- About Azerbaijan
- The Republic of Azerbaijan is an independent Turkic state in the Caucasus region, located to the east of Europe and west of Asia.
- Azerbaijan’s neighbors include Iran, Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and the Caspian Sea.
- In 1918, Azerbaijan was declared the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, making it the first parliamentary republic of the Muslim World.
- It has a population of 8.3 million, and the capital city is Baku, located on the Caspian Sea.
- About 94% of the population is Muslim. However, the traditional religion in the area is Zoroastrianism.
- The official language is Azerbaijani, or Azeri, a language similar to Turkish.
- The literacy rate is 99%.
- Azerbaijan has two UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Gobustan Rock Art Cultural Landscape and Old City in Baku
About Karabakh
Location
Karabakh (Azerbaijani: Qarabağ) is a geographic region in southwestern Azerbaijan, extending from the highlands of the Lesser Caucasus down to the lowlands between the rivers Kura and Aras. It includes two sub-regions, as follows: Mountainous Karabakh (better known as Nagorno-Karabakh) and Lowland Karabakh (the southern Kura plains and mountains, which includes the districts of Aghdam, Aghjabedi, Barda, Fuzuli, Gubadli, Jebrayil, Kelbajar, Lachin, Terter, and Zangilan).
Origins of the Name
The word Karabakh originates from the Azerbaijani Turkish language, and literally means "black garden.” The place name is first mentioned in the Georgian Chronicles (Kartlis Tskhovreba), as well in Persian sources from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The name became common after the 1230s, when the region was conquered by the Mongols. Ancient and medieval Lowland and Mountainous Karabakh, dating back more than two millennia, were populated with several autochthonous Caucasian tribes that made up the Caucasian Albanian nation. The Caucasian Albanians were the ancestors of modern-day Azerbaijanis and organized as the Artsakh province of the Caucasian Albanian kingdom. Most of the population at that time were Fire Worshippers (Zoroastrians). Some of the first churches in the Caucasus were built in Karabakh region, especially since Caucasian Albania officially converted to Christianity in 313 A.D., making it one of the world’s first nations to officially proclaim Christianity as a state religion. After the Arab caliphate conquest in 705 A.D., most of the Caucasian Albanian population started to convert to Islam, consolidating into the Azerbaijani nation—a Turkic-speaking mostly Muslim nation with strong Caucasian roots and traditions.
Centuries of Change
As the rule of the Arab caliphate started to be brought down by native resistance and freedom fighters such as Babek (the Azerbaijani Spartacus), the entire area came under the control of successive Turkic empires and dynasties, including the Seljuks, the Atabeks, the Mongol-Tatar Ilkhanids, the Qara-Qoyunlu, the Ag-Qoyunlu, the Safavids, and the Afshars. Roughly from the 1500s, the powerful Azerbaijani Turkic Safavid Dynasty created a Karabakh Ganja Beylerbeyliq, which was one of the four such administrative super-regions (beylerbeyliqs) into which they divided Azerbaijan. The first beylerbey of the Karabakh Ganja beylerbeliq was Shahverdi Soltan Ziyadoglu of the Qajar dynasty. In 1747 Panah Ali khan Javanshir, a local Azerbaijani Turkic noble and military leader of the Javanshir Otuz-iki Turkic tribe, returned back to the region after the death of the Nadir Shah Afshar, the ruler of the Afshar Azerbaijani Turkic dynasty of the Iranian Empire, and in whose army Panah Ali khan was a general, and both Lower Karabakh and Mountainous Karabakh were declared as the new independent Karabakh khanate. In 1805 the Karabakh khanate accepted Russian suzerainty, and in 1822 the Russian Empire abolished the khanate and incorporated Karabakh, like all other Azerbaijani khanates, into its administrative territorial structure, where Karabakh remained until the fall of the Russian empire. As Azerbaijan was able to establish its independence in 1918 until 1920 as the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR), the world’s first predominantly Muslim parliamentary democracy, Karabakh was part of it and remained as such after the Bolshevik Russia overtook Azerbaijan and proclaimed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.). While remaining part of what became Soviet Azerbaijan, the Karabakh region had its highland portion carved up into a Mountainous Karabakh Autonomous District (best known by its Russian acronym NKAO), whereas the remaining parts of the historic Karabakh were divided into multiple smaller districts of Aghdam, Aghjabedi, Barda, Fuzuli, Gubadli, Jebrayil, Kelbajar, Lachin, Terter, and Zangilan.
