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AZDĀKARA (from Old Persian azdā- “announcement” and kara- “maker”), officials of the Achaemenid chancery, the heralds, who made known, for example, the government edicts and  court sentences. The word is first attested in the form ʾzdkr(y)ʾ in an Aramaic letter, sent in 428 B.C. to Aršāma, satrap of Egypt (Cowley,…

AZDĪ, MOḤAMMAD B. RAWWĀD, a notable of Azerbaijan at the beginning of the 3rd/9th century, known mainly in connection with the revolt of Bābak, the leader of the Ḵorrami movement. According to the Fehrest, Bābak was in Ebn al-Rawwād’s service in Tabrīz for two years between the ages of sixteen…

AZDI,ʿABD-AL-JABBĀR b. ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān, was a governor of Khorasan who came into conflict with the caliph al-Manṣur. ʿAbd-al-Jabbār was one of the leaders of the Khorasanian army at the time of the overthrow of the Umayyads and that he was then commander of the caliph al-Saffāḥ’s elite military force, or šorṭa….

AZERBAIJAN (Āḏarbāy[e]jān), historical region of northwestern Iran, east of Lake Urmia, since the Achaemenid era. 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…

AZERBAIJAN i. Geography I. The geographic concept of Azerbaijan. A. The name of the country is derived from that of the Achaemenian satrap of Media Atropates (Strabo 11.523) who was retained by Alexander in the government of western Media and preserved it under his successors, thus founding a principality which…

AZERBAIJAN iii. Pre-Islamic History Like other parts of Iran, the northwestern province of Azerbaijan can look back on a long history. For the earliest periods, however, archeological research has barely begun. Before the Achaemenids. In 1949 C. Coon discovered a cave of the Paleolithic period at Tamtama, north of Urmia…

AZERBAIJAN iv. Islamic History to 1941 Background. Azerbaijan formed a separate province of the early Islamic caliphate, but its precise borders varied in different periods. In the north, the Aras or Araxes river formed a clear natural boundary between Azerbaijan and Arrān or Caucasian Albania, whilst the low-lying region of Mūḡān/Mūqān (Moḡān),…

 AZERBAIJAN v. History from 1941 to 1947 The United Kingdom and the Soviet Union invaded Iran on 3 Šahrīvar 1320 Š./25 August 1941, invoking an unsatisfactory response to parallel demands for expulsion of four-fifths of the 1,500 Germans in Iran. Approximately 40,000 Soviet troops entered Iran from the north, occupying…

AZERBAIJAN vi. Population and its Occupations and Culture Population. Azerbaijan, the main Turkic-speaking area and one of the richest and most densely populated regions of Iran, presents a picture of ethnic distinctiveness and homogeneity that is perhaps misleading. Not only are there various linguistic, religious, and tribal minority groups, but…

AZERBAIJAN vii. The Iranian Language of Azerbaijan Āḏarī (Ar. al-āḏarīya) was the Iranian language of Azerbaijan before the spread of the Turkish language, commonly called Azeri, in the region. The currency of Āḏarī in Azerbaijan during the first centuries of the Islamic period is attested by contemporary sources. The earliest…

AZERBAIJAN viii. Azeri (Āḏarī) Turkish Azeri belongs to the Oghuz branch of the Turkic language family. In the eleventh century the “Tūrān defeated Ērān” and a broad wave of Oghuz Turks flooded first Khorasan, then all the rest of Iran, and finally Anatolia, which they made a base for vast…

AZERBAIJAN ii. Archeology The region to be discussed comprises the two Iranian provinces of West Azerbaijan and East Azerbaijan, with administrative centers at Urmia (before 1979 Reżāʾīya) and Tabrīz respectively; it does not include “Northern Azerbaijan,” centered on Baku, which since 1829 has belonged to the Russian empire. The modern…

AZERBAIJAN ix. Iranian Elements in Azeri Turkish Azeri is, perhaps after Uzbek, the Turkic language upon which Iranian has exerted the strongest impact—mainly in phonology, syntax and vocabulary, less in morphology. Much of the Iranian interference is also present, albeit less strongly in other Turkic languages, e.g., Ottoman Turkish, but…

AZERBAIJAN x. Azeri Literature in Iran The language spoken today in Azerbaijan is one of the branches of Oghuz Turkic. It was introduced into Iran by Turks entering the area in the 5th/11th and 6th/12th centuries and underwent a gradual development before assuming its present form. For two centuries after…

AZERBAIJAN x. Azeri Turkish Literature in Iran The language spoken today in Azerbaijan is one of the branches of Oghuz Turkic. It was introduced into Iran by Turks entering the area in the 11th and 12th centuries and underwent a gradual development before assuming its present form. For two centuries…