Azerbaijan

A broad definition would put Europe’s border with Central Asia in Azerbaijan, on the Caspian Sea, south of the Caucasus. The Caspian Sea is the largest salt lake in the world and it is where Azerbaijan is renewing its oil exploration. Its present production is in excess of one million barrels per day.

At the beginning of the 20th Century, Azerbaijan was the largest producer of oil in the world and its oil wealth was important right up until the Second World War. In 1941, Hitler was presented for his birthday a cake in the form of the map of Azerbaijan and a candle in the form of an oil tower. The murderous führer ate the cake with an anticipation to take over the country in a not too distant future and with this takeover, pick up the oil reserves necessary to ensure a reliable source of gasoline for his infernal war machine. For the benefit of humanity, the German troops were distracted in their failed Russian campaign and they never arrived to the Caspian Sea.

Azerbaijan has been populated since the Stone Age. A demonstration are the caves in Gobustan. The Greeks arrived to Azerbaijan and later the Romans. The Roman Empire reached up to the borders of modern Azerbaijan. Christianity arrived in Azerbaijan in the 3rd Century. In the 8th Century Azerbaijan was conquered by the Arabs and through the Arabs, Islam displaced Christianity in the country. In 1928, as a result of the Treaty of Turmenchay, Azerbaijan was divided in two parts: the North went to the Russian Empire and the South went to Persia.

Modern Azerbaijan is the northern part of the country that had gone to the Russians. Iran has kept up to our days, the southern part of the original Azerbaijan and it is there that it obtains an important part of its oil production and, or course, its production of caviar. In 1917, with the fall of the tsarist government in Russia, Azerbaijan gained independence. It took advantage of this period of independence, albeit very short, to adopt the national flag and the national anthem. Also, and without abandoning Islam, Azerbaijan adopted the Roman alphabet for its writings and established universal suffrage both for men as well as for women. Regretfully, in 1920 Azerbaijan fell again into Russian hands, this time under the structure of the Soviet Union.

Azerbaijan gained final independence in 1990 and then fell into a war with Armenia that had as a result that Azerbaijan lost over 20% of its territory. In 1994, it signed a cease-fire with Armenia, putting an end to the hostilities between the two countries. In 1995, it adopted a democratic Constitution and restarted the development of its oil industry.

Baku

Baku is the capital of Azerbaijan and most important city in the country. The oil wealth of the end of the 19th Century is reflected in the architecture in Baku, with beautiful French-style buildings in the style of Paris of Napoleon III and which date back to the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th Century. Baku had at the time visits from personalities such as the Rothschilds, Alfred Nobel y J.D. Rockefeller.

The house of the Rothschilds in Baku is converted today into a museum and represents a jewel of French influence architecture from the end of the 19th Century. We also find from this golden era of Azerbaijan the mosque Ajdar Bek (the Blue Mosque) and the Government Palace. These jewels were paid for with revenue from its newly discovered wealth, and wells went up around Baku. You can still find oil wells in the outside of Baku mixed in with the buildings so people live among the oil wells.

The citadel in Baku was built in the 12th Century. It is surrounded by a wall that comes from the same time. In the citadel you find the famous Maiden’s Tower that is 30 meters high (approximately 100 feet). The citadel is in very good state and a visit to it is an exposure to a medieval city that mixes Europe with Central Asia.According to one legend, the king fell in love with his daughter and insisted that he wanted to marry her. His daughter, horrified by the proposal, asked him to first build a tall tower from which she could see the city. When the tower was finished the maiden princess ran up to the top of the tower and threw herself off the tower and died, having preferred death to accepting the proposal of the kind, from here the name of the tower.

As an effect of the oil boom, in Baku you we now start to find a new construction boom similar to that found in Kazakhstan and with certain similarities of some of the construction types of tall impressive new building that one finds in cities such as Qatar and Dubai.

Zoroastrianism

Zoroastrianism appeared in Azerbaijan in the 6th Century b.C. It came from Persia and it was the religion found on the basis on the teaching of the prophet Zarathrusta. Zoroastrism is identified by the veneration of fire and is practiced up to our days. These eternal fires at one time were characteristic of the area around the city of Baku; Azerbaijan actually means land of fire. Zoroastrism has origins in Persia 1,200 years before the Christian era. The most interesting monument of Zoroastrism is the Fire Temple of Surahaby (Atashgah) in the outskirts of Baku and were there is a permanent flame that helps the worship of fire. The flame is kept alive by the oil that is apparent or flourishes on the earth.

The Caves of Gobustan

At the southwest of Baku, in the National Park of Gobustan, you will find some 20 caves that contain a spectacular collection of archeological monuments in the form of stone carvings that date more than 40,000 years ago. The drawings are similar to those that one can find in the Altamira Caves in Spain, giving the impression that there was some sort of prehistoric connection between the Iberian Peninsula and the Caspian Sea. The subjects are multiple, including men, women, bulls, deer and wild boars. There are also representations of ceremonies and prayer.

The people and the country

For anybody interested in Azerbaijan, an interesting introduction is the reading of the excellent novel Alí and Nino, which is rarely available in English. The novel was original published in German in 1930 and was written by Kurban Said, an Azeri of Jewish origin that had converted to Islam. For more than 30 years the author of the book was not known. In the story, Ali is a young Moslem man and Nino a girl of Georgian origin and a member of the Church of Georgia (a form of Orthodox Christianity). The story describes the contrast between the Moslem of Central Asia and the westerner. An Azeri explained to me that Europe ends where the Roman legions arrived, that is, Azerbaijan. This clearly places the country in a crossroad. This sensation of being European and Asiatic at the same time gives a comfortable feeling to the Azeri with what is the modern world.

The Azeri welcomes tourists with a friendly smile. The official language is Azeri, a Turkish language with a strong influence from Arabic. Also, a good number of Azeris speak Russian. The majority of Azeris are Moslems. About 10% of the population is Russian and are Orthodox Christians. There is also a number of Armenians and Georgians. English is not very common though there have been recent efforts to teach English at school.