Flight to Nakhichevan

Nakhichevan

About Nakhichevan

The Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic (Azerbaijani: Naxç?van Muxtar Respublikas?; Armenian: ; Russian: ? ? ?; Turkish: Nahç?van Özerk Cumhuriyeti or Nahç?van Muhtar Cumhuriyeti; Persian: ), known simply as Nakhchivan, is a landlocked exclave of Azerbaijan. The region covers 5,500 km² and borders Armenia (221 km) to the east and north, Iran (179 km) to the south and west, and Turkey (9 km) to the northwest. Its capital is Nakhchivan City, home to the Nakhchivan State University.

Etymology

Variations of the name Nakhchivan include Nakhichevan, Nachidsheuan, Nakhijevan, Nakhchawan, Nakhitchevan, Nakhjavan and Nakhdjevan. According to the nineteenth-century language scholar, Johann Heinrich Hübschmann, the name "Nakhichavan" in Armenian literally means "the place of descent", a Biblical reference to the descent of Noah's Ark on the adjacent Mount Ararat. Hubschmann notes, however, that it was not known by that name in antiquity. Instead, he states the present-day name evolved to "Nakhchivan" from "Naxcavan". The prefix "Naxc" was a name and "avan" is Armenian for "town". Nakhchivan was also mentioned in Ptolemy's Geography and by other classical writers as Naxuana. According to other versions, the name Nakhchivan derived from the Persian Nagsh-e-Jahan ("Image of the World"), a reference to the beauty of the area.[dubious - discuss] The medieval Arab chronicles referred to the area as "Nashava".

History

According to an Azerbaijan tradition, Nakhchivan was founded by Noah, of the Abrahamic religions. The oldest material culture artifacts found in the region date back to the Neolithic Age. The region was part of the states of Mannae, Urartu and Media. It became part of the Satrapy of Armenia under Achaemenid Persia circa 521 BC. After Alexander the Great's death (323 BC) various Macedonian generals such as Neoptolemus tried to take control of the region but ultimately failed and a native dynasty of Orontids flourished until Armenia was conquered by Antiochus III the Great.

In 189 BC, Nakhchivan was part of the new Kingdom of Atabeyler established by Artaxias I. Within the kingdom, the region of present-day Nakhchivan was part of the Ayrarat, Vaspurakan and Syunik provinces. The area's status as a major trade center allowed it to prosper, though because of this, it was coveted by many foreign powers. According to historian Faustus of Byzantium (4th century), when the Sassanid Persians invaded Armenia, Sassanid King Shapur II (310-380) removed 2,000 Armenian and 16,000 Jewish families in 360-370. In 428, the Armenian Arshakuni monarchy was abolished and Nakhchivan was annexed by Sassanid Persia. In 623, possession of the region passed to the Byzantine Empire. From 640 on, Arabs invaded Nakhchivan and undertook many campaigns in the area crushing all resistance and attacking Armenian nobles who remained in contact with the Byzantines or who refused to pay tribute. In 705, Arab viceroy Muhammad ibn-Marwan decided to eliminate the Armenian nobility. In Nakhchivan, several hundred Armenian nobles and their families were locked up in churches and burnt, while others were crucified. The violence caused many Armenian princes to flee to the neighboring Kingdom of Georgia or the Byzantine Empire. Meanwhile, Nakhchivan itself became part of the autonomous Principality of Armenia under Arab control. In the 8th century, Nakhchivan was one of the scenes of an uprising against the Arabs led by Persian revolutionary Babak Khorramdin of the Iranian Khorram-Dinan ("those of the joyous religion" in Persian). Nakhchivan was finally released from Arab rule in the 10th century by Bagratid King Smbat I and handed over to the princes of Syunik.

In the 11th century the region was taken over by the Seljuk Turks. In 12th century, the city of Nakhchivan became the capital of the state of Atabegs of Azerbaijan, also known as Ildegizid state, which included most of Iranian Azerbaijan and significant part of South Caucasus. The magnificent 12th century mausoleum of Momine khatun, the wife of Ildegizid ruler, Great Atabeg Jahan Pehlevan, is the main attraction of modern Nakhchivan. At its heyday, the Ildegizid authority in Nakhchivan and some other areas of South Caucasus was contested by Georgia. The Armeno-Georgian princely house of Zacharids frequently raided the region when the Atabeg state was in decline in the early years of the 13th century. It was then plundered by invading Mongols in 1220 and Khwarezmians in 1225 and became part of Mongol Empire in 1236 when the Caucasus was invaded by Chormaqan. In the 13th century during the reign of the Mongol horde ruler Güyük Khan Christians were allowed to build churches in the strongly Muslim town of Nakhchivan, however the conversion to Islam of Gazan khan brought about a reversal of this favor. The 14th century saw the rise of Armenian Catholicism in Nakhchivan, though by the 15th century the territory became part of the states of Kara Koyunlu and Ak Koyunlu.

In the 16th century, control of Nakhchivan passed to the Safavid dynasty of Persia. Because of its geographic position, it frequently suffered during the wars between Persia and the Ottoman Empire in the 14th to 18th centuries. Turkish historian Pechevi-Ibrahim described the brutality of the Ottoman army marching from the Ararat plain to Nakhchivan and Syunik:

In 1604, Shah Abbas I Safavi, concerned that the lands of Nakhichevan and the surrounding areas would pass into Ottoman hands, decided to institute a scorched earth policy. He forced the entire local population, Armenians, Jews and Muslims alike, to leave their homes and move to the Persian provinces south of the Aras River.

Many of the deportees were settled in the neighborhood of Isfahan that was named New Julfa since most of the residents were from the original Julfa (a predominantly Armenian town which was looted and burned). The Turkic Kangerli tribe was later permitted to move back under Shah Abbas II (1642-1666) in order to repopulate the frontier region of his realm. In the 17th century, Nakhchivan was the scene of a peasant movement led by Köro?lu against foreign invaders and "native exploiters". In 1747, the Nakhchivan khanate emerged in the region after the death of Nadir Shah Afshar.

After the last Russo-Persian War and the Treaty of Turkmenchay, the Nakhchivan khanate passed into Russian possession in 1828. With the onset of Russian rule, the Tsarist authorities encouraged resettlement of Armenians to Nakhchivan and other areas of the Caucasus from the Persian and Ottoman Empires. Special clauses of the Turkmenchay and Adrianople treaties allowed for this. Alexandr Griboyedov, the Russian envoy to Persia, stated that by the time Nakhchivan came under Russian rule, only 17% of its residents were Armenians, while the remainder of the population (83%) were Muslims. After the resettlement initiative, the number of Armenians had increased to 45% while Muslims remained the majority at 55%. With such a dramatic increase in population, Griboyedov noted friction arising between the Armenian and Muslim populations. He requested Russian army commander Count Ivan Paskevich to give orders on resettlement of some of the arriving people further to the region of Daralayaz to quiet the tensions.

The Nakhchivan khanate was dissolved in 1828, its territory was merged with the territory of the Erivan khanate and the area became the Nakhchivan uyezd of the new Armenian oblast, which later became the Erivan Governorate in 1849. According to official statistics of the Russian Empire, by the turn of the 20th century Azerbaijanis made up 57% of the uyezd's population, while Armenians constituted 42%. At the same time in the Sharur-Daralagyoz uyezd, the territory of which would form the northern part of modern-day Nakhchivan, Azeris constituted 70.5% of the population, while Armenians made up 27.5%. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, conflict erupted between the Armenians and the Azeris, culminating in the Armenian-Tatar massacres which saw violence in Nakhchivan in May of that year.

Azerbaijan

About Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan (IPA: /?æz?ba?'n/ (UK), /z?ba?'n/ (US); Azerbaijani: Az?rbaycan), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan (Azerbaijani: Az?rbaycan Respublikas?), is the largest and most populous country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Eastern Europe and Western Asia, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to the south. The Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan is bordered by Armenia to the north and east, Iran to the south and west, and Turkey to the northwest. Nagorno-Karabakh, along with 7 other districts in Azerbaijan's southwest, have been controlled by Armenia since the end of the Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1994. Four United Nations Security Council Resolutions (822, 853, 874, and 884) called for "the withdrawal of occupying forces from occupied areas of the Azerbaijani Republic" The country's territory also encompasses several islands in the Caspian Sea. Azerbaijan, a nation with an ethnic Azeri and Shi »˜ite Muslim majority population, is a secular and unitary republic. The country has been a co-founder of GUAM and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and has been a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States since September 1993. The country has a Permanent Mission to the European Union, hosts a Special Envoy of the European Commission and is a member of the United Nations, OSCE, Council of Europe, and the NATO Partnership for Peace (PfP) program.

Etymology of the name

The name of Azerbaijan derives from Atropates, a satrap of Persia under the Achaemenid empire, who was later reinstated as the satrap of Media under Alexander of Macedonia. The original etymology of this name is thought to have its roots in the ancient Zoroastrianism, namely, in Avestan Frawardin Yasht ("Hymn to the Guardian Angels"), there is a mentioning of: âterepâtahe ashaonô fravashîm ýazamaide, which literally translates from Old Persian as "we worship the Fravashi of the holy Atare-pata" . Atropates ruled over the region of present-day Iranian Azerbaijan. The name "Atropates" itself is derived from Old Persian roots meaning "protected by fire."

History

The earliest evidence of human settlement in the territory of Azerbaijan dates to the late Stone Age and is related to the Quruçay culture of Azykh Cave. The Upper Paleolithic and particularly Mousterian cultures are attested to in the caves of Ta?lar, Damcili, Zar, Yataq-yeri, etc. Jugs with the remnants of dry wine, revealed in the necropolises of Leylatepe and Sarytepe, testify to wine-making activity during the Late Bronze Age.

The entire South Caucasus was conquered by the Achaemenids around 550 B.C., which led to the spread of Zoroastrianism in this part of the Persian Empire. After its overthrow by Alexander the Great, the Seleucid Greeks, who inherited the Caucasus, were ultimately beset by pressures from Rome, secessionist Greeks in Bactria and most adversely the Parthians. Caucasian Albanians, the original inhabitants of the area established a kingdom in the 4th century B.C. In 95-67 B.C. parts of Caucasian Albania may have been under the subjugation of neighboring Armenia, as a part of Tigranes the Great's empire. According to Strabo, as the Romans and Parthians began to expand their domains, Albania, unlike Iberia and Armenia, remained independent of Roman domination, signing a peace treaty (Strabo XI, 4, 5). The Roman inscription found in Gobustan testifies to the presence of Legio XII Fulminata in the time of Domitian.

Caucasian Albania remained largely independent until the Sassanids turned it into a vassal state in 252 A.D. King Urnayr of Caucasian Albania officially adopted Christianity as the state religion in the 4th century A.D., and Albania remained a predominantly Christian state until the Islamic conquest of the 8th century A.D. Despite numerous conquests by the Sassanids and Byzantines, Caucasian Albania remained an entity in the region until the 9th century A.D. The territory of modern Azerbaijan roughly corresponds to the ancient state of Caucasian Albania.

The Islamic Umayyad Caliphate defeated both the Sassanids and the Byzantines, making Caucasian Albania a vassal state after the Christian resistance, led by Prince Javanshir, was suppressed in 667 A.D. After the decline of Abbasid Caliphate, the territory of present-day Azerbaijan was under the sway of numerous dynasties such as the Salarids, Sajids, Shaddadids, Rawadids and Buyids. At the beginning of the 11th century, the territory was gradually seized by waves of Turkic Oghuz tribes from Central Asia. The first of these dynasties were the Ghaznavids, who took over part of the area now known as Azerbaijan by 1030.

Locally, the possessions of the subsequent Seljuk Empire were ruled by atabegs, who were technically vassals of the Seljuk sultans, being sometimes de facto rulers themselves. Under the Seljuk Turks, local poets such as Nizami Ganjavi and Khagani Shirvani gave rise to a blossoming of Persian literature on the territory of present-day Azerbaijan. The next ruling state of the Jalayirids was short-lived and fell under the conquests of Tamerlan. The local dynasty of Shirvanshahs became a vassal state of Tamerlan's empire and assisted Tamerlan in his war with the ruler of the Golden Horde Tokhtamysh. Following Tamerlan's death two independent and rival states emerged: Kara Koyunlu and Ak Koyunlu. Until his death the Ak Koyunlu sultan Uzun Hasan ruled the whole territory now known as Azerbaijan. Thereafter the Shirvanshahs maintained a high degree of autonomy as local rulers and vassals from 861 until 1539. As the Shirvanshahs were persecuted by the Safavids, the last dynasty imposed Shia Islam upon the formerly Sunni population, battling against the Sunni Ottoman Empire. The area was ruled under Iranian dynasties of Afshar and Zand following the collapse of the Safavids and briefly under Qajars. In the meanwhile, however, several independent khanates emerged in the area, especially following collapse of Zand dynasty and in early Qajar era. Engaged in constant warfare, these khanates were eventually incorporated to the Russian Empire, following two Russo-Persian Wars. Under the Treaty of Turkmenchay the Persian Empire recognized Russian sovereignty over the Erivan khanate, the Nakhchivan khanate and the remainder of the Talysh khanate.

After the collapse of the Russian Empire during World War I, Azerbaijan, together with Armenia and Georgia became part of the short-lived Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic. When the republic dissolved in May 1918, Azerbaijan declared independence as the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR). The ADR was the first democratic parliamentary republic in the Muslim world, but lasted only 23 months until the Bolshevik XIth Red Army invaded in April 1920. Overthrowing the ADR government, Bolsheviks established Azerbaijan SSR in Baku on April 28, 1920.

In 1922, Azerbaijan, along with Armenia and Georgia, became part of the Transcaucasian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic {TSFSR), which itself became a constituent member of the newly-established Soviet Union. In 1936, TSFSR was dissolved and Azerbaijan SSR became one of the 12 (by 1940 - 15) constituent member states of the Soviet Union.

During the 1940s, the Azerbaijan SSR supplied much of the Soviet Union's oil on the Eastern Front of World War II. Close to 600,000 Azerbaijanis fought on this front against Nazi Germany. Operation Edelweiss was launched by Adolf Hitler to occupy the Caucasian oilfields and capture Baku, but all the offensives were pushed back. The Germans made largely fruitless efforts to enlist the cooperation of émigré political figures, such as Mammed Amin Rasulzade, who came to Berlin and found opportunities to meet captured Soviet Azerbaijani POWs.

Following the politics of glasnost, initiated by the last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, civil unrest and ethnic strife grew in various regions of the Soviet Union, including Nagorno-Karabakh, a region of the Azerbaijan SSR. The disturbances in Azerbaijan, in response to Moscow's indifference to already heated conflict, resulted in calls for independence and secession from the USSR, which subsequently culminated in the events of Black January in Baku. At this time, Ayaz Mutallibov was appointed as the First Secretary of the Azerbaijan Communist Party.