Azerbaijanis (; , ), Azeris, or Azerbaijani Turks (, ) are a Turkic ethnic group living mainly in the Azerbaijan region of northwestern Iran and the Republic of Azerbaijan. They are the largest ethnic group in the Republic of Azerbaijan and the second-largest ethnic group in neighboring Iran and Georgia. They speak the Azerbaijani language, belonging to the Oghuz branch of the Turkic languages, and predominantly practice Shia Islam.
Following the Russo-Persian Wars of 1813 and 1828, the territories of Qajar Iran in the Caucasus were ceded to the Russian Empire and the treaties of Gulistan in 1813 and Turkmenchay in 1828 finalized the borders between Russia and Iran. After more than 80 years of being under the Russian Empire in the Caucasus, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was established in 1918 which defined the territory of the Republic of Azerbaijan.
Etymology Azerbaijan is believed to be named after Atropates, a Persian satrap (governor) who ruled in Atropatene (modern Iranian Azerbaijan) circa 321 BC. The name Atropates is the Hellenistic form of Old Persian Aturpat which means 'guardian of fire' itself a compound of ātūr () 'fire' (later āður (آذر) in (early) New Persian, and is pronounced āzar today)MacKenzie, D. (1971). A concise Pahlavi dictionary (p. 5, 8, 18). London: Oxford university press. + -pat () suffix for -guardian, -lord, -master (-pat in early Middle Persian, -bod (بُد) in New Persian).
Present-day name Azerbaijan is the Arabicized form of Āzarpāyegān (Persian: آذرپایگان) meaning 'the guardians of fire' later becoming Azerbaijan (Persian: آذربایجان) due to the phonemic shift from /p/ to /b/ and /g/ to /dʒ/ which is a result of the medieval Arabic influences that followed the Arab invasion of Iran, and is due to the lack of the phoneme /p/ and /g/ in the Arabic language. The word Azarpāyegān itself is ultimately from Old Persian Āturpātakān (Persian: آتورپاتکان) meaning 'the land associated with (satrap) Aturpat' or 'the land of fire guardians' (-an, in its postvocalic form -kān, is a suffix for association or forming adverbs and plurals; e.g.: Gilan 'land associated with Gil people').Aliyev, Igrar. (1958). History of Atropatene (تاريخ آتورپاتكان) (p. 93).
Ethnonym
The modern ethnonym "Azerbaijani" or "Azeri" refers to the Turkic peoples of Iran's northwestern historic region of Azerbaijan (also known as Iranian Azerbaijan) and the Republic of Azerbaijan. They historically called themselves or were referred to by others as Muslims and/or Turks. They were also referred to as Ajam (meaning from Iran), using the term incorrectly to denote their Shia belief rather than ethnic identity. When the Southern Caucasus became part of the Russian Empire in the nineteenth century, the Russian authorities, who traditionally referred to all Turkic people as Tatars, defined Tatars living in the Transcaucasus region as Caucasian Tatars or more rarelyTsutsiev, Arthur. "18. 1886–1890: An Ethnolinguistic Map of the Caucasus". Atlas of the Ethno-Political History of the Caucasus, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014, pp. 48–50. ""Tatars" (or in rarer cases, "Azerbaijani Tatars") to denote Turkic-speaking Transcaucasian populations that would later be called "Azerbaijanis"" Aderbeijanskie (Адербейджанские) Tatars or even Persian Tatars in order to distinguish them from other Turkic groups and the Persian speakers of Iran. The Russian Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, written in the 1890s, also referred to Tatars in Azerbaijan as Aderbeijans (адербейджаны), but noted that the term had not been widely adopted. This ethnonym was also used by Joseph Deniker in 1900. In Azerbaijani language publications, the expression "Azerbaijani nation" referring to those who were known as Tatars of the Caucasus first appeared in the newspaper Kashkul in 1880.
During the early Soviet period, the term "Transcaucasian Tatars" was supplanted by "Azerbaijani Turks" and ultimately "Azerbaijanis."Tsutsiev, Arthur. "Appendix 3: Ethnic Composition of the Caucasus: Historical Population Statistics". Atlas of the Ethno-Political History of the Caucasus, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014, p. 192 (note 150).Tsutsiev, Arthur. "31. 1926: An Ethnic Map Reflecting the First Soviet Census". Atlas of the Ethno-Political History of the Caucasus, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014, p. 87.Tsutsiev, Arthur. "26. 1920: The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic and Soviet Russia". Atlas of the Ethno-Political History of the Caucasus, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014, pp. 71–73. For some time afterwards, the term "Azerbaijanis" was then applied to all Turkic-speaking Muslims in Transcaucasia, from the Meskhetian Turks in southwestern Georgia, to the Terekemes of southern Dagestan, as well as assimilated Tats and Talysh. The temporary designation of Meskhetian Turks as "Azerbaijanis" was most likely related to the existing administrative framework of the Transcaucasian SFSR, as the Azerbaijan SSR was one of its founding members.Tsutsiev, Arthur. "32. 1926: Using the Census to Identify Russians and Ukrainians". Atlas of the Ethno-Political History of the Caucasus, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014, pp. 87–90 After the establishment of the Azerbaijan SSR, on the order of Soviet leader Stalin, the "name of the formal language" of the Azerbaijan SSR was also "changed from Turkic to Azerbaijani".
Among post-Soviet Azerbaijanis, the term "Azeri" usually provokes a negative reaction.
Exonym The Chechen and Ingush names for Azerbaijanis are Ghezloy/Ghoazloy (/) and Ghazaroy/Ghazharey (/). The former goes back to the name of Qizilbash while the latter goes back to the name of Qajars, having presumably emerged in Chechen and Ingush languages during the reign of Qajars in Iran in the 18th–19th centuries.
History
Ancient residents of the area, known as Azaris, spoke Old Azeri from the Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. In the 11th century AD with Seljuq conquests, Oghuz Turkic tribes started moving across the Iranian Plateau into the Caucasus and Anatolia. The influx of the Oghuz and other Turkmen tribes was further accentuated by the Mongol invasion. These Turkmen tribes spread as smaller groups, a number of which settled down in the Caucasus and Iran, resulting in the Turkification of the local population. Over time they converted to Shia Islam and gradually absorbed Azerbaijan and Shirvan.
Ancient period Caucasian-speaking Albanian tribes are believed to be the earliest inhabitants of the region in the north of Aras river, where the Republic of Azerbaijan is located. The region also saw Scythian settlement in the ninth century BC, following which the Medes came to dominate the area to the south of the Aras River.
Alexander the Great defeated the Achaemenids in 330 BC, but allowed the Median satrap Atropates to remain in power. Following the decline of the Seleucids in Persia in 247 BC, an Armenian Kingdom exercised control over parts of Caucasian Albania. Caucasian Albanians established a kingdom in the first century BC and largely remained independent until the Persian Sassanids made their kingdom a vassal state in 252 AD.: Today, Iranian Azerbaijan has a solid majority of Azeris with an estimated population of at least 15 million (over twice the population of the Azerbaijani Republic). (1999) Caucasian Albania's ruler, King Urnayr, went to Armenia and then officially adopted Christianity as the state religion in the fourth century AD, and Albania remained a Christian state until the 8th century.
Medieval period Sassanid control ended with their defeat by the Rashidun Caliphate in 642 AD through the Muslim conquest of Persia. The Arabs made Caucasian Albania a vassal state after the Christian resistance, led by Prince Javanshir, surrendered in 667. Between the ninth and tenth centuries, Arab authors began to refer to the region between the Kura and Aras rivers as Arran. During this time, Arabs from Basra and Kufa came to Azerbaijan and seized lands that indigenous peoples had abandoned; the Arabs became a land-owning elite. Conversion to Islam was slow as local resistance persisted for centuries and resentment grew as small groups of Arabs began migrating to cities such as Tabriz and Maraghah. This influx sparked a major rebellion in Iranian Azerbaijan from 816 to 837, led by an Iranian Zoroastrian commoner named Babak Khorramdin. However, despite pockets of continued resistance, the majority of the inhabitants of Azerbaijan converted to Islam. Later, in the 10th and 11th centuries, parts of Azerbaijan were ruled by the Kurdish dynasty of Shaddadid and Arab Radawids.
In the middle of the eleventh century, the Seljuq dynasty overthrew Arab rule and established an empire that encompassed most of Southwest Asia. The Seljuk period marked the influx of Oghuz nomads into the region. The emerging dominance of the Turkic language was chronicled in epic poems or dastans, the oldest being the Book of Dede Korkut, which relate allegorical tales about the early Turks in the Caucasus and Asia Minor. Turkic dominion was interrupted by the Mongols in 1227, but it returned with the Timurids and then Sunni Qara Qoyunlū (Black Sheep Turkmen) and Aq Qoyunlū (White Sheep Turkmen), who dominated Azerbaijan, large parts of Iran, eastern Anatolia, and other minor parts of West Asia, until the Shi'a Safavids took power in 1501.
Early modern period
The Safavids, who rose from around Ardabil in Iranian Azerbaijan and lasted until 1722, established the foundations of the modern Iranian state. The Safavids, alongside their Ottoman archrivals, dominated the entire West Asian region and beyond for centuries. At its peak under Shah Abbas the Great, it rivaled its political and ideological archrival the Ottoman Empire in military strength. Noted for achievements in state-building, architecture, and the sciences, the Safavid state crumbled due to internal decay (mostly royal intrigues), ethnic minority uprisings and external pressures from the Russians, and the eventually opportunistic Afghans, who would mark the end of the dynasty. The Safavids encouraged and spread Shi'a Islam, as well as the arts and culture, and Shah Abbas the Great created an intellectual atmosphere that according to some scholars was a new "golden age". He reformed the government and the military and responded to the needs of the common people.
After the Safavid state disintegrated, it was followed by the conquest by Nader Shah Afshar, a Shia chieftain from Khorasan who reduced the power of the ghulat Shi'a and empowered a moderate form of Shi'ism, and, exceptionally noted for his military genius, making Iran reach its greatest extent since the Sassanid Empire. The brief reign of Karim Khan came next, followed by the Qajars, who ruled what is the present-day Azerbaijan Republic and Iran from 1779. Russia loomed as a threat to Persian and Turkish holdings in the Caucasus in this period. The Russo-Persian Wars, despite already having had minor military conflicts in the 17th century, officially began in the eighteenth century and ended in the early nineteenth century with the Treaty of Gulistan of 1813 and the Treaty of Turkmenchay in 1828, which ceded the Caucasian portion of Qajar Iran to the Russian Empire. While Azerbaijanis in Iran integrated into Iranian society, Azerbaijanis who used to live in Aran, were incorporated into the Russian Empire.