Azerbaijan

• 1. Introduction

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  Azerbaijan sits at a crossroads so ancient and contested that even its name carries the echoes of a Persian satrap from the age of Alexander the Great. The name derives from Atropates, a governor reinstated under Alexander whose name meant "Protected by the Holy Fire" in Old Iranian. For a country that calls itself the "land of fire," that etymology feels less like coincidence and more like destiny.

  The questions this documentary sets out to answer are not simple ones. How does a place with thousands of years of layered rule, from the Achaemenid Empire to the Soviets, forge a single national identity? What happens when that identity collides with the claims of neighbors who shared the same mountains? And how does one of the world's most oil-rich republics reconcile economic growth with a government that Freedom House ranked 7 out of 100 on its global freedom scale in 2024?

• 2. The Name and Its Dispute

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  The word Azerbaijan did not always refer to the country that bears it today. Before 1918, the name was used exclusively to identify a region of what is now northwestern Iran. When the Musavat party declared independence that year after the collapse of the Russian Empire, it adopted the name for its new republic, and Iran immediately protested.

  The linguistic journey that produced the name spans millennia. Atropates became Aturpatakan in Middle Persian, then shifted through Adharbadhaganand Adhorbaygan in New Persian before arriving at the modern form. The name was preserved in Greek sources, where Diodorus Siculus and Strabo both mentioned it. During Soviet rule, the country was spelled in Cyrillic as a transliteration from Russian, a form used from 1940 to 1991.

  What the pre-1918 territory had been called was Arran and Shirvan, names with their own long histories. The adoption of Azerbaijan as the republic's name cut across an established geographic identity and permanently tied the new state's name to a controversy that persists in Iranian-Azerbaijani relations today.

• 3. Layers of Empire

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  The earliest evidence of human settlement in the territory dates back to the late Stone Age, found at Azykh Cave and linked to the Guruchay culture. Scythians arrived during the 9th century BC. Then came the Iranian Medes, who forged a vast empire between 900 and 700 BC before being absorbed into the Achaemenid Empire around 550 BC.

  Caucasian Albania, the pre-Islamic state of the region, became a vassal of the Sasanian Empire in 252 and retained its monarchy even under heavy Sasanian control, with the Sasanian marzban holding most real authority. King Urnayr officially adopted Christianity as the state religion in the 4th century. Christianity in Caucasian Albania did not outlast the Umayyad Caliphate, which repulsed both the Sasanians and Byzantines from the South Caucasus and suppressed Christian resistance led by King Juansher in 667.

  The Seljuk Turks entered the area by 1067, and with them came a profound linguistic shift. The pre-Turkic population had spoken several Indo-European and Caucasian languages, including Armenian and Old Azeri, an Iranian language. That Old Azeri was gradually replaced by the early precursor of what is now the Azerbaijani language. Under the Seljuks, poets Nizami Ganjavi and Khaqani gave rise to a flowering of Persian literature in the region.

  From the 16th century, the Safavid dynasty of Iran converted the formerly Sunni population to Shia Islam, a transformation that shaped the country's religious character to the present day. The Safavids ultimately deposed the local Shirvanshah dynasty in 1538, making the area a province of Shirvan directly under Safavid rule.

• 4. Russia's Conquest and a New Identity

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  In 1804, Russian forces invaded and sacked the Iranian town of Ganja, sparking the first of two devastating wars with Qajar Iran. The Treaty of Gulistan in 1813 forced Iran to cede most of the khanates along with Georgia and Dagestan. Then Russia violated the treaty and invaded again, touching off the Russo-Persian War of 1826-1828. The resulting Treaty of Turkmenchay compelled Iran to give up the Erivan Khanate, the Nakhchivan Khanate, and the remainder of the Talysh Khanate.

  Despite the military conquest, preoccupation with Iranian culture, literature, and language remained widespread throughout the 19th century among intellectuals in the Russian-held cities of Baku, Ganja, and Tiflis. An Azerbaijani national identity only emerged clearly by the late 19th century.

  The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic declared independence in 1918 and immediately achieved a series of historic firsts. It was the first modern parliamentary republic in the Muslim world and the first Muslim nation to grant women equal political rights with men. Baku State University, described as the first modern university founded in the Muslim East, was established during this brief period. That period lasted only 23 months. The Bolshevik 11th Soviet Red Army invaded on the 28th of April 1920. As many as 20,000 Azerbaijani soldiers died resisting what the source calls effectively a Russian reconquest, even as the bulk of the new army was engaged in suppressing an Armenian revolt in Karabakh.

• 5. Oil, War, and Soviet Years

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  During World War II, Baku supplied 80 percent of Soviet oil used on the Eastern Front. The German Wehrmacht launched Operation Edelweiss specifically to capture the city, recognizing it as the energy dynamo of the Soviet war effort. By decree of the Supreme Soviet in February 1942, more than 500 workers in Azerbaijan's oil industry were awarded orders and medals for their contributions.

  A fifth of all Azerbaijanis served in the Second World War between 1941 and 1945. Approximately 681,000 people went to the front, including more than 100,000 women, from a total population of 3.4 million. Some 250,000 people from Azerbaijan were killed. More than 130 Azerbaijanis were named Heroes of the Soviet Union. Major-General Azi Aslanov was twice awarded the title.

  The final years of Soviet rule brought a different kind of violence. Following Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost policies, ethnic conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh intensified. The Black January events in Baku, sparked by Moscow's indifference to the conflict, pushed the republic toward independence. In October 1991, the Supreme Council adopted a Declaration of Independence, affirmed by referendum in December that year.

• 6. Nagorno-Karabakh and the Aliyev Era

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  By the end of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1994, Armenians controlled 14-16 percent of Azerbaijani territory. An estimated 30,000 people were killed. More than a million people were displaced, with more than 800,000 Azerbaijanis and 300,000 Armenians uprooted from their homes. Four United Nations Security Council resolutions demanded the withdrawal of Armenian forces from occupied Azerbaijani territories.

  In 1993, elected President Abulfaz Elchibey was overthrown in a military insurrection led by Colonel Surat Huseynov, which brought former Soviet Azerbaijan leader Heydar Aliyev to power. Huseynov himself then attempted a coup against Aliyev in 1994 and was arrested for treason. A second coup attempt came in 1995, this time by the commander of the Russian OMON unit, Rovshan Javadov. That attempt was also suppressed, resulting in Javadov's death.

  dar Aliyev died in 2003 and his son Ilham Aliyev became president. He was re-elected to a third term in October 2013 and secured a fourth consecutive term in April 2018 in an election boycotted by main opposition parties as fraudulent. On the 27th of September 2020, clashes resumed in Nagorno-Karabakh. The six-week war ended with Azerbaijan making significant territorial gains. In September 2023, Azerbaijan launched an offensive against the Republic of Artsakh that resulted in the dissolution and reintegration of Artsakh on the 1st of January 2024 and the flight of nearly all ethnic Armenians from the region. On the 8th of August 2025, President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a joint declaration at the White House committing to a peace deal facilitated by the Trump administration.

• 7. Fire, Mud, and the Land Itself

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  Yanar Dag, which translates as "burning mountain," blazes continuously on a hillside on the Absheron Peninsula near Baku, where flames jet from a thin, porous sandstone layer. The site draws visitors to a city already known across the ancient world as the land of fire, a reputation grounded in the natural gas seeps that have burned here for centuries.

  Nearly half of all the mud volcanoes on Earth are concentrated in Azerbaijan, and these volcanoes were among nominees for the New 7 Wonders of Nature. Mount Bazarduzu rises to 4,466 meters as the country's highest peak. The lowest point lies in the Caspian Sea. Nine of the eleven existing climate zones on Earth are present within this single country's borders.

  Two-thirds of Azerbaijan is rich in oil and natural gas. In September 1994, a 30-year contract was signed between the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan and 13 companies including Amoco, BP, ExxonMobil, Lukoil, and Equinor. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline became operational in May 2006 and extends more than 1,774 kilometers. The Southern Gas Corridor, connecting the Shah Deniz gas field in Azerbaijan to Europe, was designed to reduce the European Union's dependency on Russian natural gas. Azerbaijan extended its agreement on development of the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli oil field until 2050 in a deal signed on the 14th of September 2017.

• 8. Culture and Repression

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  UNESCO proclaimed the Azerbaijani mugham tradition a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians describes the Azerbaijani people as musically much closer to Iran than Turkey in terms of ethnicity, culture, and religion. Mugham is a free-form suite of poetry and instrumental interludes, often compared to jazz in its improvisational nature.

  Azerbaijan's ashiq tradition, included on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2009, combines poetry, storytelling, dance, and vocal and instrumental music. An ashiq is a mystic troubadour who plays the saz. The tradition has roots in the shamanistic beliefs of ancient Turkic peoples. In November 2010, the Azerbaijani carpet was proclaimed a Masterpiece of Intangible Heritage by UNESCO.

  Ell and Nikki won the Eurovision Song Contest 2011 with the song "Running Scared," giving Azerbaijan the right to host the contest in Baku in 2012. The country had made its debut at Eurovision only three years earlier, in 2008, and gained third place in 2009.

  Against this cultural richness stands a severe press environment. Azerbaijan ranked 177th out of 196 countries on a press freedom index. All foreign broadcasts are banned. In 2025, there were 375 political prisoners in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan had the largest number of journalists imprisoned in Europe in 2015 according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Journalists from Abzas Media, Toplum TV, and Meydan TV were prosecuted in 2024 and 2025 in trials international human rights organizations described as unfair. Leaked data revealed that Azerbaijan's leadership made more than 16,000 covert payments from 2012 to 2014, routing funds to politicians and journalists in a lobbying effort the source terms caviar diplomacy.