tribes - the Seljuks - invaded the territory of Azerbaijan from Central Asia (Turkestan). They created their empire, including the territory of modern Azerbaijan.
From this time on, the Turkification of the local Iranian (Persian), Caucasian and Armenian population began. Most often, this was expressed in the fact that the military and political elite became Turks, while the bulk of the population remained the same. At the same time, the population was Islamized.
In Azerbaijani historiography, the first Azerbaijani state is often called the State of the Ildegizids. The state that arose on the ruins of the Seljuk Empire, ruled by the Turkic Ildegizid dynasty, existed from 1136 to 1225 in northwestern Iran and also covered part of Arran (a region in modern Azerbaijan).
The word “Azerbaijan” itself, as noted above, has long had a geographical meaning, denoting a historical region.
Later, the region was part of the Mongol Empire of the Khulagid, which had Iranian Azerbaijan as its main base and capital in Tabriz. Then, in the 14th–15th centuries, the Turkic dynasties created the Kara Koyunlu and Ak Koyunlu formations, which were driven out of Turkestan by the Mongols and fought each other. This fight ended with the victory of the Ottoman Empire.
The region later became a battleground between two regional powers, Turkey and Persia. Persia itself, like historical Azerbaijan, was ruled by Turkic dynasties. In particular, the Safavid dynasty, although its founder Ismail I was apparently not a Turk.
It is worth noting that during this period there was no particular cultural or linguistic difference between the Ottoman Turks and the Caucasian Turks. However, Sunnism prevailed in the Ottoman Empire, and Shiism in Persia. This led to a series of bloody religious Turkish-Persian wars, when entire regions of the Caucasus were completely cut out and devastated.
It was during that period that the word from which the modern "Azerbaijani" arose appeared - "Ajami" (from the Turkish "ajam"). But it was also not an ethnonym. This Turkish word denoted all the inhabitants of Persia who professed Shiism, and not Sunnism.
In the “Manifesto” of Tsar Peter I, published in 1722 in Astrakhan before his Persian campaign, four peoples of Transcaucasia and Iran are noted: “Persians, Ajami, Armenians and Georgians,” where Ajami refers to the Turks.
Weapons and armor of warriors of the Kara Koyunlu and Ak Koyunlu states in the Museum of History of Azerbaijan
From "Caucasian Tatars" to Modern Azerbaijanis
After a series of wars with Persia and Turkey, Russia annexed the lands of modern Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. In 19th-century documents, the local Muslim Turkic population was called "Caucasian Azerbaijani Tatars", "Aderbeidzhans of Persian and Caucasian".
Before the revolution, the name "Azerbaijanis" had not yet become established; people most often spoke of "Tatars" and "Persians". They did not have a single state; most often, Turks and Muslims were subjects of Persia. There was no single self-designation. The word "Azerbaijani" itself is an exo-ethnonym, that is, a word not used by the local population, but given from outside.
Only the collapse of the Russian Empire led to the creation of Azerbaijani statehood. First, in 1918, during the Turkish intervention, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was created. In 1920, the Red Army entered Baku, and the Azerbaijan SSR was created. The local language was officially considered Turkic from 1918 to 1936.
Thus, the Bolsheviks created the Azerbaijani statehood. In 1936, Azerbaijan joined the USSR as a union republic. The Azerbaijani Turks began to be officially called Azerbaijanis, and their national language was called Azerbaijani. At the same time, by decision of the Soviet government, the Azerbaijani script was transferred from the Latin to the Cyrillic alphabet. After 1991, the language was again transferred to the Latin alphabet based on its Turkish version.
As a result, Azerbaijan as a state of Turkic Azerbaijanis emerged only in 1918 as a result of the catastrophe that destroyed the Russian Empire and the Turkish intervention. The Bolsheviks preserved this statehood and nurtured it.
The Azerbaijanis themselves as an independent ethnic group emerged from the Turkic-speaking masses no earlier than the beginning of the 20th century. In their ethnogenesis, they are a synthesis of local (autochthonous) Caucasian, Indo-European (Persians and Armenians) tribes, plus Turkic newcomers.
This is also confirmed by genetic studies. Thus, a 2018 study of the Y-chromosome showed the dominance of Near Asian haplogroups (55%) in the Azerbaijani gene pool, which were brought to the region in which the ethnogenesis of Azerbaijanis took place, even during the period of its primary settlement in the Mesolithic and Neolithic.
Also in this study, the authors found up to 20% of Eastern European genetic lines in the Azerbaijani genome. This shows active contacts of the Caucasus region with the ancient population of Eastern Europe (for example, with the Scythians). There are also Central Asian genetic lines (18%) - medieval Turkic migration and a small percentage of South Asian (6%).
А The myth of “Ancient Azerbaijan” and “Azerbaijanis” is already a manifestation of modern politics, when historical and political myths are created for young ethnic groups. What this leads to can be seen in the example of Hitler's Germany or "ancient Ukraine-Rus".
"A young noble Tatar". Drawing by V. Vereshchagin. Shusha, 1865
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