Azerbaijani Turks

ETHNONYMS: Azerbaijanis (used since 1937 in Soviet Azerbaijan); Azeris.

Orientation

Identification. Historic Azerbaijan is today divided into the independent Republic of Azerbaijan (Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic until 30 August 1991) in the north and the East and West Azerbaijan provinces of Iran in the south. The Araxes (Aras) River forms most of the boundary between the two sides.

Location. Azerbaijan occupies the western shore of the Caspian Sea, extending west to approximately 45° longitude (which runs through the middle of the Caucasian isthmus and west of Lake Urmia in Iran) and from the foot of the Caucasus Mountains in the north to just south of Lake Urmia (37° latitude) in the south. The Kura River crosses the republic from northwest to southeast. Elevation varies greatly, from the coastal lowlands and basins of the Kura and Araxes rivers in the east and southeast (at and below sea level) to the Greater Caucasus mountains (to 4,243 meters) in the north at the Daghestan border, and to the Lesser Caucasus (to 3,581 meters) in the west. In the lowlands, the climate is mild (average temperature is 14-14.5° C with 20-40 centimeters of precipitation annually), but in the mountains winters are severe (average temperature is 2-10° C; with extremes to -13°, and 100-160 centimeters of precipitation). The Azerbaijan Republic, with its capital at Baku, includes the (mostly Armenian) Nagorno-Karabagh region and the noncontiguous Nakh-jivan Autonomous Republic (separated from the rest of the republic by a strip of Armenia). Iranian Azerbaijan is entirely mountainous: elevations are over 2,000 meters, with some ranging as high as 5,000 meters near Ardebil in the east. Climate is correspondingly severe. It is separated from the Caspian coast by the Gilan region. In the south, the main city, Tabriz, is located near Lake Urmia.

Demography. The population of the Azerbaijan Republic was about 7 million in 1989; Baku had a population of 2.5 million. The birthrate is high (43.7 per thousand between 1959 and 1969, as contrasted with 19 per thousand for Russians), with the median age of the population in 1979 at 15. The Azerbaijan SSR had become more ethnically homogeneous in the last three decades, both because of the emigration of non-Azerbaijanis and because of the relatively higher birthrate of the Azerbaijanis. The other major groups in the republic are Russians and Armenians. These three groups account for approximately 90 percent of the population. Other groups are Georgians, Jews, and northern Caucasians. Comparable demographic data are not available for Iranian Azerbaijan. Tabriz has a population of over half a million, and East Azerbaijan Province, about 4 million. Estimates of the total number of Azerbaijanis in Iran, however, vary from 6 million to more than twice that figure. In West Azerbaijan Province, there is a large Kurdish population and also Assyrian and other Christian minorities. Some nomadic groups still exist, although their former migration patterns were disrupted by the restrictions on moving southward across the Araxes River. Most prominent among these groups are the Shahseven.

Linguistic Affiliation. Azerbaijani is a dialect of Turkish, although on the northern side of the border the Soviet state officially called it a separate language starting in 1937; on the Iranian side it is called simply "Türki," as are Turkish dialects in Central Asia. Azerbaijani is closely related to Turkmen and Anatolian Turkish; it is intelligible to most speakers of Turkish dialects and is a lingua franca in much of Daghestan. The Azerbaijan Republic has used the Cyrillic orthography since the late 1930s, after about a decade of Latin orthography, which replaced the earlier Arabo-Persian script. The republic's government plans to reinstate Latin orthography in 1993. Azerbaijani is a language with an important literature. Azerbaijanis have a low level of linguistic Russification, with over 98 percent claiming Azerbaijani as their first language. On the Iranian side of the border, the Arabo-Persian script is still in use. Prior to the creation of this script, Turkish had been written in other alphabets, the earliest of which was the so-called runic script of the eighth century Orkhon-Yenisei inscriptions.

History and Cultural Relations

Present-day Azerbaijanis north of the Araxes River regard themselves as descendants of the ancient Caucasian Albanians (Albania is the former name of the area), whose kingdom occupied eastern Caucasia from antiquity to the Muslim conquests; they also claim descent from Turkish nomads who first migrated to the steppe north of the Caspian in pre-or early Christian times and thereafter penetrated and mingled with the existing population of Azerbaijan. Decisive Turkicization occurred in the eleventh century. In Iran, however, as a result of the Persianization campaigns of the Pahlavi dynasty (1925-1979), official history insists that the Turks of the Azerbaijan provinces are "Turkicized Aryans." Because of the restrictions on higher education and publishing in Iranian Azerbaijan, there has been little exploration of this contention in Iran; Soviet Azerbaijani scholars have denounced it. Over the centuries, Azerbaijan has been overrun by its neighbors (Byzantium and Iran) and more distant invaders (Khazars, Arabs, Seljuks, Mongols, Timurids, and Russians). For much of its history, Azerbaijan has been ruled as part of Iran by successive groups including the Sasanids (third to seventh century); the Arab caliphate (at various times); the Turkish Seljuks (eleventh century); the Chingizid Ilkhanids (thirteenth-fourteenth centuries); the Central Asian Timurids (fourteenth and fifteenth centuries); and Safavids from southern Azerbaijan (sixteenth-eighteenth centuries).

Among historically important cities are Barda, Ganje, Ardebil, Tabriz, and Maragha. Local dynasties have occasionally exerted considerable independence, notably the Shirvanshahs of the north, who ruled during the sixth to sixteenth centuries despite the loss of suzerainty to imperial rulers in Iran or Central Asia. The region they ruled was known simply as "Shirvan" or "Sharvan." After a period of fragmentation into semi-independent khanates in the eighteenth century, northern Azerbaijan was conquered by the Russians early in the nineteenth century. The border was fixed in 1828 at roughly its present position. Northern Azerbaijan constituted two provinces of the Russian Empire (the Baku and Elisavetpol provinces) and part of the Erevan Province. It experienced rapid (if one-sided) industrial development as Baku's oil wealth was exploited from the last quarter of the nineteenth century well into the twentieth; because of the "oil rush," northern Azerbaijan received thousands of Russians, Caucasian mountaineers, Armenians, and southern Azerbaijani Turks as workers, many of whom were organized into the Socialist movement. Northern Azerbaijan became an independent republic in 1918, in the wake of the Russian Revolution and World War I, but it was reconquered by the Red Army in 1920. Southern Azerbaijan was one of the richest provinces of Iran and, under the Qajars, was ruled by the heir to the Iranian throne. It became a center of protests against the shah's foreign concessions in the 1890s and of the Constitutional Movement (1905-1911) that led to the short-lived constitutional period. This history of protest, however, so weakened the old regime that the path was paved for the coup by Reza Khan (later Shah) Pahlavi in the 1920s. Cross-border relations remained strong. During World War II, Soviet troops occupied part of southern Azerbaijan, but they withdrew in 1946. Thereafter an autonomous local government was destroyed by the Shah's troops.

The culture of Azerbaijan has historically been a rich and complex admixture of pre-Islamic Turkish, Iranian, and Islamic elements. The mix is reflected in the dastan, or "ornate oral history," which preserves history, customs, values, and the language itself. Later forms (dating from about the fourteenth century) of these ancient works are known today: The Book of Dede Korkut and Köroglu. "High culture" is also strongly in evidence in the form of poetry, scholarship, visual arts, and architecture. The eleventh to thirteenth centuries were the golden age, during which the poets Khagani Shirvani (1120-1199) and Nizami Ganjevi (1141-1209) and the scholar Muhammad Nasr al-Din Tusi (1207-1274) lived and worked. Later luminaries included the poet Fuzuli (1498-1556). They were internationally known and many traveled far beyond the borders of Azerbaijan. Maragha, in the south, boasted a fourteenth-century observatory and library. Mausoleums, bridges, and other structures survive from the eleventh century and later. Some remaining structures are even older. Russian influence had some impact on the upper classes in the north during the nineteenth century and far more under Soviet power. Certain members of the Azerbaijani intelligentsia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were educated in France, Germany, or the Ottoman Empire; those desiring religious training went to Iran or Ottoman Iraq. Under Soviet rule, the Azerbaijan SSR became increasingly insulated, and cultural policies were determined by the Soviet Communist party. In addition to the alphabet changes, many works of oral and written literature were banned and denounced as "feudal-clerical" or "bourgeois." Writers, composers, and poets perished in the purges. In the south, Persianization was emphasized and Azerbaijani Turkish culture regarded as primitive, "folk" culture. Major historical personages were called "Persian" regardless of their place of birth, parentage, or self-identification. Literacy in Turkish was not counted in the 1962 Iranian census.

Settlements

The northern Azerbaijani population has been about half urban since the middle of this century. The traditional division of towns into mahalle (quarters) based on the ethnicity or region of origin of the inhabitants, which the names of the mahalle may reflect, survives to some degree to the present. Rural villages are numerous on both sides of the border and tend to be ethnically homogeneous. In the north, the descendants of nineteenth-century Russian settlers still remain in a few areas. The transfer of large Armenian populations from Iran after the Russian conquest has led to large Armenian concentrations in some western and central regions of Caucasia, including many parts of the present-day Armenian Republic and the Karabagh region of the Azerbaijan Republic.

Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities . Agriculture is a key component of the economy on both sides of the border; the region encompasses several climatic zones and produces tea, grapes, wheat, tobacco, and pomegranates, as well as mulberry trees and cocoons (for silk) and forest products. Sheep, cattle, and goats are kept. Among natural resources are copper, salt, iron ore, and, in the north, the most famous—oil. Black caviar is produced by the sturgeon off the Azerbaijan coast, but severe pollution in the Caspian Sea has virtually destroyed this industry and fishing. Industrial development, consisting of oil and petrochemical industries, is confined to the north. Pesticide use, especially on grapes and cotton, has been excessive and has caused serious health and environmental damage.

Industrial Arts. Azerbaijan has long been famous for its silks and carpets. Tabriz is known for carpets and has famous schools of miniatures and calligraphy; Shemakhi in the north was a major producer of silk cloth; various towns produced rugs. Machine production has largely, but not entirely, replaced handicrafts.

Trade. Trade in silk, carpets, wax, and oil has been important to the towns of Azerbaijan throughout its history. Baku is located on the south side of the Apsheron Peninsula and has the best natural harbor on the Caspian. It has been a commercial port for more than a millennium. Ruins of caravansaries reflect trade with South Asia as well as the Middle East. The towns of the south lay on major overland trade routes. Since the early nineteenth century the economy of each part of Azerbaijan has been integrated into the state of which it is a part.

Division of Labor. The traditional division of men's and women's work generally prevails, with the latter including unusually onerous tasks in nomadic and rural areas. In the twentieth century, especially with losses of male population in northern Azerbaijan after the abortive battle for independence, collectivization, purges, and World War II, women increasingly filled the work force. Intellectual or white-collar employment for females is acceptable in northern Azerbaijan, but physical labor is disdained by women and will be accepted only by the very poor.

Land Tenure. There was no private land in the Azerbaijan SSR, but in rural areas the population was able to use land to build houses and keep private gardens. There is sufficient flexibility in the system for a thriving black market in fruit and flowers. The republican government is committed to privatization of land, but the process is proceeding slowly. In the south, the abortive land reforms of the last Pahlavi shah did not alter the landowning pattern in Azerbaijan; land tends to be concentrated in the hands of the wealthy.

Kinship

A patrilinear pattern is characteristic. Language reflects details of relations, with different terms for the mother's brother and sister, the father's brother and sister, spouses and avuncular relatives, and so forth. Marriage bonds are very important, with clear definition of relations between children and paternal and maternal relatives. These obligations are recognized even among urban populations. Extended families are preferred, even in cities.

Marriage and Family

Marriage. People commonly marry in their early twenties, and within each family are expected to marry in order from eldest to youngest. If marriages are not specifically arranged (arranged marriages are increasingly unlikely in urban areas), Azerbaijani Turks are expected to marry someone whose family is known by or related to their own family. The first child is expected to be born in the first year of marriage, although there is no convention concerning the timing of subsequent children. Higher education may cause marriages to be deferred and may also result in marriage outside the usual circles. Nonetheless, marriage outside the national community is rare. In those instances when official "mixed" marriages are recorded by Soviet statistics, the match is usually with another Turk (a Tatar, Uzbek, etc.) or non-Turkish Muslim (Legzhi, etc.) rather than a non-Turk and non-Muslim. Intermarriage between Turks and Persians in Iran is more likely for those outside Azerbaijan. Abortion, though legal in the north, is virtually unheard of; divorce is rare, and social pressures against it are enormous. Polygamy was illegal in the Soviet Union but existed sporadically in a few rural areas under various guises (such as civil divorce, followed by a civil and religious second marriage).

Domestic Unit. An extended patrilocal family is preferred and is often necessary because of housing shortages in towns in the north. Women constitute a subculture within the household and share in housekeeping and child-rearing duties, even if employed outside the household. They may play an important role in decision making, especially concerning children.

Inheritance. Inheritance was traditionally determined by Islamic provisions that require all offspring to inherit, although males were favored. Now the laws of each state govern inheritance.

Socialization. The family is the main instrument of socialization, and public opinion exerts a powerful force. Both the Russians (under czarist and Soviet power) and Persians have tried to use schools as a means to socialize Azerbaijani Turks into the majority culture. The Russians had limited success; the Persians have had more, especially among those Azerbaijanis who leave Azerbaijan.

Sociopolitical Organization

The Azerbaijan Republic, unlike its Soviet predecessor, is characterized by various political and social organizations and parties. Its leaders have confirmed their willingness to grant cultural autonomy to ethnic minorities. Iran does not recognize ethnic or national differences nor grant autonomy to nationalities.

Social Organization. Although much of the society has been peasant and nomadic, the cities in Azerbaijan have produce a small but vigorous urban culture and merchant class. The upper class traditionally was composed of landowners or merchants, but in the north industrialization in the nineteenth century also created an industrial bourgeoisie. In the north, there was a secular cultural-intellectual movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Political Organization. The Azerbaijan Republic realized aspects of its sovereignty only slowly because of the continued control of the government by former Communists during its first months of independence. The 1978 constitution remained in force. During the spring of 1992, the former Communists lost power and were supplanted by the Azerbaijan Popular Front, the major opposition force since its founding in 1989. Its leader, Abulfez Elchibey, was elected president (7 June 1992) in the first democratic elections since 1919. The post-Communist government embarked on a program of social, political, and economic change.

Social Control. Traditional norms are enforced by the family and by community opinion. Religious values can be enforced by the religious establishment in the south. In the north, the pressure by the Communist party apparatus and Ministry of Internal Affairs is gradually being replaced by new laws.

Conflict. The main conflict is between Azerbaijani Turks and non-Azerbaijanis. The czar ist period was marked by continual but only sporadically violent resistance to Russian control, laws restricting non-Christians, and Christianization and Russification campaigns. Resistance to Russification continued under Soviet rule. The use of force by the Soviet state to mobilize the population at harvest time led to occasional violence against the authorities. Sporadic but intense periods of conflict with Armenians characterized the first quarter of the twentieth century and the late 1980s and early 1990s. The latter confrontation concerns a territorial dispute over Nagorno-Karabagh (the first word means "mountainous" in Russian, the second is "black garden" in Turkish), which both nations regard as their historic patrimony.

Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs and Practices. Today Azerbaijan is more than three-quarters Shiite, less than one-quarter Sunni. Azerbaijan has been Islamic since the eighth century and Shiite since the sixteenth century, when Shah Ismail, founder of the Safavid dynasty, adopted Shiism as state religion. Secularization is far more in evidence in northern Azerbaijan, probably as a result of the Russian conquest. The veiling and segregation of women, common throughout Iran, is not practiced in former Soviet Azerbaijan, nor among nomads on either side of the border, although modesty in dress is the norm. Rural women often wear large black shawls but leave their faces uncovered.

In accordance with pre-Islamic belief systems common in Central Asia, including animism and shamanism, Azerbaijani Turks display reverence for nature and the elements. According to Harry H. Walsh (in Weekes, 1984, 65-66), "in rural areas of Azerbaijan, pre-Islamic practices may still be encountered among the Azeris. Holy places (pir ) are still revered. The holiday Su Jeddim, in which Azeris seek communion with their ancestors through bathing in sanctified streams, has been observed in recent times. Certain trees, especially the oak and the iron tree, are venerated and may not be felled. Pieces of bark from the iron tree are worn about the neck of persons and horses as amulets, and are tied to cribs in order to ward off illness and the evil eye. A cult of fire, which is regarded by the Azeris as the holiest and purest element in nature, has had many adherents, and there has been a cult of rocks, particularly of a certain kind of black rock to which curative powers are attributed."

Religious Practitioners. Islam has no "clergy" in the Christian sense, as Islam is not a sacramental religion. Mullahs are prayer leaders; ulema (pl. of alim, "scholar") act as judges (qadis), interpreters of the law. These practitioners were driven out of northern Azerbaijan or subordinated to the Ecclesiastical Boards created in the 1840s. The Bolsheviks destroyed these boards in the 1920s. They were reestablished in the 1940s and still exist in the republic. Under the Soviet regime, these boards controlled the education, practices, and publications of official mullahs in Soviet Azerbaijan. Consequently, the populace looked upon the mullahs with suspicion and sometimes turned to "holy men." There are about 300 holy places in Azerbaijan, and pilgrimages to them are common in the countryside (i.e., there are notable differences in religious practices between rural and urban areas). With the fall of communism, interest in religion has revived but plays no significant role in political life. In Iran, on the other hand, the ulema were and continue to be a powerful and independent force.

Ceremonies. Novruz Bayram, a holiday celebrating the beginning of spring, survives from the pre-Islamic period. Another significant ceremony is Ashura, devoted to the martyr Imam Hussein. Muharrem (Shiite commemoration) and other Islamic rituals are common in the south; they were legal but discouraged in Soviet Azerbaijan.

Arts. Traditional music is extremely popular throughout Azerbaijan. The north also has a twentieth-century tradition of operas based on traditional music; most famous among these are the operas and comic operettas of Uzeir Hajibeyli (1885-1948). His national march, written for the first republic in 1918, has been adopted by the present republic. Prominent singers enjoy enormous celebrity. Hajibeyli and many singers, composers, and traditional reciters of dastans and poetry come from Karabagh, which is regarded as a cradle of music in Azerbaijani culture. Folk plays, often with religious content, are performed in Iranian Azerbaijan. Plays with secular, often social-satirical themes were first produced in the north by Mirza Fath Ali Akhundzade (1812-1878). These and similar later works are still performed.

Medicine. In the north, remnants of the inadequate Soviet system prevail. The south has the same system as elsewhere in Iran, which is also inadequate. Herbal folk medicines are still used, mainly by the rural population.

Death and Afterlife. Islamic ceremonies in mourning and burial appear to be practiced universally (and were practiced even by Communist party members in the north). A commemoration is held at the fortieth day after death.

Bibliography

Altstadt, Audrey L. (1985). "Baku, 1813-1914: Transformation of a Muslim Town." In The City in Late Imperial Russia, edited by Michael F. Hamm. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Altstadt, Audrey L. (1992). "Azerbaijani Turks." In Modern Encyclopedia of Religions of Russia and the Soviet Union. Vol. 2. Sea Breeze, Fla.: Academic International Press.

Altstadt, Audrey L. (1992). The Azerbaijani Turks.: Power and Identity under Russian Rule. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press.

Bennigsen, Alexandre, and Chantai Lemercier-Quelquejay (1964). Islam in the Soviet Union. Translated by Geoffrey Wheeler. London: Pall Mall Publishers.

Bennigsen, Alexandre, and S. Enders Wimbush (1986). Muslims of the Soviet Empire: A Guide. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Golden, Peter (1983). "The Turkic Peoples and Caucasia." In Transcaucasia: Nationalism and Social Change, edited by Ronald Grigor Suny. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications.

Walsh, Harry H. (1984) "Azeris." In The Muslim Peoples: A World Ethnographic Survey. 2nd ed., edited by Richard V. Weekes. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.

AUDREY L. ALTSTADT