🇦🇿 Azerbaijan

The Medes came to dominate lands south of the Aras and built an extensive empire between 900 and 700 BC. Their rule established the deep Iranian political and cultural orientation of the region.

The earliest human presence in the territory traces to the late Stone Age Guruchay culture of Azykh Cave. Scythian settlement in the 9th century BC marks the first named people recorded in the area, opening a long sequence of steppe and Iranian influence.

The Median realm was integrated into the Achaemenid Empire around 550 BC following Achaemenid conquest. The conquest brought Zoroastrianism to the territory, embedding a religious tradition that shaped the region for centuries.

In 252 the Sasanians reduced Caucasian Albania to vassalage, retaining its monarchy but placing real civil, religious and military authority in the hands of a Sasanian marzban. Albania survived as an entity until the 9th century under this subordinate arrangement.

Urnayr made Christianity the official religion of Caucasian Albania in the 4th century. This gave the polity a distinct confessional identity within the Sasanian sphere that endured for centuries.

In the first half of the 7th century the Sasanian vassal of Caucasian Albania passed under Muslim overlordship as Persia fell. The shift began the long Islamisation of the territory.

The Umayyads expelled both Sasanian and Byzantine power from the South Caucasus and defeated Christian resistance under King Juansher in 667. Caucasian Albania was converted into an Umayyad vassal state, consolidating Arab authority.

As Abbasid authority weakened, dynasties such as the Sallarids, Sajids and Shaddadids took control of the territory. The Shirvanshahs likewise established themselves from 861, retaining a high degree of autonomy for centuries.

From the beginning of the 11th century migrating Oghuz Turks progressively took the region, bringing a Turkoman ethnonym. Their settlement began the replacement of Old Azeri and other Indo-European and Caucasian languages by the Turkic precursor of modern Azerbaijani.

The Seljuks reached the territory by 1067, ruling locally through the Eldiguzids who were nominal vassals but often de facto sovereigns. Under Seljuk rule poets such as Nizami Ganjavi and Khaqani produced a flowering of Persian literature in the region.

The Persianised local dynasty of the Shirvanshahs accepted Timurid suzerainty and assisted Timur in his war against Tokhtamysh of the Golden Horde. After Timur's death the rival Turkoman states of Qara Qoyunlu and Aq Qoyunlu emerged, with the Shirvanshahs returning to autonomous rule.

In 1501 the Safavids defeated the Shirvanshahs and annexed their territories, though allowing the dynasty nominal survival under suzerainty. Over the following century the Safavids converted the formerly Sunni population to Shia Islam, a decisive and lasting confessional transformation.

Tahmasp I ended the Shirvanshah dynasty entirely in 1538 and absorbed its lands as a directly administered Safavid province. This completed the incorporation of the territory into the Iranian imperial state.

The Sunni Ottomans seized the territory as a result of the war of 1578–1590. They were ousted in the early 17th century by the Safavid ruler Abbas I, restoring Iranian control.

Amid the collapse of the Safavid dynasty, Russian forces took Baku and its environs, while the Ottomans occupied the remainder of present-day Azerbaijan from 1722 to 1736. These were the first serious Russian and Ottoman encroachments on a land otherwise under Iranian rule until the 19th century.

The assassination of Nader Shah in 1747 unleashed instability across the Afsharid realm, and numerous khanates with varying autonomy emerged in the territory. Their rulers remained related to and vassals of Iran's ruling dynasties while profiting from trade routes between Central Asia and the West.

Despite continued preoccupation with Iranian culture, literature and language among Shia and Sunni intellectuals in Baku, Ganja and Tiflis, a distinct Azerbaijani national identity crystallised by the end of the 19th century. This provided the ideological basis for the later republic.

Russia's more aggressive posture towards Iran and the Ottomans led to the sack of the Iranian town of Ganja in 1804. The militarily superior Russians won the ensuing nine-year war.

Defeated in 1813, Qajar Iran surrendered most of the khanates along with Georgia and Dagestan to the Russian Empire. The treaty began the detachment of the lands north of the Aras from Iran.

In violation of the Gulistan treaty Russia attacked Iran's Erivan Khanate, provoking the final war between the two empires. Russian victory settled the fate of the Caucasus.

Turkmenchay forced Iran to surrender sovereignty over the Erivan and Nakhchivan khanates and the rest of the Talysh Khanate. The Aras River became the Russo-Iranian border, permanently dividing the Azerbaijani people between two states.

The publication of Akinchi in 1875 gave the Azerbaijani language its first periodical press. It was a milestone in the formation of a modern public sphere and national consciousness.

Cinema in Azerbaijan dates from 1898, among the earliest anywhere in the Russian Empire and the Muslim world. It laid the foundation for a domestic audiovisual industry.

With imperial Russia's collapse during the First World War, a short-lived federative republic was proclaimed comprising present-day Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia. Its dissolution in May 1918 opened the way for separate national states.

The ADR parliament granted women equal political rights with men, making it the first Muslim nation to do so. The measure remains a defining claim of the republic's modernising record.

Baku State University, established during the ADR period, was the first modern university founded in the Muslim East. It became the core institution of higher education and scientific training in the country.

Between 30 March and 2 April 1918 massacres took place in Baku and adjacent areas of the Baku Governorate. The violence deepened ethnic antagonism on the eve of independence.

On the dissolution of the Transcaucasian federation the leading Musavat party and the National Council of Azerbaijan proclaimed the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic on 28 May 1918, adopting for the first time as a state name 'Azerbaijan', previously used only for the adjacent region of Iran. It was the first modern secular parliamentary republic in the Muslim world and the first state to grant women the vote. The republic fell to the Red Army's invasion in April 1920.

The National Army of the ADR was formed on 26 June 1918. The date is treated as the origin of Azerbaijan's national armed forces tradition.

After Soviet power was established, the chairman of the Revolutionary Committee of Azerbaijan nationalised the film industry. Cinema thereby became a state instrument of culture and propaganda.

The Perso-Arabic script was replaced by Latin in the 1920s and Latin by Cyrillic in the 1930s, with the country's name spelled in Cyrillic from 1940 to 1991. Despite the disruption, literacy and average education levels rose dramatically in the Soviet era.

After 23 months of independence, the Bolshevik 11th Red Army invaded on 28 April 1920, entered Baku and imposed Soviet rule, establishing the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. As many as 20,000 Azerbaijani soldiers died resisting what amounted to a Russian reconquest, much of the army being tied down by an Armenian revolt in Karabakh. Azerbaijan remained incorporated in the Soviet Union for seven decades.

On 13 October 1921 Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia concluded the Treaty of Kars with Turkey. It made the formerly independent Republic of Aras the Nakhchivan Autonomous SSR within Azerbaijan, awarded Zangezur to Armenia and returned Gyumri to Armenia, fixing borders that still shape the region.

After Armenia and Azerbaijan disputed the territory's status, Moscow in 1923 recognised Nagorno-Karabakh as an autonomous region within Soviet Azerbaijan, a decision at the heart of the later conflict.

Baku's oilfields were the energy dynamo of the USSR during the Second World War, and in February 1942 more than 500 Azerbaijani oil workers were decorated by decree of the Supreme Soviet. The fields' importance made Baku the objective of the German Operation Edelweiss.

Roughly a fifth of all Azerbaijanis fought in the war, including over 100,000 women, out of a total population of 3.4 million. About 250,000 were killed and more than 130 were named Heroes of the Soviet Union, Major-General Azi Aslanov twice.

Soviet data reported 100 percent literacy for both males and females aged nine to forty-nine in 1970. The 1970 census also recorded 510,000 ethnic Russians and 484,000 Armenians in the republic.

War broke out in 1988 over the primarily Armenian-populated region, and the struggle escalated after both countries gained independence in 1991.

Soviet forces stormed Baku on 20 January 1990 to crush the pro-independence movement, killing over 130 civilians in the crackdown. The events hardened public support for independence from the Soviet Union.

Later in 1990 the Supreme Council dropped 'Soviet Socialist' from the republic's title, declared sovereignty and readopted the flag of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic. These steps asserted continuity with the 1918 republic ahead of full independence.

After independence the country became a member of the IMF, World Bank, EBRD, Islamic Development Bank and Asian Development Bank. In 1992 the National (later Central) Bank was created from the Azerbaijan State Savings Bank.

Moscow agreed on 15 April 2026 to compensate Azerbaijan after President Putin admitted in October 2025 that Russian air defences caused the crash of flight 8243, which killed 38 people over Chechnya in December 2024. The admission followed more than a year of denials.

The 5 March 2026 attack injured two people as the wider war involving Iran spilled into the region. Iran denied responsibility for the strike on Azerbaijan's exclave.

Crossings that had been closed after a drone strike on Nakhchivan were reopened to cargo on 9 March 2026. The closure had briefly disrupted trade links between Azerbaijan's exclave and Iran during the wider regional conflict.

The 16 March 2026 verdict came amid a wider crackdown on foreign nationals and journalists. Rights groups have criticised similar prosecutions, including of Radio Free Europe and Abzas Media journalists jailed in mid-2025, as politically motivated.

US Vice-President JD Vance oversaw the signing in Baku on 10 February 2026, a day after visiting Armenia, as Washington deepened engagement with both South Caucasus states following the 2025 peace deal.

Aliyev's 14 February 2026 statement marked a further deterioration in relations with Moscow, following disputes over the 2024 airliner shootdown and the deaths of Azerbaijani nationals in Russian police custody in mid-2025.

Vardanyan, the former state minister of the self-declared Republic of Artsakh, was convicted over his role in the Nagorno-Karabakh administration that Azerbaijan dissolved in 2023. Armenia and rights groups called the prosecution politically motivated.

Authorities said the suspects, detained on 27 January 2026, were plotting an attack on an embassy in Baku on behalf of Islamic State-Khorasan Province. No target was publicly named.

Karimli, who leads the Azerbaijani Popular Front Party, was detained on 29 November 2025 on unspecified charges. His arrest extended a crackdown on dissent that has also targeted journalists and independent media.

Putin's admission on 9 October 2025 confirmed Russian responsibility for the December 2024 crash near Chechnya that killed 38 people, ending months of denial. Azerbaijan had suspended flights to several Russian cities after the incident.

On 8 August 2025 the Azerbaijani president and Armenian prime minister committed to a peace deal facilitated by the Trump administration. The declaration aimed to end nearly four decades of conflict between the two states.

A rapid military operation in September 2023 dissolved the breakaway Republic of Artsakh's decades of self-rule, prompting nearly the entire ethnic Armenian population of over 100,000 people to flee to Armenia within days. The entity formally dissolved itself and Nagorno-Karabakh was reintegrated into Azerbaijan on 1 January 2024, completing Azerbaijani control of its recognised territory.

Clashes resumed along the Line of Contact on 27 September 2020 and six weeks of fighting ended with a Russian-brokered ceasefire on 10 November, widely celebrated in Azerbaijan. The seven surrounding districts and parts of Nagorno-Karabakh itself returned to Azerbaijani control, reversing the outcome of 1994; thousands of soldiers were killed on both sides.

An amended PSA signed on 14 September 2017 with BP, Chevron, Inpex, Equinor, ExxonMobil and others prolonged development of the Azeri–Chirag–Guneshli field. The extension secured the country's principal source of export revenue for decades.

The Guardian reported leaked data showing more than 16,000 covert payments made between 2012 and 2014 through opaque British companies to pay prominent Europeans, buy luxury goods and launder money. The revelations reinforced international findings of systemic corruption.

In 2014 press and media freedom collapsed further amid a government drive against criticism, even as Azerbaijan chaired the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers. By 2015 the country held the largest number of imprisoned journalists in Europe, and journalists from Abzas Media, Toplum TV and Meydan TV were prosecuted in 2024 and 2025.

AzerSat 1 was launched on 7 February 2013 from the Guiana Space Centre to an orbital position of 46° East. It gave the country its own satellite communications capability, part of a wider science and technology revival funded by the oil and gas boom.

The 2012 project was designed to link the railways of China and Kazakhstan with the European network via Turkey. It positioned Azerbaijan as a transit corridor between Asia and Europe.

Ell and Nikki won the 2011 contest with 'Running Scared' after debuting in 2008, entitling Azerbaijan to host in Baku in 2012. The victory and hosting were used to project the country's image internationally.

A 2009 referendum abolished presidential term limits, and the government has been accused of authoritarianism amid widespread corruption.

The UN General Assembly elected Azerbaijan to the newly created Human Rights Council on 9 May 2006, with its term beginning on 19 June. The country later won a non-permanent UN Security Council seat in 2011 with the support of 155 states.

The 1,774-kilometre Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan oil pipeline, running across Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to the Mediterranean coast and built to bypass Russia and Iran, became operational in May 2006. It was followed at the end of 2006 by the South Caucasus Pipeline carrying Shah Deniz gas to European markets, together making Azerbaijan a major independent energy supplier to Western markets.

After chronically high inflation was brought under control in the early 2000s, a new currency was introduced on 1 January 2006. The redenomination was intended to cement economic reforms and erase the legacy of instability.

Ilham Aliyev won an election in October 2003 that international observers criticised as flawed, taking over from his father Heydar Aliyev weeks before the elder Aliyev's death, and also became chairman of the New Azerbaijan Party. The transition began more than three decades of Aliyev family rule; he was re-elected in October 2013 and secured a fourth consecutive term in April 2018 in a poll boycotted by the main opposition as fraudulent.

A new ministry with broad policy and regulatory functions was created in 2002. It centralised oversight of the railways, ports, airports and merchant marine that underpin the country's transit ambitions.

From 2001 the state budget grew on revenues from the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline, and the share earmarked for environmental protection nearly doubled. Seven large nature reserves were established from that year.

Membership of the Council of Europe from 2001 anchored the country in a European institutional framework and it maintains good relations with the European Union. It later chaired the Committee of Ministers from May to November 2014.

A well-known destination in the 1980s, Azerbaijan's tourism sector was damaged by the Soviet collapse and the First Nagorno-Karabakh War before recovering from the 2000s. It ranked among the top ten countries for growth in visitor exports between 2010 and 2016 and first for the fastest-developing travel and tourism economy in 2016.

Revenue from oil and gas production has substantially reduced the poverty rate and increased infrastructure investment in recent years, but reforms have not adequately addressed weaknesses in most government institutions, particularly in education and health.

A provision adopted on 16 June 1999 set out the status of local state administration. In June 2012 the president approved a regulation granting local executive authorities further powers, strengthening their dominance over local affairs.

Aliyev secured a second presidential term in October 1998. His rule entrenched the New Azerbaijan Party's dominance of state institutions.

The constitution adopted on 12 November 1995 formalised the structure of the state, including the 125-seat Milli Majlis elected on majority vote for five-year terms. In practice the ruling party and loyal independents hold almost all seats.

By 2012 national output had grown twentyfold compared with 1995, driven by the exploitation of the Azeri–Chirag–Guneshli oil field and the Shah Deniz gas field. Growth was accompanied by criticism of high economic inequality and corruption.

In September 1994 the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) concluded a thirty-year production-sharing agreement, dubbed the Contract of the Century, with a consortium of 13 international companies including Amoco, BP, ExxonMobil, Lukoil and Equinor. The deal opened the Azeri–Chirag–Guneshli fields in the Caspian Sea to large-scale foreign investment and laid the foundation for the country's oil-dependent economy.

Hostilities in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War ceased with a ceasefire that took hold in May 1994, leaving Nagorno-Karabakh de facto independent and seven surrounding districts under ethnic Armenian control, amounting to 14–16 percent of internationally recognised Azerbaijani territory. An estimated 30,000 people were killed and over a million displaced, and four UN Security Council resolutions demanded Armenian withdrawal. The OSCE Minsk Group, co-chaired by the United States, France and Russia, was established as the framework to mediate a peaceful resolution, but the conflict remained unresolved.

Huseynov, by then prime minister, attempted a coup in 1994 and was arrested for treason; in 1995 the commander of the Russian-style OMON police unit, Rovshan Javadov, tried again and was killed, his units disbanded. Surviving both consolidated Aliyev's grip on a state also afflicted by rampant bureaucratic corruption.

A military insurrection led by Colonel Surat Huseynov forced the democratically elected president Abulfaz Elchibey from Baku in June 1993, bringing the former Soviet Politburo member Heydar Aliyev to power. Aliyev was formally elected president that October and remained in power until 2003, and his New Azerbaijan Party has governed continuously since.

Azerbaijan was admitted to the United Nations on 2 March 1992, months after declaring independence from the Soviet Union. Membership formalised its standing as a sovereign state amid the ongoing war over Nagorno-Karabakh.

The law on the armed forces of 9 October 1991 established the national military after the Soviet collapse. By 2021 the forces numbered 126,000 active personnel with 17,000 paramilitaries and large reserves.

Following the failed Soviet coup in Moscow, the Supreme Council declared the restoration of Azerbaijan's independence on 18 October 1991, confirmed by nationwide referendum in December, shortly before the USSR ceased to exist on 26 December. The country marks 18 October as its Day of Restoration of Independence, having earlier proclaimed independence on 30 August 1991. Abulfaz Elchibey was elected the country's first president the following June.

The ethnic Armenian majority of Nagorno-Karabakh declared its own republic in September 1991. This triggered the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, which dominated Azerbaijan's early independence.