:''This region should not be confused with modern-day
Albania in the
Balkans.''
Ancient countries of Caucasus: Armenia, Iberia, Colchis and Albania
'Caucasian Albania', also known as 'Alvank' in
Armenian,
[1]3 'Ardhan' in
Parthian, 'Arran' in
Persian,
[2] and 'Al-Ran' in
Arabic,
12 was an ancient kingdom, which existed on the territory of present-day
Republic of Azerbaijan and southern
Dagestan. The name "Albania" is
Latin, and denotes "mountainous land".
[3] The native name for the country is unknown.
[4]
Ancient population of Caucasian Albania
Caucasian Albanians were one of the
Ibero-Caucasian peoples, the ancient and indigenous population of modern southern
Dagestan and Azerbaijan.
Strabo wrote about the Caucasian Albanians in the 1st century BC:
The
Mannaeans had one of the earliest states recorded as being established in the area as far as the
Kura from ca.
800 BC, and they were rivals of
Urartu and
Assyria, but later fell under the rule of Urartu until their destruction and eventual assimilation by the Medes under
Cyaxares in
616 BC. In ancient times, they were heavily mixed with the
Persian people who settled in the area during the
Achaemenid,
Parthian and
Sassanid periods.
Cities and regions
Strabo had no knowledge of any city in Albania, although in the 1st century AD
Pliny mentions the initial capital of the kingdom which was pronounced in many different ways including Kabalaka, Shabala, Tabala, and present-day
Qabala. Later the capital moved to the south to Partaw (present-day
Barda).
Early history
According to the
Georgian chronicle “Juansher's Concise History of the Georgians”, Armenians, Georgians and Albanians had one father named
Togarmah (Torgom), who was descendant of
Japheth, son of
Noah. Torgom divided his land among his sons, and gave to one of them, by the name of Bartos, the "territory from the Berdahoj river to the region of the Kur river to the sea where the conjoined Erasx (
Aras) and Kur rivers enter it". According to this legend, Bartos built the city Partaw in his own name.
[5]
According to the local tradition,
Aran was a legendary ancestor and the eponym of the Albanians. Thus, referring to the events in the beginning of
2nd c. BC, he mentions that "… as leader of [savage tribes to the north], by [Armenian king] Vagharshak's order, was appointed someone from the family of
Sisakan, one of the descendants of
Yafet, named
Aran, who inherited the plains and mountains of the country of Aghvank beginning from the river
Yeraskh (
Araks) up to the castle of
Hnarakert (on river
Kura)," after whom "this country was called Aghvank" (I.4). Medieval historian
Moses of Kalankatuyk explained the name Alvank as a derivation from the word ''Alu'' which was the nickname of Caucasian Albania's first king Aran and referred to his lenient personality.
[6] The Armenian historian
Moses of Chorene, who is considered in Armenian historiography "the father of Armenian history", also confirmed that the Sisakan family inherited the area "from the river
Yeraskh (
Araks) up to the castle called
Hnarakert," and the region was named Aghvank after them in the early
2nd century BC (History of Armenia, II.8). However it is uncertain whether Aran and Sisak were real or imaginary persons.
[7]
The kingdom of Caucasian Albania (Aghbania, Aghvania) was founded in the late
4th - early
3rd century BC. Albanians are mentioned for the first time in 331 BC at the
Battle of Gaugamela as participants from the satrapy of Media.
[8]
Parts of Caucasian Albania, including
Utik on the right bank of the
Kura river were conquered by the
Armenians, in the 1st century B.C.
[9]
Strabo,
Ptolemy and
Pliny all write that at this time, the border between Albania and the Kingdom of Greater Armenia was through the river
Kura. At the same time Strabo writes that the river of Kura flows through Albania. However the frontier along the Kura was repeatedly overrun, to the advantage sometimes of the Albanians, sometimes of the Armenians.
In
66 BC, following the defeat of the Armenian king
Tigranes II at the hand of the
Romans, the Armenian empire lost most of its territory. At this time, the Albanians regained control over their right bank territories conquered by Armenians.
According to the 7th c. historian Moses of Kalankatuyk, author of "History of Aghvank", at this time, the southern border of Caucasian Albania was along the
Araks river.
[10]
In 65 B.C. the Roman general
Pompey invaded Albania at the head of his army. When fording the
Alazan river, he was attacked by forces of Oroezes, king of Albania, and eventually defeated them. According to
Plutarch, Albanians "were led by a brother of the king, named Cosis, who as soon as the fighting was at close quarters, rushed upon Pompey himself and smote him with a javelin on the fold of his breastplate; but Pompey ran him through the body and killed him".
[11]
Plutarch also reported that "after the battle, Pompey set out to march to the Caspian Sea, but was turned back by a multitude of deadly reptiles when he was only three days march distant, and withdrew into Lesser Armenia".
[12]
Between 83 and 93 A.D. in the reign of
Domitian a detachment of the
Legio XII Fulminata was sent to the Caucasus to support the allied kingdoms of Iberia and Albania in a war against
Parthia. An inscription found in
Gobustan (69 km south of
Baku) attests to the presence of a Roman garrison in that area. During the reign of Roman emperor
Hadrian (117-138) Albania was invaded by the
Alans, an Iranian nomadic group.
[13]
The Sasanian domination
Main articles: Albania (satrapy)
In 252-253 AD Caucasian Albania along with
Iberia and Armenia was conquered by the
Sassanid Empire. Albania was mentioned among the Sasanian provinces listed in the trilingual inscription of
Shapur I at
Naqsh-e Rustam.
[14][15][16] However Albania retained its monarchy and was designated as a kingdom, and the relationship of the local rulers with the Sasanian “king of kings” is usually referred to by scholars as “vassalage”.
[17] But despite being one of the chief vassals of Sasanian
Shahanshah, the Albanian king had only a semblance of authority, and the Sassanid
marzban (military governor) held most civil, religious, and military authority.
In the middle of the 4th century the king of Albania Urnayr arrived in Armenia and was baptized by
Gregory the Illuminator, but Christianity spread in Albania only gradually, and the Albanian king remained loyal to the Sassanids. After the partition of Armenia between Byzantium and Persia (in
387 AD), Albania, as an ally of
Sassanid Persia, regained all the right bank of the river Kura up to river Araxes, including Artsakh and Utik.
Sasanian king
Yazdegerd II passed an edict requiring all the Christians in his empire to convert to
Mazdaism, fearing that Christians might ally with Roman Empire, which had recently adopted Christianity. This led to rebellion of Albanians, along with Armenians and Iberians. In a battle that took place in 451 AD
in the Avarayr field, the allied forces of the Armenian, Albanian and Iberian kings, devoted to Christianity, suffered defeat at the hands of the Sassanid army. Many of the Albanian nobility ran to the mountainous regions of Albania, particularly to Artsakh, that became a center for resistance to Sassanid Iran. The religious center of the Albanian state also moved here. However, the Albanian king Vache, a relative of Yazdegerd II, converted to the official religion of the Sasanian empire, but soon reverted back to Christianity.
In the middle of the 5th century by the order of the Persian king
Peroz I Vache built in Utik the city initially called Perozabad, and later Partaw and
Barda, and made it the capital of Albania.
[18] Partaw was the seat of the Albanian kings and Persian marzban, and in 552 A.D. the seat of the Albanian Catholicos was also transferred to Partaw.
[19]
After the death of Vache, Albania remained without a king for thirty years. The Sasanian
Balash reestablished the Albanian monarchy by making Vachagan, son of Yazdegerd and brother of the previous king Vache, the king of Albania.
By the end of the 5th century, the ancient
Arsacid royal house of Albania, a branch of the ruling dynasty of
Parthia, became extinct, and in the 6th century it was replaced by princes of the Persian or Parthian
Mihranid family, who claimed descent from the Sasanians. They assumed a Persian title of
Arranshahs (i.e.
shahs of Arran, Persian name of Albania).
[20] The ruling dynasty was named after its Persian founder Mihran, who was a distant relative of the Sasanians.
[21] Mihranid dynasty survived under Muslim suzerainty until 821-2.
[22]
In the late 6th – early 7th centuries AD the territory of Albania became an arena of wars between Sasanian Persia,
Byzantium and
Khazar kaganate, the latter two very often acting as allies. In 628, during the
Third Perso-Turkic War, the Khazars invaded Albania, and their leader
Ziebel declared himself lord of Albania, levying a tax on merchants and the fishermen of the Kura and Araxes rivers "in accordance with the landsurvey of the kingdom of Persia". Most of Transcaucasia was under Khazar rule before the arrival of the Arabs.
[23] The Albanian kings retained their rule by paying tribute to the regional powers. According to Peter Golden, "steady pressure from Turkic nomads was typical of the Khazar era, although there are no unambiguous references to permanent settlements",
[24] while
Vladimir Minorsky stated that, in Islamic times, "the town of Qabala lying between Sharvan and Shakki was a place where Khazars were probably settled".
[25]
Arab and Seljuk domination
In the middle of the
7th century AD, the kingdom was overrun by the
Arabs and, like all Islamic conquests at the time, incorporated into the
Caliphate. The Albanian king
Javanshir, the most prominent ruler of Mihranid dynasty, fought against the
Arab invasion of
caliph Uthman on the side of the Sasanid
Iran. Facing the threat of the Arab invasion on the south and the
Khazar offensive on the north, Javanshir had to recognize the Caliph’s suzerainty. The Arabs then reunited the territory with Armenia under one governor.
From the
8th century, Caucasian Albania existed as the principalities of Arranshahs and
Khachin, along with various Caucasian, Iranian and Arabic principalities: the Principality of
Shaddadids, the Principality of
Shirvan, the Principality of
Derbent, etc. Most of the region was ruled by the
Sajid Dynasty of
Azerbaijan from 890 to 929.
As a result of the expansion of
Seljuks Turks into the territory of modern Azerbaijan in the
11th century, the indigenous Albanian population was assimilated. Albanians played a significant role in the
ethnogenesis of today's
Azeris.
Religion
The ancient
pagan religion of Albania was centered on the worship of three divinities:
Sol,
Zeus, and
Luna.
Caucasian Albania was one of the first countries where
Christianity was adopted in the
4th century, and the first Christian church in the region was built by St. Eliseus, a disciple of
Thaddeus of Edessa, in a place called Gis (believed to be the modern-day
Church of Kish).
In
498 AD (in other sources, 488 AD) in the settlement named Aluen (Aguen) (present day
Agdam region of Azerbaijan), an Albanian church council convened to adopt laws further strengthening the position of Christianity in Albania.
Albanian churchmen took part in missionary efforts in the Caucasus and Pontic regions. In 682, the
catholicos Israel led an unsuccessful delegation to convert
Alp Iluetuer, the ruler of the
North Caucasian Huns, to Christianity. The Albanian Church maintained a number of monasteries in the
Holy Land.
[26]
The Arabic conquest resulted in gradual Islamization of the Albanian population.
Alphabet and language
Main articles: Caucasian Albanian alphabet
A stone with inscriptions in Albanian language, found in
Mingachevir
According to
Movses Kaghankatvatzi, the
Albanian alphabet was invented by
Mesrob Mashdots, an Armenian
monk,
theologian and
linguist (see Moses Kalankaytuk, ''The History of Aluank'', I, 27 and III, 24).
Another Armenian historian,
Koriun, in his book ''"The Life of Mashtots"'', wrote: ''"Then there came and visited them an elderly man, an Albanian named Benjamin. And he [Mesrop] inquired and examined the barbaric diction of the Albanian language, and then through his usual God-given keenness of mind invented an alphabet, which he, through the grace of Christ, successfully organized and put in order."'' (see
Koriun, Ch. 16).
The Albanian alphabet was rediscovered by a Georgian scholar, Professor
Ilia Abuladze, in
1937. The alphabet was found in
Matenadaran MS No. 7117, an Armenian-language manual of the
15th century. This manual presents different alphabets for comparison: Armenian, Greek, Latin, Syrian, Georgian, Coptic, and Albanian among them. The Albanian alphabet was titled: ''"Aluanic girn e"'' (Albanic letters). Abuladze made an assumption that this alphabet was based on Georgian letters.
No text in Caucasian Albanian has survived, hence any attempt to link ancient Albania with modern Azerbaijan must remain pure speculation, though these speculations payed an important part in the Azerbaijani nation building process from the 1960s onward.
[27]
The distinctive Albanian speech persisted into early Islamic times, and Arabic geographers recorded that the language which they called Arranian was still spoken in the capital Barda in the 10th century.
The
Udi language, spoken by 8000 people mostly in Azerbaijan, and also Georgia, is thought to be the last remnant of the language once spoken in Caucasian Albania.
[28]
Footnotes
1. V. Minorsky. Caucasica IV. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 15, No. 3. (1953), p. 504
2. "Arran". ''Encyclopaeida Iranica''. By C.E Bosworth
3. James Stuart Olson. An Ethnohistorical Dictionary of the Russian and Soviet Empires. ISBN 0313274975
4. Robert H. Hewsen. Ethno-History and the Armenian Influence upon the Caucasian Albanians, in: Samuelian, Thomas J. (Hg.), Classical Armenian Culture. Influences and Creativity, Chico: 1982, 27-40.
5. Juansher's Concise History of the Georgians
6. ''The History of Aluank'' by Moses of Kalankatuyk. Book I, chapter IV
7. J. H. Kramers. The Military Colonization of the Caucasus and Armenia under the Sassanids.
Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London, Vol. 8, No. 2/3.
8. Encyclopedia Iranica. M. L. Chaumont. Albania.
9. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Nagorno-Karabakh
10. Russia and Azerbaijan: a borderland in transition - T Swietochowski
11. ★ class=wikiexternal target=_blank>.html Plutarch, The Parallel Lives. Pompey, 35
12. ★ class=wikiexternal target=_blank>.html Plutarch, The Parallel Lives. Pompey, 36
13. Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911
14. [http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/v2f1/v2f1a035.html Gignoux. "Aneran". ''Encyclopaedia Iranica''. Text: ''The high priest Kirder, thirty years later, gave in his inscriptions a more explicit list of the provinces of Aneran, including Armenia, Georgia, Albania, and Balasagan, together with Syria and Asia Minor.''
15. Encyclopaedia Britannica:''The list of provinces given in the inscription of Ka'be-ye Zardusht defines the extent of the empire under Shapur, in clockwise geographic enumeration: (1) Persis (Fars), (2) Parthia, (3) Susiana (Khuzestan), (4) Maishan (Mesene), (5) Asuristan (southern Mesopotamia), (6) Adiabene, (7) Arabistan (northern Mesopotamia), (8) Atropatene (Azerbaijan), (9) Armenia, (10) Iberia (Georgia), (11) Machelonia, (12) Albania (eastern Caucasus), (13) Balasagan up to the Caucasus Mountains and the Gate of Albania (also known as Gate of the Alans), (14) Patishkhwagar (all of the Elburz Mountains), (15) Media, (16) Hyrcania (Gorgan), (17) Margiana (Merv), (18) Aria, (19) Abarshahr, (20) Carmania (Kerman), (21) Sakastan (Sistan), (22) Turan, (23) Mokran (Makran), (24) Paratan (Paradene), (25) India (probably restricted to the Indus River delta area), (26) Kushanshahr, until as far as Peshawar and until Kashgar and (the borders of) Sogdiana and Tashkent, and (27), on the farther side of the sea, Mazun (Oman)''
16. Wiesehofer, Josef. ''Ancient Persia''. published 1996, page 184 - Text: ''"And I [Shapur I] posses the lands [provinces; Greek ethne]: Fars [Persis], Pahlav [Parthia], Huzestan [Khuzistan], Meshan [Maishan, Mesene], [Asorestan [Mesopotamia], Nod-Ardakhshiragan [Adiabene], Arbayestan [Arabia], Adurbadagan [Atropatene], Armen [Armenia], Virozan [Iberia], Segan [Machelonia], Arran [Albania], Balasagan up to the Caucasus and to the 'gate of the Alans' and all of Padishkwar[gar]
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