History of Azerbaijan

Location of Azerbaijan

This article deals with the history of the territory of the Azerbaijan state in the Caucasus . The article History of Azerbaijan (Iran) deals with the history of the historical region .

Neolithic

The Neolithic , the transition to the productive way of life, began in Azerbaijan at the beginning of the 6th millennium BC. As shown by excavations in Göytepe and Hacı Elamxanlı Tepe, the oldest farming villages in the west of the country.

Antiquity

Map of the Caucasus (290 BC)

Azerbaijan was in the first millennium BC. BC probably settlement area of the Median tribe of the Mager and thus heartland of the priest caste, from whose name the expression magician is derived; Zarathustra may also come from this region. The first state in what is now Azerbaijan was Albania , an empire of nomadic Albani. The state was founded in the 4th century BC and mentioned by Pliny , Plutarch and Strabo . The country was occupied by the Roman forces under Pompey in 65 BC and a vassal of the Roman Empire . After the turning point, Albania was dependent on the Parthians . There were frequent wars against the neighboring states of Armenia and Iberia . In the 4th century by Armenians that Christianity introduced in the region; Church literature is said to have been started by Saint Mesrop in the 5th century. After the fall of the Parthian Empire at the beginning of the 3rd century, Albania became a vassal of the Sassanid Empire at the end of the 4th century .

The first settlements of Turkish ethnic groups in what is now Azerbaijan can be traced back to the 2nd century, when the early Hunnic people of the Az appeared there. This tribe is possibly also the namesake of the area, so that Azerbaijan means rule of the Az . Another explanation of the name derives the name from the Persian phrase Land of Fire (Aderbaidjan), which is supposed to refer to the petroleum deposits known since ancient times as well as to Zoroastrianism with its fire cult.

From the 4th century at the earliest, the Sabirs settled in Azerbaijan, north of the state of Albania. The coast of the country was part of the Sassanid Empire from this time, the part of the country south of the Kura from the 6th century.

middle Ages

At the beginning of the 7th century, the states of Lekia and Derbent were formed in the north of what is now the Republic of Azerbaijan . In 643 the Arabs invaded the country and Islamized it. The Christian church disappeared in the period that followed. In the 8th century Derbent was also conquered by the Arabs.

The state of the Shirvan Shahs existed since 799 with the capital Şamaxı in the eastern part of the country from Kura to Derbent . The state of Gəncə arose at the end of the 9th century south of the Kura in western Azerbaijan. Later a state of Azerbaijan and Aran emerged south of the Kura . The remnants of the kingdom of Albania were conquered by the Georgian state of Heretia in the 30s of the 9th century . In the 9th and 10th centuries, the tribes of wandering Oghusen one in this area.

From the 60s of the 11th century the area became dependent on the Seljuks . There were frequent incursions by Seljuk troops. After Georgia gained strength , the Georgians subdued the Azerbaijani states of Shirvan, Ran, Gəncə, Lekia and Derbent.

Around 1220 the south was conquered by the Khorezm Shah and the north by Genghis Khan . In the following decade the south was conquered by the Mongols , only the state of the Shirvan Shahs could continue to exist as a vassal. After 1254 the area belonged to the sphere of influence of the Ilkhan Empire . This often led wars with the northern Khanate of the Golden Horde for the countries in the region and allied itself with the Nogai Horde, which is located north of Azerbaijan . At that time, a small number of Mongols settled in the country, but were absorbed by the local population. The Hanega fortress on the banks of the river Pirsagat dates from this period.

After the dissolution of the Ilkhanate in 1336, Shirvan became independent and included large parts of today's Azerbaijan, while smaller parts were ruled by Georgia. After 1390 Azerbaijan was conquered by Timur , who established a new Mongolian empire from Samarkand .

Early modern age

After Timur's death in 1405, the tribal federation of the white mutton ruled what is now Azerbaijan and the southern countries, while to the west of it the black mutton ruled. From Derbent, the state of the Shirvanshahs began to gain strength again and a few decades later again encompassed large parts of today's Azerbaijan. In addition, the state of Karabakh Khanate was established . The main centers of Azerbaijani culture at that time were Təbriz ( Tabriz ) and Şamaxı .

Mid-15th century, the power base of the Persian formed Safavids - Dynasty south of the River Kura on the Caspian Sea. In Armenia and Persia, the black mutton prevailed. Around 1500 the Safavids broke away from the black mutton, conquered their empire and Ismail I crowned himself in Tabriz in 1502 as the first Persian Shah of the Safavids. These also conquered the parts of Shirvan south of the Kura and forced Karabach, Shirvan and the Sheki Khanate, split off from Shirvan, into dependence. Shirvan soon became an entirely Persian province. Since the Safavid dynasty is of Azerbaijani origin, the aristocracy and culture of this country played an important role in the Persian Empire, and the Azerbaijani language became the second official language. Significant cities of that time in today's Azerbaijan were Şamaxı and Baku .

The influence of Azerbaijan in Persia decreased under the rule of Abbas I (1587-1629), the capital was moved to Isfahan and Azerbaijan became a province. In 1590 the Ottoman Empire briefly succeeds in conquering Azerbaijan. Parts of the north go to Dagestan and only the Sheki Khanate remains as an Ottoman vassal. In the following decade, Persia was able to regain Azerbaijan. In the course of the 17th century, the north of Dagestan can also be recaptured.

In 1723 the Russian Tsar Peter I briefly conquered the areas of Baku and Dərbənd and the rest of the Persian coast of the Caspian Sea in the first Russo-Persian War . The khanates Shirvan , Salyan and Sheki were able to make themselves independent of Persia. The Ottomans also conquered Naxçıvan. In 1736 Nadir Shah was able to recapture all of Azerbaijan for Persia.

After Nadir's assassination in 1747, khanates that were more or less independent of Persia emerged in the areas of Azerbaijan and Transcaucasia, which had previously belonged to Persia. Among them were Şəki , Şirvan, Baku , Quba , Dərbənd , Talış , Gəncə , Qarabağ , Naxçıvan , İrəvan , Salyan and Cavad in the north , which was later conquered by the Russian Empire . In what is now Iran's south, it was Təbriz, Urmiya, Ərdəbil , Xoy, Qaradağ, Sərab, Marağa and Maku. These khanates often fought with each other and got caught between the re-strengthened Persia and the Russian Empire around 1800 . As a result, there were three Russian-Persian wars in a row . The war of 1796 brought no change, but after the Russo-Persian War 1804 to 1814, the khanates north of the Aras except Naxçıvan and İrəvan became a Russian province in the peace of Gulistan . After the Russo-Persian War of 1826/28, these too came to the Russian Empire in the Peace of Turkmanchai . The border established in the last treaty still separates Azerbaijan (and Armenia) from Iran.

From 1818 Germans from Württemberg settled in the state.

The exploitation of the oil fields began in the 1870s. The world's first development of an oil site with a technically modern method took place in 1844, when the first oil well with a percussion drilling system was discovered in the Bibi-Heybat oil field in southern Baku on the initiative of the Russian engineer FN Semjonow . The tsarist government did not document this event until 1848, 11 years before Edwin Colonel Drake opened an American oil well in Pennsylvania in 1859.

Recent history

Map of Azerbaijan

After the collapse of the Russian Empire and the failed attempt to establish a Transcaucasian Democratic-Federal Republic together with Georgia and Armenia , the first republic in the Islamic Orient , the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan ( Azerbaijani : Democracy Cumhuriyyəti Azərbaycan ), was established on May 28, 1918 , founded with the capital Gəncə , which formally existed from 1918 to 1920, but whose area of rule was limited to northern Azerbaijan. Fätälikhan Hoylu was elected as the first prime minister of the republic and the chairman of the Azerbaijani nationalist party Müsavat (“Equality”), Məhəmməd Əmin Rəsulzadə , was elected as the first president of the republic .

Baku and the east of Azerbaijan were initially not controlled by the Democratic Republic, but by the pro-Soviet commune of Baku established in early 1918 . The Bolsheviks and the Armenian nationalists of the Daschnakzutyun, allied with them, reacted to Azerbaijani nationalist efforts in their domain with massacres of the Muslim civilian population, the so-called March events . When Ottoman troops advanced on Baku in the summer of 1918, the Mensheviks , Social Revolutionaries and Dashnaks represented in the Council of People's Representatives overthrew the Bolsheviks to turn to General Lionel Dunsterville's British troops stationed in Persia for help. They founded the short-lived Central Aspic dictatorship , which was under British protection. In September 1918 Dunsterville vacated Baku and left it to the overpowering Ottomans. These, in turn, committed massacres of the local Armenians with their Azerbaijani allies . As a result of the Mudros armistice , Baku came back under British control in November 1918.

In January 1920, Azerbaijan was recognized by the Allies as an independent country. An Azerbaijani government delegation was received by US President Woodrow Wilson and on January 11, 1920, Azerbaijan was officially recognized by the USA. However, this independence was ended by the Red Army on April 28, 1920. Russian troops crossed the state border with Azerbaijan near the city of Yalama and advanced into the country. Since the military of the republic in the west of the country was also involved in a dispute with Armenian guerrillas, Baku could not offer permanent resistance against the Red Army. Thus, on April 28, a Russian occupation regime established itself in Baku. A few months later, a Soviet republic was established in Azerbaijan, which was forcibly united with Georgia and Armenia in 1922 to form the Transcaucasian Federal Soviet Republic and integrated into the USSR.

After the Russian invasion of northern Azerbaijan, Sheikh Khiabani proclaimed the Azerbaijani state of Azadistan (Land of the Free) in Iranian Azerbaijan in 1920 , which however went under again only six months later. This also influenced the Iranian Soviet Republic .

In 1936 Azerbaijan became an independent Soviet republic of the USSR . During the Sovietization of Azerbaijan, Azerbaijani schools that had existed since the 17th century were closed and the Russian language and culture were promoted over Azerbaijani. Representatives of literature and art also fell victim to this policy, for example the poet Hüsyen Cavid and the writer Mikayil Muschwig were murdered under Stalin. The liberal writer Elcin was banned from writing in the 1970s. The historian and orientalist and later President of Azerbaijan Abulfaz Eltschibey was interned in 1975. Mosques and synagogues were also closed.

Due to the Armenian territorial claims and their support by the Armenian population in Nagorno-Karabakh , in 1988 the local Soviet applied for the transfer of the territory from Azerbaijani to Armenian republic sovereignty in the absence of Azerbaijani MPs. In the same year there were anti-Armenian pogroms in several Azerbaijani cities (see pogrom in Sumgait 1988). On September 23, 1989, the Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan passed the constitutional law on the sovereignty of Azerbaijan in Baku in the wake of the beginning of the collapse of the USSR . According to reports broadcast by the Tagesschau on December 30, 1989, thousands of people demonstrated in Cəlilabad at the end of December 1989 against the party's monopoly of power. One person is said to have been killed and 150 injured during the police operation against the demonstrators. In response, party officials and police officers were chased out of the city on December 29, 1989. In January 1990 there was renewed fighting between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. The USSR declared a state of emergency and from January 20, 1990, it transferred troops to Azerbaijan. In Baku alone, the military intervention killed 170 people and injured around 400 civilians. The invasion of Baku followed the same strategy that the Soviet military had used a year earlier in the Georgian capital Tbilisi and repeated a year later in Vilnius, Lithuania, with the Vilnius Blood Sunday .

On August 30, 1991, after the failed August coup in Moscow , Azerbaijan proclaimed independence and became a co-founder of the CIS . The first president of the again independent Azerbaijan was Ayaz Mütəllibov (October 18, 1991 to May 14, 1992), who was the only candidate to receive 98.5% of the votes in an unfree election. The first freely elected president was the leader of the Popular Front of Azerbaijan Abulfaz Eltschibey (June 7, 1992 to June 25, 1993), who received 60.9% of the vote in the June 7, 1992 elections. His presidency, like that of his predecessor, soon ended under the open war against Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, which was bad for Azerbaijan .

In September 1993 the former secret service agent and Communist Party leader Heydər Əliyev was elected president, who founded the state party “New Azerbaijan”. Əliyev strove for good relations with Russia, Turkey and the USA, but also for good neighbors with Iran .

In 1995 a constitution was adopted which constituted a presidential system of government. With several changes in leadership and coup attempts, the political situation in Azerbaijan has proven to be unstable since 1991, which is also related to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict .

Various parties have been founded since 1993. Among the most important of these are the Azerbaijani Popular Front , Müsavat (Equality Party ), the Azerbaijani Motherland Party , the National Independence Party , Yeni Azərbaycan Partiyası (Party for New Azerbaijan, YAP) and the Azerbaijani Democratic Party (ADP). During internal unrest, the short-lived Talysh Mugan Autonomous Republic was proclaimed in southern Azerbaijan .

In 2002 İlham Əliyev was elected to succeed his father in the office of president and was confirmed by the people in 2003 elections that were criticized as rigged.

In 2012 the Eurovision Song Contest took place in the capital Baku, the event arena, the Bakı Kristal Zalı , was built especially for it. As a result of this major event, Azerbaijan attracted the attention of the European media, and conditions in the country, especially the authoritarian regime, were widely criticized.

literature

Erich Feigl : Silk Road through Tierra del Fuego. The history of Azerbaijan. Amalthea, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-85002-667-3 .

Web links

Commons : History of Azerbaijan - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

↑ Yoshihiro Nishiaki, Farhad Guliyev, Seiji Kadowaki: Chronological Contexts of the Earliest Pottery Neolithic in the South Caucasus: Radiocarbon Dates for Göytepe and Hacı Elamxanlı Tepe, Azerbaijan , in: American Journal of Archeology 119.3 (2015) 279–294.

^ Beginning of the petroleum age - Baku. Retrieved February 10, 2018 .

↑ Embassy of Azerbaijan in Switzerland: History of Azerbaijan ( Memento of the original from February 25, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2

↑ 12/30/1989. Tagesschau (ARD) , December 30, 1989, accessed on December 29, 2016 .

↑ January 20, 1990. Tagesschau (ARD) , January 20, 1990, accessed on May 3, 2017 .

↑ Discontent about the Eurovision Contest in Azerbaijan in swissinfo.ch (accessed on May 28, 2012).

[1] Yoshihiro Nishiaki, Farhad Guliyev, Seiji Kadowaki: Chronological Contexts of the Earliest Pottery Neolithic in the South Caucasus: Radiocarbon Dates for Göytepe and Hacı Elamxanlı Tepe, Azerbaijan , in: American Journal of Archeology 119.3 (2015) 279–294.

[2] Beginning of the petroleum age - Baku. Retrieved February 10, 2018 .