Timurid Empire

Culture

"Tamerlane and his descendants, the Tīmūrids, were a continuation of Mongol dominion in that they respected Mongol customs and prestige. But during the fifteenth century CE, the Tīmūrids increasingly derived their authority from Tamerlane’s own prestige and synthesized a new royal culture that combined Islamic religious, Persian, and Mongol understandings of the past (cf. Bernardini 2008)." pp. 219–220, Bashir, Shahzad, A Perso-Islamic Universal Chronicle in Its Historical Context: Ghiyas al-Din Khwandamir's Habib al-siyar. In Historiography and Religion, edited by Jörg Rüpke, Susanne Rau, and Bernd-Christian Otto. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2015

"With his death in 1405, Timur’s empire disintegrated, in accordance with the nomadic patrimonial succession rules for the division of the conqueror’s empire among his sons. The disintegration of Timur’s empire into a growing number of Timurid principalities ruled by his sons and grandsons allowed the remarkable rebound of the Ottomans and their westward conquest of Byzantium and the rise of rival Turko-Mongolian nomadic empires of the Qara Qoyunlu and Āq Qoyunlu in western Iran, Iraq, and eastern Anatolia. In all of these nomadic empires, however, Persian remained the official court language and the Persianate ideal of kingship prevailed. The political culture of the polycentric Timurid empire was deeply tinged by Sufism as the dominant Persianate form of Islam spread throughout the Persianate world with the free movement of its bearers, namely the bureaucratic estate of divān monshi (chancery secretaries), from one court to another" - p. 45, Arjomand, Saïd Amir Arjomand (2022). Revolutions of the End of Time: Apocalypse, Revolution and Reaction in the Persianate World. Brill.

"Similarly, Timurid Herat and Samarqand were the most influential Persianate role models of the elites of the Ottoman and arguably also Mughal empires. Secondly, the decentering of Iran is also justified by this volume’s main focus on the Timurid period onwards, on the centuries during which a multiplicity of Persian literary traditions and hubs of Persianate culture came to dilute the sweet clarion call of Shiraz." - page xv, In Green, Nile (ed.). The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca. University of California Press.

"But since the advent of Islam in the seventh century, Central Asia had been intregal to the Persianate dynasties and cultures from the Samanids down to the Timurids and even as late as the Mughals." page 230, Dabashi, Hamid (2012). The World of Persian Literary Humanism. Harvard University Press

"Persian literature, especially poetry, occupied a central in the process of assimilation of Timurid elite to the Perso-Islamicate courtly culture, and so it is not surprising to find Baysanghur commissioned a new edition of Firdawsi's Shanameh ..." - page 130, David J. Roxburgh. The Persian Album, 1400–1600: From Dispersal to Collection. Yale University Press, 2005

The ethnonym Azerbaijani

"Russian sources cited in this study refer to the Turkish-speaking Muslims (Shi’a and Sunni) as “Tatars” or, when coupled with the Kurds (except the Yezidis), as “Muslims.” The vast majority of the Muslim population of the province was Shi’a. Unlike the Armenians and Georgians, the Tatars did not have their own alphabet and used the Arabo-Persian script. After 1918, and especially during the Soviet era, this group identified itself as Azerbaijani." -- Bournoutian, George (2018). Armenia and Imperial Decline: The Yerevan Province, 1900-1914. Routledge. p. 35 (note 25).
"The third major nation in South Caucasia,19 the Azerbaijanis, hardly existed as an ethnic group, let alone a nation, before the twentieth century. The inhabitants of the territory now occupied by Azerbaijan defined themselves as Muslims, members of the Muslim umma; or as Turks, members of a language group spread over a vast area of Central Asia; or as Persians (the founder of Azerbaijani literature, Mirza Fath’ Ali Akhundzadä, described himself as ‘almost Persian’). ‘Azerbaijani identity remained fluid and hybrid’ comments R. G. Suny (1999–2000: 160). As late as 1900, the Azerbaijanis remained divided into six tribal groups – the Airumy, Karapapakh, Pavlari, Shakhsereny, Karadagtsy and Afshavy. The key period of the formation of the Azerbaijani nation lies between the 1905 revolution and the establishment of the independent People’s Republic of Azerbaijan in 1918 (Altstadt, 1992: 95)." -- Ben Fowkes (2002). Ethnicity and Conflict in the Post-Communist World. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 14
"As hinted earlier, the history of Azerbaijan and of the growth of an Azerbaijani ethnie is more problematic than the other two cases. The lack of a clear way of differentiating between the various Turkic languages spoken and written in medieval and early modern times is one of the difficulties. Another is the absence until the twentieth century of an Azerbaijani state." -- idem, p. 35
"In the case of the third major ethnic group of South Caucasus, the Azerbaijanis, the path towards nationhood was strewn with obstacles. First, there was uncertainty about Azerbaijani ethnic identity, which was a result of the influence of Azerbaijan’s many and varied pre-Russian conquerors, starting with the Arabs in the mid-seventh century and continuing with the Saljuq Turks, the Mongols, the Ottoman Turks and the Iranians. Hence the relatively small local intelligentsia wavered between Iranian, Ottoman, Islamic, and pan-Turkic orientations. Only a minority supported a specifically Azerbaijani identity, as advocated most prominently by Färidun bäy Köchärli." -- idem, p. 68
"Azerbaijani national identity emerged in post-Persian Russian-ruled East Caucasia at the end of the nineteenth century, and was finally forged during the early Soviet period." -- Gasimov, Zaur (2022). "Observing Iran from Baku: Iranian Studies in Soviet and Post-Soviet Azerbaijan". Iranian Studies. 55 (1): page 37
"In fact, the change in defining national identity in Azerbaijan was a result of a combination of developments in the 1930s in Turkey, Iran, Germany, and the Soviet Union. The article concludes that these developments left Soviet rulers no choice but to construct an independent Azerbaijani identity." -- Harun Yilmaz (2013). "The Soviet Union and the Construction of Azerbaijani National Identity in the 1930s". Iranian Studies. 46 (4). p. 511
"A group of Azerbaijani nationalist elites, led by M.A. Rasulzada, declared independence for the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR) on 28 May 1918. After a century of Russian colonial rule, the emergent Azerbaijani nation established its first nation-state. Not only was it a new state but also it was a new nation. Because they previously had lacked a distinct national identity, the Azerbaijani Turks had been called “Caucasian Muslims” or “Tatars,” a common term used for the subject Muslim population in the Tsarist Russian empire (Мишиjeв, 1987, p. 159). The Azerbaijani identity and nation were new constructions of nationalists of the late 19th century, culminating in the establishment of the ADR." Ahmadoghlu, R. Secular nationalist revolution and the construction of the Azerbaijani identity, nation and state. Nations and Nationalism. 2021; 27. Wiley Online Library. p. 549
"Azerbaijan first tried to create a national identity in 1918 at the time of the formation of the first Azerbaijan republic. Because of linguistic factors and despite its deep and long connection with Iran, Azerbaijan constructed its identity on the basis of Turkism and even pan-Turkism." Eldar Mamedov (2017). The New Geopolitics of the South Caucasus: Prospects for Regional Cooperation and Conflict Resolution: Azerbaijan Twenty-Five Years after Independence: Accomplishments and Shortcomings. Edited by Shireen Hunter. Lexington Books. p. 29
"In the pre-national era, both north and the south of the Aras River (Shervan, Mughan, Qarabagh, and Azerbaijan) were provinces, akin to Lorestan or Khorasan of an all-Iranian imperial structure. Following the Russian conquest of the Turkic-speaking regions in the South Caucasus in the nineteenth century, a thin layer of intelligentsia emerged in Baku and began discussing the characteristics of a distinct Azerbaijani identity. The Republic of Azerbaijan was established in May 1918 by the same elite. This short experience was abruptly halted when the Red Army occupied Transcaucasia in 1920/21. Subsequently, the Bolsheviks launched their modern, state-driven nation building projects in Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia. Contemporary Azerbaijanis are Turkic-speakers and their national history could be centered on a Turkic ethno-linguistic identity. Nevertheless, for reasons discussed elsewhere, the Bolsheviks did not prefer this solution. The Azerbaijani national identity and historical narrative constructed after 1937 stressed the indigenous nature of the Azerbaijani people and was based on a territorial definition. The territorial approach found support at the highest level—from Joseph Stalin himself." -- Yilmaz, H. (2015). A Family Quarrel: Azerbaijani Historians against Soviet Iranologists. Iranian Studies, 48(5), p. 770
"Even as the ethnogenesis of the Azerbaijanis continues to be a matter of academic debate, most scholars agree that Azerbaijan, as a national entity, emerged after 1918, with the declaration of the first Republic of Azerbaijan after Word War I" -- p. 585, Gippert, Jost and Dum-Tragut, Jasmine. Caucasian Albania: An International Handbook, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2023.
"At the beginning of the 20th century, the heavily used name “Turks” for the Muslims of eastern Caucasus was replaced by the term “Azerbaijani.” It has dominated since the 1930s as a result of the Soviet policy of indigenization, largely promoted by Josef Stalin" - p. 254, After the Soviet Empire. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 05 Oct. 2015.
"Besides Azerbaijan, which as a historical territory in the 12th century has been illustrated in the maps of that era as an area in modern northwestern Iran and distinguished from Arrān, we should mention the term “Azerbaijani”. Prior to the late 19th century and early 20th century, the term “Azerbaijani” and “Azerbaijani Turk” had never been used as an ethnonym. Such ethnonyms did not exist. During the 19th century and early 20th century, Russian sources primarily referred to the Turcophone Muslim population as “Tatars” which was a general term that included a variety of Turkish speaker. Under the Mussavatist government, in 1918 and during the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan, the term “Azeri people” referred to all inhabitants while the Turkish-speaking portion was called “Azeri Turk”. Thus the concept of an Azeri identity barely appears at all before 1920 and Azerbaijan before this era had been a simple geographical area." -- pp. 16-17, Lornejad, Siavash; Doostzadeh, Ali (2012). Arakelova, Victoria; Asatrian, Garnik (eds.). On the modern politicization of the Persian poet Nezami Ganjavi (PDF). Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies.
"Until the late 19th and early 20th century it would be unthinkable to refer to the Muslim inhabitants of the Caucasus as Azaris (Azeris) or Azerbaijanis, since the people and the geographical region that bore these names were located to the south of the Araxes River. Therefore, the Iranian intelligentsia raised eyebrows once the independent Republic of Azerbaijan was declared in 1918 just across the Iranian border. - pp. 176-177, Avetikian, Gevorg. "Pān-torkism va Irān [Pan-Turkism and Iran]", Iran and the Caucasus 14, 1 (2010), Brill
"The ethno-genesis of the Azerbaijani nation can thus be traced, in a formal, bureaucratic manner at least, to the late 1930s. Hardly unique in the history of the Soviet or other states, the Azerbaijani case demonstrates the logic of Stalinist national-state construction, whereby the formation of a Soviet republic named Azerbaijan required the existence of an Azerbaijani nation to inhabit it." p. 229, Monuments and Identities in the Caucasus Karabagh, Nakhichevan and Azerbaijan in Contemporary Geopolitical Conflict, Brill
"The South Caucasian Muslims lacked clear cultural or religious boundaries as late as the nineteenth century. Divided into Shiʿa and Sunni populations, with a vernacular language close to Turkish and a literary language still dominated by Persian and then Ottoman Turkish, with no prior experience of statehood and no overall delimitation of the historical homeland, they had to define a separate identity. That construction essentially took place under Soviet rule and on the basis of a Soviet political agenda, even though its Pan-Turkist agenda predates that period and appears to have been influenced by some of the Ottoman leaders, in particular Enver Pasha and his younger half-brother, Nuri Pasha. The latter was in fact in Elisavetpol (Gandja) just before the proclamation of independence and subsequently formed the Islamic Army of the Caucasus which captured Baku in mid-September 1918. In a way, imperialism built the nation, its historiography, and its identity. Earlier processes also contributed to these developments: the tsarist territorial subdivisions of Transcaucasia in the 19th century, the growth of Baku, Armenian-Azeri economic antagonisms, and the Armenian-Tatar War" idem, pp. 232-233

Historical negationism/revisionism

"The republication of classical and medieval sources with omissions, with the replacement of the term "Armenian state" by "Albanian state" and with other distortions of the original manuscripts was another way to play down the Armenian role in early and medieval Transcaucasia. ... The Azeri scholars did all of this by order of the Soviet and Party authorities of Azerbaijan, rather than through free will." Victor Schnirelmann. The Value of the Past: Myths, Identity and Politics in Transcaucasia. Senri Ethnological Studies. pp. 160, 196–97

"Bournoutian’s scholarship has always been relevant. However, today it is even more essential as Armenia and Artsakh are facing monumental challenges due to the 2020 Artsakh War. One of these challenges deals with the intentional falsification of Artsakh’s history by Azeri scholars and their acolytes in the West. Bournoutian has been on the forefront of combatting this revisionist history, which has now infiltrated western academia through Azeri-funded centers and thanks to some Western scholars who seem infatuated by the Aliyev regime." -- Bedross Der Matossian, In Memoriam, Dr. George Bournoutian (1943–2021)

"Scholars should be on guard when using Soviet and post-Soviet Azeri editions of Azeri, Persian, and even Russian and Western European sources printed in Baku. These have been edited to remove references to Armenians and have been distributed in large numbers in recent years. When utilizing such sources, the researchers should seek out pre-Soviet editions wherever possible." -- Robert Hewsen. Armenia: A Historical Atlas. University of Chicago Press, 2001. p. 291

"It should be noted that such falsifications with regards to the regional history of Iranians and other groups, to the point of denial and falsification of their history (e.g. denial of Armenian, Greek and Assyrian genocides due to modern Turkic nationalism or claims that many Iranian figures and societies starting from the Medes, Scythians and Parthians were Turks), are still prevalent in countries that adhere to Pan-Turkist nationalism such as Turkey and the republic of Azerbaijan. These falsifications, which are backed by state and state backed non-governmental organizational bodies, range from elementary school all the way to the highest level of universities in these countries. Due to prevalent political situation in the world, where historical truths are sacrificed for political and financial reasons, falsification of history has even reached some authors who claim affiliation with Western academia as noted in the Part I of this book and exposed in other books such as Vyronis 1993. Another recent example was the desecration of Armenian monuments in Nakhjavan." -- Lornejad, Siavash; Doostzadeh, Ali (2012). Arakelova, Victoria; Asatrian, Garnik (eds.). On the modern politicization of the Persian poet Nezami Ganjavi (PDF). Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies. p. 85 (note 277).

"Azeri scholars, until some two decades ago, did not deny the historic Armenian presence in Mountainous Karabagh. In fact, the works of Mirza Jamal,'Mirza Adigozal Beg, Ahmad Beg, and Bakikhanov, mentioning an Armenian presence in the region, were printed in Baku. Everything tumed upside down in 1988, following the demands of the Armenians of Mountainous Karabagh to secede from Azerbaijan. Azeri politicians, journalists, and, as will be demonstrated below, even academics, in order to justify their government's anti-Armenian actions in Mountainous Karabagh, avowed that the region was never part of historic Armenia and that the Armenians of Mountainous Karabagh were newcomers who had gradually arrived there only after 1828." -- Bournoutian, George (2011). The 1823 Russian Survey of the Karabagh Province. A Primary Source on the Demography and Economy of Karabagh in the First Half of the 19th Century. Mazda Publishers. p. 427

"A more recent revisionist view claims that in the nineteenth century Russia and Iran conspired to divide Azerbaijan between themselves. Considering that Iran fought two devastating wars with Russia (1803–1813 and 1824–1828), the idea of a Russo-Iranian conspiracy against Azerbaijan is totally absurd. However, this is exactly what the Azerbaijani nationalist poet Bakhtiar Vahabzadeh claims in his poem titled “Gulistan.” The poem refers to the 1813 Treaty of Golistan, according to which Iran lost part of its Transcaucasian possessions to Russia. This view is now widely accepted by Azerbaijani nationalists. The result has been that Azerbaijan’s post-Soviet national identity is not only Turko-centric but also very much anti-Iran. In many ways, it has been developed in opposition to Iran as “the other,” not only as a state but also as a culture and historical entity. Being Azerbaijani has come to mean denying any Iran connection." Eldar Mamedov (2017). The New Geopolitics of the South Caucasus: Prospects for Regional Cooperation and Conflict Resolution: Azerbaijan Twenty-Five Years after Independence: Accomplishments and Shortcomings. Lexington Books. p. 31

"This certainly is the case with Zia Bunyatov, who has made an incomplete and defective Russian translation of Bakikhanov's text. Not only has he not translated any of the poems in the text, but he does not even mention that he has not done so, while he does not translate certain other prose parts of the text without indicating this and why. This is in particular disturbing because he suppresses, for example, the mention of territory inhabited by Armenians, thus not only falsifying history, but also not respecting Bakikhanov's dictum that a historian should write without prejudice, whether religious, ethnic, political or otherwise. [...] Guilistam-i Iram translated with commentary by Ziya M. Bunyatov (Baku. 1991), p.11, where the translator has deleted the words 'and Armenia' from the text, which shows, as indicated in the introduction, that his translation should be used with circumspection, because this is not the only example of omissions from Bakikhanov's text." -- pp. xvi and 5. The Heavenly Rose-Garden: A History of Shirvan & Daghestan. pp. xvi, 5. Willem M. Floor and Hasan Javadi

"The young Azeri's seemingly innocuous, abstract archaeological paper was a deliberate political provocation: all the crosses on today's territory of Azerbaijan, including significantly Nagorno-Karabagh and Nakhichevan, were defined as Albanian, a people who in turn were seen as the direct ancestors of today's Azeris. // The rest, as they say, is history. The Armenian archaeologists were upset and threatened to walk out en bloc. Protests were filed, and even Russian scholars from Leningrad objected to this blatantly political appropriation, posing as scholarship. [...] // Thus, minimally, two points must be made. Patently false cultural origin myths are not always harmless." -- p. 154, Philip L. Kohl (1996). Nationalism, politics, and the practice of archaeology. Cambridge University Press

"In the Republic of Azerbaijan, the long Soviet practice of historic falsification has left a legacy which has distorted both the views of many Azerbaijanis of Iran and the true nature of their cultural, ethnic and historic connections. The following are some examples of this process of falsification, which, incidentally, in the last few years, has been picked up and given new credence by a number of Western commentators. Several myths with significant policy implications shape the Azerbaijanis' views of their country, its origins, and its relations to Iran." -- p. 106, Shireen Hunter (1998). Shireen Hunter: Iran and Transcaucasia in the Post-Soviet Era. Routledge.

"As noted, in order to construct an Azerbaijani national history and identity based on the territorial definition of a nation, as well as to reduce the influence of Islam and Iran, the Azeri nationalists, prompted by Moscow devised an "Azeri" alphabet, which replaced the Arabo-Persian script. In the 1930s a number of Soviet historians, including the prominent Russian Orientalist, Ilya Petrushevskii, were instructed by the Kremlin to accept the totally unsubstantiated notion that the territory of the former Iranian khanates (except Yerevan, which had become Soviet Armenia) was part of an Azerbaijani nation. Petrushevskii's two important studies dealing with the South Caucasus, therefore, use the term Azerbaijan and Azerbaijani in his works on the history of the region from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Other Russian academics went even further and claimed that an Azeri nation had existed from ancient times and had continued to the present. Since all the Russian surveys and almost all nineteenth-century Russian primary sources referred to the Muslims who resided in the South Caucasus as "Tatars" and not "Azerbaijanis", Soviet historians simply substituted Azerbaijani for Tatars. Azeri historians and writers, starting in 1937, followed suit and began to view the three-thousand-year history of the region as that of Azerbaijan. The pre-Iranian, Iranian, and Arab eras were expunged. Anyone who lived in the territory of Soviet Azerbaijan was classified as Azeri; hence the great Iranian poet Nezami, who had written only in Persian, became the national poet of Azerbaijan." -- p. xvi. Bournoutian, George (2016). The 1820 Russian Survey of the Khanate of Shirvan: A Primary Source on the Demography and Economy of an Iranian Province prior to its Annexation by Russia. Gibb Memorial Trust.

"In fact, after Stalin’s failure to annex Iranian Azarbayjan in 1946, Soviet historians not only proclaimed that the khanates were never part of Iran and were independent entities, but began (and have continued to do so after 1991) to refer to Iranian Azarbayjan as south Azerbaijan, which had been separated from north Azerbaijan, see V. Leviatov, Ocherki iz istorii Azerbaidzhana v XVIII veke (Baku, 1948). Such absurd notions are completely negated by Article III of the Golestan Treaty and Article I of the treaties between Russia and the khans of Qarabagh, Shakki and Shirvan; see Appendix 4." -- Bournoutian, George (2021). "Georgia and the Khanates of South Caucasus in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century" in From the Kur to the Aras: A Military History of Russia’s Move into the South Caucasus and the First Russo-Iranian War, 1801-1813. Brill. p. 249 (note 4)"

"In a book by Aziz Alakbarli, published by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Azerbaijan in 2007 – and no less edited by Academician Budag Badagov, Prof. Vali Aliyev and Dr. Jafar Giyassi of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences – the entire territory of the current Republic of Armenia is presented as Western Azerbaijan. The Monuments of Western Azerbaijan, reprinted several times in recent years and in different languages, opens with “The map [of ] the Ancient Turkish-Oghuz land – Western Azerbaijan (present day the Republic of Armenia)” [sic!]. According to this “study”, endorsed by the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences, all monuments in Armenia are of “Turkic”, “Turkish” or “Arman-Turkish” origin, including the first-century Roman Temple of Garni, “referring to ancient Gargar Turks” [sic!], and the Cathedral of the Holy See of the Armenian Apostolic Church as a 7th-century “Arman-Turkish Christian temple Uchkilsa/Echmiadzin”.19 This kind of re-writing of “history” is based solely on sources produced by Azerbaijani authors, notably prominent academician and national figure Ziya Buniyatov, whom President Heydar Aliyev described as “the constructor of our identity and self-consciousness”.20 This constructed narrative is echoed in the political discourse of President Aliyev and is woven into state policies, diplomacy, public relations, identity construction and, critically, in the construction of extreme anti-Armenianism in Azerbaijan. -- pp. 586–587, Gippert, Jost and Dum-Tragut, Jasmine. Caucasian Albania: An International Handbook, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2023.

"From the mid-2000s the notion of western Azerbaijan converged with revived interest in the khanates in a wide-ranging fetishisation of the Erivan (Irevan) khanate as a historically Azerbaijani entity. Covering some 7,500 square kilometres and most of present-day Armenia (if not exactly coextensive with it), the Erivan khanate has undergone the same kind of transformations as Caucasian Albania before it. Contemporary Azerbaijani historiography depicts the Erivan khanate as an ‘Azerbaijani state’, populated by autochthonous Azerbaijani Turks and sacralised as the burial ground of semi-mythological figures from the Turkic pantheon.73 ‘Azerbaijani Turk’ and ‘Muslim’ are used interchangeably in this literature, although contemporary demographic surveys differentiate the latter into Persians, Shia and Sunni Kurds and Turkic tribes.74 Emulating the nationalist scientism of Samvel Karapetyan, catalogues of lost Azerbaijani heritage depict a Turkic palimpsest beneath almost every monument and religious site in Armenia – whether Christian or Muslim." p. 117, Broers, Laurence (2019). Armenia and Azerbaijan: Anatomy of a Rivalry. Edinburgh University Press.

The toponym Azerbaijan

"Let us conclude with an important point. The pre-1918 maps indicate various names of regions or states north of the river Araxes, such as “Albania” or “Arran”. No map knows of “Azerbaijan” north of the Araxes. This name was applied for centuries to the northern province of Iran, originally called Atropatene, around Tabriz, i.e. south of the Araxes. The Encyclopaedia of Islam published in 1913 leaves no room for doubt: “Nowadays, under ‘Adharbaydjan’ is understood the north-western province of Persia”. The name “Azerbaijan”, which the present-day republic adopted in 1918, is, therefore, a result of later socio-political developments.In the 1930s, this name was adopted by the Soviet authorities: it suited Stalin who considered expansion to Iran" - p. 42, Monuments and Identities in the Caucasus Karabagh, Nakhichevan and Azerbaijan in Contemporary Geopolitical Conflict, Brill

"The name Azarbaijan is a pre-Islamic Persian name for a pre-Islamic province south of the River Aras. “Azarbaijan” was not used in any definite or clear manner for the area north of the River Aras in the pre- modern period. In some instances, the name Azarbaijan was used in a manner that included the Aran region immediately to the north of the River Aras, but this was rather an exception. The adoption of this name for the area north of the River Aras was by the nationalist, Baku-based Mosavat government (1918–20) and was later retained by the Soviet Union." p. 16 - Behrooz, Maziar (2023). Iran at War: Interactions with the Modern World and the Struggle with Imperial Russia. I.B. Tauris

"In fact, in medieval times the name ‘Azerbaijan’ was applied not to the area of present independent Azerbaijan but to the lands to the south of the Araxes river, now part of Iran. The lands to the north west of the Araxes were known as Albania; the lands to the north east, the heart of present-day post-Soviet Azerbaijan, were known as Sharvan (or Shirwan) and Derbend." p. 30, Fowkes, B. (2002). Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflict in the Post-Communist World. Springer.

"The adoption of the name “Azerbaijan” in 1918 by the Mussavatist government for classical Caucasian Albania (Arrān and Sharvān) was due to political reasons28. For example, the giant orientalist of the early 20th century, Vasily Barthold has stated: “… whenever it is necessary to choose a name that will encompass all regions of the republic of Azerbaijan, the name Arrān can be chosen. But the term Azerbaijan was chosen because when the Azerbaijan republic was created, it was assumed that this and the Persian Azerbaijan will be one entity, because the population of both has a big similarity. On this basis, the word Azerbaijan was chosen. Of course right now when the word Azerbaijan is used, it has two meanings as Persian Azerbaijan and as a republic, it’s confusing and a question rises as to which Azerbaijan is being talked about”. In the post-Islamic sense, Arrān and Sharvān are often distinguished while in the pre-Islamic era, Arrān or the Western Caucasian Albania roughly corresponds to the modern territory of republic of Azerbaijan. In the Soviet era, in a breathtaking manipulation, historical Azerbaijan (NW Iran) was reinterpreted as “South Azerbaijan” in order for the Soviets to lay territorial claim on historical Azerbaijan proper which is located in modern Northwestern Iran". p. 10, Lornejad, Siavash; Doostzadeh, Ali (2012). Arakelova, Victoria; Asatrian, Garnik (eds.). On the modern politicization of the Persian poet Nezami Ganjavi (PDF). Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies.

"The case of Azerbaijan is interesting in several aspects. The geographical name “Azerbaijan” for the territory where the Republic of Azerbaijan is now situated, as well as the ethnic name for the Caucasian Turks, “Azerbaijani,” were coined in the beginning of the 10th century. The name Azerbaijan, which implies the lands located north of the Aras River, is a duplicate of the historical region of Azerbaijan (it is the arabized version of the name of a historical region of Atropatena) which is the north-western region of Iran. After the proclamation of the first Republic of Azerbaijan in 1918, the Turkish army invaded the Caucasus, and the name “Azerbaijan” was offered by a young Turkish regime to the Turkish-speaking territory" p. 253, After the Soviet Empire. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 05 Oct. 2015.

"The Ottoman Turks coveted Iran’s province of Azerbaijan. Therefore following the Bolshevik revolution, in 1918 installed a pro-Turkish government in Baku and named it after the Iranian province of Azerbaijan" - p. xvii, The New Geopolitics of the South Caucasus: Prospects for Regional Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (Contemporary Central Asia: Societies, Politics, and Cultures), Lexington Books, Shireen Hunter

"Until 1918, when the Musavat regime decided to name the newly independent state Azerbaijan, this designation had been used exclusively to identify the Iranian province of Azerbaijan." - p. 60, Dekmejian, R. Hrair; Simonian, Hovann H. (2003). Troubled Waters: The Geopolitics of the Caspian Region. I.B. Tauris.

"The region to the north of the river Araxes was not called Azerbaijan prior to 1918, unlike the region in northwestern Iran that has been called since so long ago." p. 356, Rezvani, Babak (2014). Ethno-territorial conflict and coexistence in the caucasus, Central Asia and Fereydan: academisch proefschrift. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press

"The name Azerbaijan was also adopted for Arrān, historically an Iranian region, by anti-Russian separatist forces of the area when, on 26 May 1918, they declared its independence and called it the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan. To allay Iranian concerns, the Azerbaijan government used the term “Caucasian Azerbaijan” in the documents for circulation abroad." - Multiple Authors, Encyclopaedia Iranica

"Originally the term Azerbaijan was the name of the Iranian historical province Adarbaigan, or Azarbaijan (from older Aturpatakan) in the north-west of the country. This term, as well as its respective derivative, Azari (or, in Turkish manner, Azeri), as “ethnonym”, was not applied to the territory north of Arax (i.e. the area of the present-day Azerbaijan Republic, former Arran and Shirvan) and its inhabitants up until the establishment of the Musavat regime in that territory (1918-1920)." - p. 85, note 1, Morozova, I. (2005). Contemporary Azerbaijani Historiography on the Problem of "Southern Azerbaijan" after World War II, Iran and the Caucasus, 9(1)

"Until the late 19th and early 20th century it would be unthinkable to refer to the Muslim inhabitants of the Caucasus as Azaris (Azeris) or Azerbaijanis, since the people and the geographical region that bore these names were located to the south of the Araxes River. Therefore, the Iranian intelligentsia raised eyebrows once the independent Republic of Azerbaijan was declared in 1918 just across the Iranian border. - pp. 176-177, Avetikian, Gevorg. "Pān-torkism va Irān [Pan-Turkism and Iran]", Iran and the Caucasus 14, 1 (2010), Brill

Khanates

"After the Russian takeover of Georgia, Russia became even more keen on conquering the rest of Iran's possessions in the Caucasus. General Pavel Dimitriovich Tsitsianov (1754-1806), the new commander of the Russian in the Caucasus, headed for Ganjeh. Contrary to Christian Georgia and Sunni Daghestan, Ganjeh was predominantly Shi'i. Tsitsianov first demanded from Javad Khan Ziyadlu, the governor of Ganjeh, payment to Russia of taxes collected, but the governor and the people opposed this. Next, in December 1803, Tsitsianov ordered an attack on Ganjeh. -- Shahvar, Soli.; Abramoff, Emil. (2018). "The Khan, the Shah and the Tsar: The Khanate of Talesh between Iran and Russia." In Matthee, Rudi.; Andreeva, Elena. Russians in Iran: Diplomacy and Power in the Qajar Era and Beyond. I.B.Tauris. p. 34

"The Treaty of Golestan, concluded with British mediation in October 1813, granted Russia nearly all of the eastern Caucasus north of the river Aras, and Russia annexed the whole of Georgia and southern Caucasian provinces of Baku, Shirvan, Qarabagh, Darband (Derbent), and Ganja. Only Iravan and Nakhijevan remained in Iranian hands." -- Abbas Amanat (2017), Iran: A Modern History, Yale University Press, p. 195.

"Realizing the strategic value of the region after the loss of Karabagh, Ganjeh, and Georgia, Fath-'Ali Shah, 'Abbas Mirza (the commander of the Iranian forces), and Hosein Qoli Khan Qajar (the new governor of Yerevan) decided to work (...)" -- The Armenians of Iran: The Paradoxical Role of a Minority in a Dominant Culture ; Articles and Documents, Cosroe Chaquèri, Center for Middle Eastern Studies of Harvard University (1998), page 68.

"Even when rulers on the plateau lacked the means to effect suzerainty beyond the Aras, the neighboring Khanates were still regarded as Iranian dependencies. (...) Agha Muhammad Khan, as proof of his suzerainty over them, had minted gold and silver coins in Erivan, and silver ones in Ganja, Nukha (the capital of Shakki), and Shamikha (the capital of Shirvan), just as he had done in Yazd, Isfahan or Tabriz. There was nothing peculiar in this: he regarded them all, as the Safavids and Nadir Shah had done, as Iranian cities. Fath Ali Shah did the same. Before the outbreak of war with Russia in 1804, he struck gold and silver coins at the Erivan and Ganja mints, and silver ones at Nukha." -- p. 146, Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 7

"Serious historians and geographers agree that after the fall of the Safavids, and especially from the mid-eighteenth century, the territory of the South Caucasus was composed of the khanates of Ganja, Kuba, Shirvan, Baku, Talesh, Sheki, Karabagh, Nakhichivan and Yerevan, all of which were under Iranian suzerainty." -- Bournoutian, George A. (2016). The 1820 Russian Survey of the Khanate of Shirvan: A Primary Source on the Demography and Economy of an Iranian Province prior to its Annexation by Russia. Gibb Memorial Trust. p. xvii.

"The Persian shah was obliged to recognize the sovereignty of the tsar over Georgia, Mingrelia, Abkhazia, Ganja, Qarābāḡ, Qobba, Darband, Baku, Dāḡestān, Šakki, and other territories (Article 3). This not only reflected the Persian loss of sovereignty in the Caucasus, but also undercut Ottoman claims to some of these territories" -- Elton L. Daniel (2001), Iranica

"In January 1804 Russian forces under General Paul Tsitsianov (Sisianoff) invade Persia and storm the citadel of Ganjeh, beginning the Russo-Persian War (1804–1813)." -- Tucker, Spencer C., ed. (2010). A Global Chronology of Conflict: From the Ancient World to the Modern Middle East

"It is important to note, however, that despite the unfounded claims of some Azeri historians, there was no united anti-Iranian movement, nor any regional, ethnic, or national identity, or plans for an independent state. The short-lived efforts of King Erekle II, Ebrahim Khan of Qarabagh, and Fath ʿAli Khan of Qobbeh to establish total hegemony over the South Caucasus all ended in failure. Such assertions have become more common among Azeri historians after 1989; for example, see, Dzh. M. Mustafaev, Severnye khanstva Azerbaidzhana i Rossiia (Baku, 1989) and E. Babaev, Iz istorii giandzhinskogo khanstva (Baku, 2003). In fact, after Stalin’s failure to annex Iranian Azarbayjan in 1946, Soviet historians not only proclaimed that the khanates were never part of Iran and were independent entities, but began (and have continued to do so after 1991) to refer to Iranian Azarbayjan as south Azerbaijan, which had been separated from north Azerbaijan, see V. Leviatov, Ocherki iz istorii Azerbaidzhana v XVIII veke (Baku, 1948). Such absurd notions are completely negated by Article III of the Golestan Treaty and Article I of the treaties between Russia and the khans of Qarabagh, Shakki and Shirvan; see Appendix 4." -- Bournoutian, George (2021). "Georgia and the Khanates of South Caucasus in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century" in From the Kur to the Aras: A Military History of Russia’s Move into the South Caucasus and the First Russo-Iranian War, 1801-1813. Brill. p. 249 (note 4)

Shush

"Forced by this coalition to join forces with Panah, Shahnazar and his Turkoman ally built the fortress of Shushi (Sus) in Varanda and, from there, first defied the other meliks and, then, through various modes of treachery, began to oust them from their lands." -- Hewsen, Robert (1972). The Meliks Of Eastern Armenia I. Revue des Études Arménie. p. 325

"His son and successor, Ebrahim Khalil Khan (d. 1806), was besieged in his fortress at Shusha (Shushi) by Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar (1742–97)–a siege often remembered for the poetic exchange incorporating a pun on the words shisha and panah. Shushi is the older Armenian pronunciation, hence the play on words with shisha, meaning glass. Relations with the Armenian meliks varied from outright alliance and intermarriage to clannish hostility." -- Melville, Charles Melville (ed.). The Contest for Rule in Eighteenth-Century Iran: Idea of Iran Vol. 11. I.B.Tauris. p. 191 and 205

"He tried to consolidate in the territory of the Qarabāḡ lowland for several times, but only in 1751, when Armenian melik Shahnazar of Varanda entered into an alliance with him, Panāh managed to get and renovate the castle in the village of Shushi, in the mountainous territories belonging to Shahnazar. Due to the key location of Shushi and its inaccessibility," -- Akopyan, Alexander; Petrov, Pavel (2016). "The Coinage of Īrawān, Nakhjawān, Ganja and Qarabāḡ Khānates in 1747–1827". State Hermitage. p. 6

"That was the first installation of Turkish rule in Artsʿakh/Karabakh, widely used by Azeri propaganda as a supposed proof of the essentially Turkic character of the region, erasing the centuries-old Armenian past, even going so far as to attribute to this khanate the construction of the Shushi fortress, which was in fact built by Armenians as early as the beginning of the 18th century—according to details found, in particular, in the middle of the century, in an Armenian manuscript entitled “History of the Artsʿakh Province”." - p. 22, Monuments and Identities in the Caucasus Karabagh, Nakhichevan and Azerbaijan in Contemporary Geopolitical Conflict, Brill

The ethnonym Kurd

"Minorsky noted that the ethnonym "kurd" did not have a generally accepted etymology and suggested it was a generic term for "nomad", pointing to Strabo's inclusion of the Cyrtians alongside other "migrant" and "predatory" tribes, all of "the same character", which Minorsky took to mean that they all had a nomadic life style." " - p. 112, Potts, Daniel T. (2014). Nomadism in Iran: From Antiquity to the Modern Era. London and New York: Oxford University Press.

"It should be remembered that “Kurd” in the sources of the 4th-5th/10th-11th centuries refers to all the transhumants of the Zagros region including the Lors." - Ch. Bürgel and R. Mottahedeh, ʿAŻOD-AL-DAWLA, ABŪ ŠOJĀʾ FANNĀ ḴOSROW, Iranica

"As is well-known, the term Kurd had a rather indiscriminate use in the early mediaeval Arabo-Persian historiography and literature, with an explicit social connotation, meaning “nomad, tent-dweller, shepherd” (Minorsky 1931: 294; idem 1940: 144-145; idem 1943: 75; Izady 1986: 16; Asatrian 2001: 47ff.), as well as “robber, highwayman, oppressor of the weak and treacherer” (Driver 1922b: 498ff)." - p. 79, Asatrian, Garnik (2009). "Prolegomena to the Study of the Kurds". Iran and the Caucasus. 13

"Most conclusive of all is the fact that Kurd in the older Persian or Arab sense meant simply nomad with no particular ethnic connotations. In this case, Ardavan V's letter becomes more insulting, since in effect he is calling Ardashir an ignorant nomad" - p. 48, J. Limbert. (1968). The Origins and Appearance of the Kurds in Pre-Islamic Iran. Iranian Studies

"In medieval Arabic sources, the term kurd (plural akrād) denotes Iranian nomads, or nomads who were neither Arab nor Turkic, and is applied to people well outside the current region of Kurdistan. The Kurds as we now know them are made up almost certainly of a variety of different peoples, among whom Iranian tribesmen have been predominant." - p. 66, Manz, B. (2021). The Rise of New Peoples and Dynasties. In Nomads in the Middle East (Themes in Islamic History, pp. 55-80). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Then follows the description of Ardašīr’s triumph over Ardawān in the battle of Hormuzagān (see HORMOZDGĀN) and his victorious campaign against the Kurds (a term that in pre-Islamic times designated the various nomadic lineages, rather than a specific ethnicity)." - C. G. CERETI, Iranica

"Tribes always have been a feature of Persian history, but the sources are extremely scant in reference to them since they did not 'make' history. The general designation 'Kurd' is found in many Arabic sources, as well as in Pahlavi book on the deeds of Ardashir the first Sassanian ruler, for all nomads no matter whether they were linguistically connected to the Kurds of today or not. The population of Luristan, for example, was considered to be Kurdish, as were tribes in Kuhistan and Baluchis in Kirman" - p. 111, Richard Frye, The Golden age of Persia, Phoneix Press, 1975. Second Impression December 2003.

"We thus find that about the period of the Arab conquest a single ethnic term Kurd (plur. Akrād ) was beginning to be applied to an amalgamation of Iranian or iranicised tribes. Among the latter, some were autochthonous (the Ḳardū; the Tmorik̲h̲/Ṭamurāyē in the district of which Alḳī = Elk was the capital; the Χοθᾱίται [= al-K̲h̲uwayt̲h̲iyya] in the canton of K̲h̲oyt of Sāsūn, the Orṭāyē [= al-Arṭān] in the bend of the Euphrates); some were Semites (cf. the popular genealogies of the Kurd tribes) and some probably Armenian (it is said that the Mamakān tribe is of Mamikonian origin)." - Kurds, Kurdistān, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, Bois, Th., Minorsky, V. and MacKenzie, D.N.

Tajik

"The victors in the civil war played on fears of Tajik nationalism among the large Uzbek minority and other non-Tajiks. The main political rivalries during the civil war and since pitted different factions of Tajiks (and others the Soviet system classified as Tajiks) against each other. The victors do on occasion invoke symbols of nationalism that the intelligentsia has also favoured. This can be seen as continuing to work with forms bequeathed by Soviet nationality politics and employing some of the same arguments. For example, the Samanid dynasty, which ruled much of the eastern Iranian world in the ninth and tenth centuries from its capital in Bukhara, is extolled as a Tajik state. Yet the Samanids would not have agreed with their Soviet characterization as Tajiks distinct from the broader population of Persian-speakers." page xxi, The Transformation of Tajikistan: The Sources of Statehood

"Though nowadays accepted proudly as an autonym (self-designation), the name Tājik was in origin a heteronym, conferred on the Tajiks by others. It did not always have its current connotations, and the Tajiks of today were not always so called. There is some scholarly controversy, and even more popular misunderstanding, surrounding the name." - TAJIK i. THE ETHNONYM: ORIGINS AND APPLICATION, Iranica

"The modern meaning of “Tajik” has been distorted in Tajik-language and Russian academic usage (both Soviet and post-Soviet) by the propaganda of the complementary agendas of Soviet nationalities policy and Tajik nationalism, so that the tail often wags the dog. In most scholarly writing on Persian literature and cultural history (of Iran and India as well as Central Asia) the adjective is usually construed as “Perso-Tajik” or “Tajik-Persian” poetry, historiography, etc., in an atopical and anachronistic application of the national ethnonym to the entire Persianate world: e.g., persidsko-tadžikskaia leksikografiia v Indii ‘Perso-Tajik lexicography in India’. This development was due largely to an understandable attempt by influential Tajik writers such as Ṣadr-al-Din ʿAyni and Bobojon Ghafurov, co-opted into the Soviet enterprise, to use Moscow’s own divide-and-rule nationalities policy against Moscow and Tashkent, in order to forestall assimilation of the Tajiks into Stalin’s Greater Russia or (a more immediate threat) Turkic Uzbekistan." - TAJIK i. THE ETHNONYM: ORIGINS AND APPLICATION, Iranica

"In Central Asia, the meaning of previously-existing group names was changed and given an ethnic content. Some groups were declared part of the Uzbek nation, and the boundaries of an entity called “Uzbekistan” (which had never existed before) were delimited (Carlisle 1991b, p.24). The implementation of the nationalities policy was similar in Tajikistan. Tajik national identity was recognized in the national delimitation of 1924. Before the Soviet Union there was no idea of national identity among the population of Tajikistan. During the time of national delimitation there was great confusion among the population of Tajikistan when people were asked to declare their nationality. In Khujand, for example, many could not say whether they were Uzbeks or Tajiks. Some Iranian speakers called themselves Uzbeks. Subsequently Soviet policies began to create a Tajik national consciousness (Harmstone 1970, pp.78–79)." After the creation of Tajikistan, especially after 1929, the Soviet regime implemented policies which aimed at creating a sense of national identity. The Soviet Union promoted a national differentiation policy. Tajik culture was defined by Persian heritage, separate and distinct from the Turkic heritage of the Uzbeks and the nomads of the steppes, yet also distinct from Persia (Harmstone 1970, p.232). These policies were critical to the development of Tajik national consciousness. The same was true for the development of the Uzbek nation as well. Nation was developed with the Soviet policies as a part of the greater Soviet identity and counter to panTurkic, pan-Islamic, and pan-Turkestan ideas." - page 1991, Power, Networks and Violent Conflict in Central Asia: A Comparison of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan

"The national identities of both Uzbekistan and Tajikistan were products of Soviet-era policies in both republics." - idem, page 20

"This essay looks at the national history of the Tajiks of Central Asia that was created in the twentieth century and has continued to develop into the twenty-first century. It traces the notion of Tajik nationalism, which arose in the 1920s under the Soviet Union, largely in response to Uzbek nationalism. Soviet intellectuals and scholars thereafter attempted to construct a new history for the Tajiks. The most important effort in that area was Bobojon Ghafurov’s study Tadzhiki (Tajiks, 1972), which gave them primacy among the Central Asian peoples" - p. 224, New Nation, New History: Promoting National History in Tajikistan, Brill

Movses Khorenatsi

Seljuk Empire