History of Azerbaijan

Antiquity

Several ancient tribes inhabited the land of Azerbaijan. Some of the states that emerged in the area from the 3rd millennium BC were powerful and quite advanced, specially the Mannai and the Medes. By the 4th century BC the Greeks under Alexander the Great partly reached the territory of modern Azerbaijan. The king of Minor Media, Atropat, seized this moment to proclaim his country's independence. The lands north of the Araz River were called Atropatene, after him. After Alexander's death a part of the area of modern Azerbaijan was integrated in the area controlled by one of his generals, Seleucus.

Christianity also arrived early, with the mission of St. Eliseus, reaching Caucasian Albania in the 1st century AD. Romans however by 115 withdrew after Trajan's armies were affected by the plague. A revolt against the Parthians succeeded in 226 taking to power a new dynasty, the Sassanids, who occupied a large territory of modern Azerbaijan. The first Sassanid king, Ardashir I, had to face a new war with Rome from 229 to 232. He revived Zoroastrianism as the official religion, however by the 3rd century the Apostolic Autocephalous Church was fully established and religious and cultural live was thriving. North of Araz River (Caucasian Albania), Christianity was widely accepted in the 5th century after St. Gregory the Illuminator converted and baptized its king, Urnayr. By 409, during the reign of Yezdigird the Wicked, Christians were permitted to publicly worship and to build churches. Yezdigird III, the last Sassanid king, saw the Arab Muslims invade Iraq. During the first four decades of the 7th century a Christian Azerbaijan under the last Albanian king Javanshir resisted fiercely to the Arab invaders. However by 642 the invaders finally completed their conquest of the Sassanid Azerbaijan. The Arabs never exerted direct rule, but used local chieftains instead, but managed to islamize the area.

Middle Ages

By the 11th century the Arabs were replaced by new masters, the Seljuk Turks. By 1018 their warlord Chagri Bey reached Azerbaijan. However not even the Turks could resist the overwhelming power of the Mongol hordes led by Temujin known as Chingiz Khan, who devastated Azerbaijan's territory with legendary cruelty in the 13th century. Timur's descendants ruled the empire from 1405 till 1499, when a native Azeri dynasty emerged, the Sefevids. Shakh Ismail made Shia Islam the official religion of his kingdom. The Sefevid dynasty came to an end in 1722, undermined by the rivalry with the Ottoman Empire.

XVIIIth-XIXth centuries

In 1747 Shakh Nadir, who had established his hold over Persia a decade before, was killed in a coup. His empire fell into chaos, effectively ending Persia's direct control over Azerbaijan, where local principalities emerged. Most of them were virtually independent, although the southern principalities still maintained tenous links to the Zand dynasty of Persia. With a mostly Shia Muslim population, Azerbaijan remained on Persia's political and religious sphere of influence until the nineteenth century.

Ruler of Quba principality, Fatali Khan, tried to create a unified Azeri state by annexing the neighbouring principalities, but Imperial Russia ended his intention: in 1795 Russian troops took Shemakha and vast territories in northern Azerbaijan, but were repelled by strong Persian forces of Aga Mohammad of Kadjar dynasty. In 1806 and 1807 Russia conquered most of Azerbaijan and by 1807 Nakhchivan was the only principality to remain independent. Tsar Alexander I gave the northern part of Azerbaijan to the European sphere of influence. In the treaty Persia and Russia agreed that Azerbaijan would be divided along the Araz River, with Russian Azerbaijan north of the river, and Persian Azerbaijan to the south. In 1826 Persia however challenged Russian hold over the region, but was defeated in the decisive battle of Ganja. The arrangements that define today's borders were made in 1828.

In the 19th century, Russian influence over daily life in Azerbaijan was less pervasive than that of indigenous religious and political elites and the cultural and intellectual influences of Persia and Turkey. During most of the nineteenth century, the Russian Empire extracted commodities from Azerbaijan and invested little in the economy. However, the exploitation of oil in Azerbaijan at the end of the nineteenth century brought an influx of Russians into Baku, increasing Russian influence and expanding the local economy.