Azerbaijan Since Independence

Svante E. Cornell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317476207
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Informatik
• Subtopic: Programmierung

Azerbaijan, a small post-Soviet republic located on the western shore of the Caspian Sea, has outsized importance becaus of its strategic location at the corssroads of Europe and Asia, its oil resources, and

1 Azerbaijan Before Soviet Rule

DOI: 10.4324/9781315706221-1

If Azerbaijan’s history from the earliest times to the present were to be characterized by a single word, the most appropriate would be crossroads. Situated between Europe and Asia, Azerbaijan is marked by major routes of migration, conquest, and trade that transit the country from east to west and north to south. This circumstance has shaped Azerbaijan’s history and demography, not least its complicated and contested ethnographic history. Evidence of protohuman activity dating back more than a million years has been discovered in Azerbaijan, with the first traces of agriculture found in Nakhichevan.¹

Azerbaijan can be geographically defined in at least two ways. On the one hand, its territory can be understood as constituting that of the Republic of Azerbaijan, which was defined as a nation-state in 1918 and, with a slight loss of territory, as a Soviet republic from 1922 to 1991, and, since 1991, as an independent state. But a historic definition of Azerbaijan—and an ethnographic one, if the country is understood as the territory populated mainly by Azerbaijani Turks—encompasses a considerably larger area including parts of neighboring countries, most prominently a large portion of northwestern Iran. Indeed, until the decisive division of Azerbaijan between the Russian and Persian empires in 1828, there was little rationale for making distinctions between the lands north and south of the Araks River (which forms much of the present-day border between Azerbaijan and Iran).

Azerbaijan From Antiquity to the Turkic Invasions

For much of human history, the focus of settlement and the emergence of states in the region occurred mainly south of the Araks River, that is, in present-day Iranian Azerbaijan (also referred to as southern Azerbaijan). This circumstance was due in large part to the area’s proximity to Mesopotamia, an early center of intense social, commercial, and political development. The northern part of what is now the independent state of Azerbaijan experienced political development somewhat later, with human settlement concentrated mainly in the fertile delta at the confluence of the Kura and Araks rivers.

Atropatena and Caucasian Albania

Two states that existed in antiquity have been especially crucial to the historiography of Azerbaijan. The first is Atropatena, which existed south of the Araks River in the first centuries BCE. Atropatena was named after a satrap of Alexander the Great, and provides one of several possible origins for the term Azerbaijan. An alternative explanation is that the name derives from the combination of azer, Persian for “fire,” and baygan, Persian for “protector.” This definition is closely connected to the role played by Azerbaijan in the emergence of the Zoroastrian religion. Southern Azerbaijan is believed by some scholars to be the birthplace of Zoroaster, though many present-day scholars dispute that claim, suggesting instead a Central Asian location.² The second crucial historical state is Caucasian Albania, also known as Aghvania. This entity, unrelated to the Albania of the Balkans, developed north of the Araks River in the fourth century BCE, in a territory roughly coterminous with the present-day state of Azerbaijan. Especially since the early Soviet period, Azerbaijani scholars have emphasized their people’s direct link to Caucasian Albania, arguing that the present-day Azerbaijani population derives from Albania’s population, which was later intermixed with Turkic tribes and became linguistically Turkified. Building on the works of Strabo and Ptolemy, among others, these scholars have identified Albania as the land between the Caucasus Mountains and the Araks River, and between “Iberia” (Georgia) and the Caspian—making it an ideal fit with the territory of northern Azerbaijan post-1828.

Azerbaijan’s history up to the seventeenth century is a bewildering tale of innumerable short-lived principalities, competing empires, and sequences of settlers, conquests, and migrations. Such a tumultuous history undoubtedly caused large-scale, continuous suffering on the part of the land’s population. The few periods of peace and development that occurred seldom lasted more than several decades.³ The Sumerians, Lullubians, Akkadians, Kutians, Cadusians, Caspians, Zamoans, Mannaeans, Assyrians, Urartians, Medians, Scythians, Armenians, and Alans are only some of the peoples who ruled parts of Azerbaijan in the centuries that preceded the Arab—and later, the even more significant Turkic—invasions. The Arab invasions of the eighth century spelled the beginning of the end of the Albanian state, as they led to the Islamization of Azerbaijan. As a result, the Albanian church—a monophysite church very similar to the Armenian but independent from it—gradually was incorporated into the Armenian one. Presently, great historical debate surrounds this issue, as Azerbaijani scholars claim that ancient Christian monuments in Karabakh are Albanian, not Armenian, something vigorously contested by Armenian scholars.

Most of Azerbaijan gradually came to adopt the Shia version of Islam, in great part because of its greater tolerance of mysticism, which was more suitable to the syncretism that had evolved (as in many other Turkic lands) among Zoroastrian, Christian, and shamanistic practices. But on the slopes of the Caucasus Mountains in northern Azerbaijan, in part because of their proximity to the staunchly Sunni North Caucasus, Sunni Islam remained dominant.

The Arrival of the Turks

While Turkic tribes certainly ventured south of the Caucasus Mountains long before, it was really in the ninth and tenth centuries that a significant Turkic element established itself in Azerbaijan. The process began with warrior clans entering the service of the Sassanid dynasty of the Persian Empire, and gained impetus in subsequent centuries with the emergence of the Oghuz Turks’ Seljuk dynasty, which gradually established its suzerainty over much of the Islamic world, making distant Baghdad its capital. Azerbaijan may have been a crossroads, but it was also a backwater for both the Seljuk dynasty and the Byzantine Empire, which before the battle of Manzikert in 1071 controlled Anatolia to Azerbaijan’s west. As a result, imperial control was weak and inconsistent, depending on changes in the relative strength and interest of the two empires at a given time. One consequence of this situation was instability and constant competition for local power among native as well as nonnative princes and vassals. Native principalities developed, the most significant being the Shirvanshahs, who originally had their seat at Qabala but were dislocated by the Arab invasions and moved to Baku a few hundred miles to the southeast, then only a village. The Shirvanshahs developed a remarkable capability for survival, allying themselves most often with the victorious empires that projected their influence into Azerbaijan. Hence, through “resilience and adaptability,” they were able to survive the destruction of both the Mongol invasion of 1235 and the Timurid invasions 150 years later.⁴

If native Caucasian, Iranian, and Turkic populations—among others—dominated Azerbaijan from the fourth century CE onward, the Turkic element would grow increasingly dominant in linguistic terms,⁵ while the Persian element retained a strong cultural and religious influence. Turkic tribes of the Oghuz lineage began arriving in Azerbaijan probably as early as the sixth and seventh centuries CE. An Oghuz presence in pre-Islamic Azerbaijan is suggested by one of the most important Oghuz Turkic historical documents, the Book of Dede Korkut, which was probably written in the ninth century, though the final version is several centuries more recent.⁶ The dominance of the Oghuz Turkic tribes, of which the Seljuks constituted a part, provided for the development of a Turkic vernacular language that would eventually become the present-day Azerbaijani language. Azerbaijani Turkish is closely similar to the Turkish spoken in Turkey and the Turkmen of both Turkmenistan and Iraq, but also has a strong Persian influence in its vocabulary. In fact, Persian retained its status as the language of culture among Azerbaijanis for centuries. Azerbaijan’s most famous and venerated poets, such as Nizami Ganjevi, wrote mainly in Persian. Following the Seljuk great power period, the Turkic element in Azerbaijan was further strengthened by migrations during the Mongol onslaught of the thirteenth century and the subsequent domination by the Turkmen Qara-qoyunlu and Aq-qoyunlu dynasties.

From Safavid to Russian Rule

Throughout Asia, Turkic dynasties played a central role in the building of statehood and empire, dominating India, the Middle East, Asia Minor, and parts of Europe for the better part of the second millennium CE. The Ottomans came to dominate Asia Minor and eastern Europe, the Mamluks left their mark on Egypt, the Ghaznavids and Moghuls ruled the Indian subcontinent, and the Seljuks controlled the Middle East. Likewise, in the sixteenth century, a dynasty with roots in Ardebil in southern Azerbaijan emerged as the leading force in the building of the modern Iranian state: the Safavids.

The Safavid Dynasty

The Safavid dynasty—which was based on a mystical Sufi order—was founded by Shah Ismail Khatai, who is best known for establishing Shia Islam as the state religion of Iran. The Safavids stood out in comparison to the Ghaznavids and other Turkic conquerors by being a local, not an invading, dynasty. Established in 1501, the Safavids fought to evict the Ottoman rule that had been imposed on parts of the region. Historians indeed argue that one reason Shah Ismail imposed Shia Islam on his state was to sharpen the differences between his rule and that of the ethnically and linguistically closely related—but Sunni—Ottomans. Shah Ismail himself wrote poetry in the Azerbaijani Turkish vernacular, which remained the court language of the early Safavid rulers. Azerbaijani Turkish developed into a literary language in a form close to that used today, as is shown by remarkable works of the time such as the prose and poetry of Muhammad Fuzuli.

The long tenure of the Safavid dynasty helped integrate Azerbaijan into the Persian world while giving the Azerbaijanis the distinction of being the only Turkic people that is predominantly Shia. As Brenda Shaffer observes, this “contributed to the formation of their distinctive and common Azerbaijani identity.”⁷

From its capital in Tabriz, the Safavid court gradually moved its seat southward in the face of Ottoman attacks. In 1592 Isfahan became the capital, and would remain so until 1795. The seventeenth century saw the gradual disintegration of Iranian power, beginning in earnest with the collapse of the Safavid dynasty in the face of an Afghan invasion in 1722. The Sa-favids were gradually replaced by the equally Turkic Qajar dynasty after a short stint in power by Nadir Shah. One of the most direct results of the weakening of Iranian central power was the growing independence this granted to the khanates of both northern and southern Azerbaijan. Most powerful among them after the destruction of the Shirvanshah khanate by the Safavids was the khanate of Quba, ruled by Fath Ali Khan; other khanates included Shamakha, Sheki, Gandja, Baku, Talysh, Nakhichevan, and Yerevan.

Russian Conquest

The late eighteenth century also saw the emergence of a new, powerful actor in the politics of the South Caucasus. This was Russia, which benefited greatly from the weakness of both the Ottoman and Iranian empires. Peter the Great sent an initial expedition down the Caspian coast past Baku in the 1720s, but business on the European side of the empire prevented Russia from focusing on the Caucasus until the 1780s. In 1783, under attack by both Iranians and Ottomans and receiving no support from the European powers in spite of continuous pleas, King Irakli II of Georgia signed the Treaty of Georgievsk with Russia, effectively making his realm a Russian protectorate and giving Russia a foothold south of the Caucasus. In return, Russia made three promises, none of which would be kept: Irakli and his descendents would be guaranteed the Georgian throne; the Georgian Orthodox Church would retain its independence; and Russia would defend Georgia from any attack from Turkey or Iran attributable to the treaty. In 1801, the eastern Georgian kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti was annexed to Russia, becoming the Tiflis Gubernia, and nine years later western Georgia was conquered. Also in the first decade of the nineteenth century, Russia extended its reach from Georgia into the rest of the South Caucasus, conquering the Shirvan and Karabakh khanates in 1805.

These expansionist moves led to two successive Russo-Persian wars, one fought from 1812 to 1813 and another from 1827 to 1828. Russia emerged victorious from both, cementing its control over the South Caucasus by means of the treaties of Gulustan (1813) and Turkmanchai (1828). Much of the fighting was done not by armies deployed from central Iran but by the local khans and their subjects, who often strenuously resisted the Russian onslaught.⁸ To this day, the border delimiting Azerbaijan and Armenia from Iran is the one devised under the Treaty of Turkmanchai, which led to the division of Azerbaijan between the Russian and Iranian empires.

Once in control of the South Caucasus, Russia moved to administer its new territorial gains. This generated a debate on how best to deal with the conquered lands. One option was to maintain colonial rule over them, and hence not incorporate them outright into the Russian state. That would follow the general model of the Western colonial powers, with some exceptions such as French Algeria or Portuguese colonies. The other option was to designate the territories of the South Caucasus as provinces of the Russian Empire like any other. Russia first tilted toward colonial status, which would be less costly because it would permit local rulers to handle internal matters as long as their loyalty to the czar was unquestioned. But by the 1840s, Russia had reversed this policy and began to impose direct rule over the South Caucasus, which in practice meant maintaining a Russian administration and spreading the use of Russian as the official language.⁹

Direct rule was imposed through the creation of various provinces or gubernii, whose composition and delimitation changed over time. The one thing they had in common was their artificial character, having little relationship with local conditions and loyalties or preexisting entities.

Russian rule meant the imposition of Russian law, and a concomitant onslaught on the role of religion and the clergy as they had existed in Azerbaijan. With brief exceptions, Russian rule was heavily anti-Muslim. Religious properties were confiscated, and Azerbaijanis were proselytized to convert to Orthodox Christianity. On the other hand, the Georgians and Armenians retained numerous privileges, especially as far as religious properties and government staffing were concerned. Armenians, in particular, came to play an important role in the administration of the Caucasus region. As Tadeusz Swietochowski has observed, the Armenians played a role for Russia similar to that of the Lebanese Maronites for the French: “a strategic foothold in the Middle East with the large proportion of Christians as the mainstay of the colonial rule.”¹⁰ Simultaneously, Russia tried to co-opt segments of the local elites, focusing in particular on the increasingly powerless beys and aghas, providing them with opportunities for civil service careers and granting them title to land—the latter measure constituting the introduction of private landownership in Azerbaijan.¹¹

One important consequence of Russian rule, particularly with the gradual centralization of power in the second half of the eighteenth century, was the unification of the former khanates of northern Azerbaijan in both economic and political terms. Though three gubernii (Baku, Elizavetpol, and Erivan) covered the area populated by Azerbaijani Turks, Russian rule imposed a uniform system of administration, provided for a single currency and an increasingly mone...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Studies of Central Asia and the Caucasus
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Maps and Photos
• Azerbaijan Since Independence
• 1 Azerbaijan Before Soviet Rule
• 2 Soviet Azerbaijan
• 3 The National Revival and the Road to Independence
• 4 The Rise and Fall of the Popular Front
• 5 The Aliyev Era: Restoring Stability
• 6 Ilham Aliyev's Azerbaijan
• 7 The Shadow over Azerbaijan: Karabakh
• 8 Politics and Power in Azerbaijan
• 9 Azerbaijan's Economy: The Primacy of Oil
• 10 Azerbaijani Society: Identity, Modernity, and Tradition
• 11 Caucasus Context: Formulating Foreign Policy
• 12 Iran and the “Other” Azerbaijan
• 13 Russia,the Resurgent Imperialist
• 14 Turkey, Best Neighbor or Big Brother?
• 15 Azerbaijan and the West
• 16 Epilogue
• Bibliographical Note
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author