ABSTRACT
Azerbaijan, a country of some eight million inhabitants, is located at the western shores of the Caspian Sea, bordering on Georgia and Russia (Dagestan) in the north, Armenia in the west and Iran in the south. There is also one Azeri enclave – Nachichevan – located between Armenia and Iran and Turkey and with some 20 million Azeris. Azeris, who speak a Turkish language, have had four different alphabets: Arabic, Latin and Cyrillic alphabet and today a Turkish style Latin alphabet. The Azeris were under Persian vassals at least since 500 BC, they were then conquered by the Romans for some centuries around the birth of Christ and then re-conquered by Persia in the third century. Azeris were then conquered by Arabs and converted to Islam in the seventh century, conquered by Turks in the eleventh century, by Mongols in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, re-conquered by Persia in the sixteenth century. In early to midnineteenth century, Azerbaijan was divided up between Persia and Russia. After the First World War, the chaotic 1918-20 self-determination ended with a Red Army conquest in 1920, and the joining of the USSR within the Transcaucasus Republic in 1922. In 1936, Azerbaijan became a Soviet Republic. Azerbaijan’s greatest assets have been oil production (since late nineteenth century), and even today, Azerbaijan relies on its oil and gas resources in two offshore fields (Pamir 2004: 125).
