Origin of the Azerbaijanis

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The

Genetic testing

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Although genetic testing demonstrates that the genetic heritage of Azerbaijani Turks is mostly from the native populations of the Middle East and the Caucasus, rather than their being direct descendants of migrants from Central Asia, it does, however, show that the region is a genetically mixed one. Whereas the population of Azerbaijan is culturally diverse,

In 2006, M. Regueiro and A.M. Cadenas of Stanford University showed that the population of central Iran (Isfahan) was closer to Caucasian Azerbaijani people than to the population of Turkey in terms of haplogroup distributions and genetic homogeneity.^[11]

The latest comparative study (2013) on the complete mitochondrial DNA diversity in Iranians has indicated that Iranian Azerbaijanis are more related to the people of

Azerbaijani Turks, however, are still demonstrated to possess significant genetic influences from East Asia relative to their non-Turkic neighbors.[13]

Iranian substrate

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The Iranian origin of the Azerbaijanis defines a link between present-day Azerbaijanis and their pre-Turkification

According to Vladimir Minorsky, around the 9th and 10th centuries:

"The original sedentary population of Azarbayjan consisted of a mass of peasants and at the time of the Arab conquest was compromised under the semi-contemptuous term of Uluj ("non-Arab")-somewhat similar to the raya (*ri’aya) of the Ottoman empire. The only arms of this peaceful rustic population were slings, see Tabari, II, 1379-89. They spoke a number of dialects (Adhari(Azari), Talishi) of which even now there remains some islets surviving amidst the Turkish speaking population. It was this basic population on which Babak leaned in his revolt against the caliphate.^[14]

Professor Ighrar Aliyev also mentions that the Arab historians Baladhuri, Masudi, Ibn Hawqal and Yaqut have mentioned this language by name.^[15] Medieval historians and scholars also record the people of the region of Azerbaijan as Iranians who spoke Iranian languages. Among these are Al-Istakhri, Al-Masudi, Ibn al-Nadim, Hamzeh Esfahani, Ibn Hawqal, Al-Baladhuri, Moqaddasi, Yaghubi, Hamdallah Mostowfi, and Al-Khwarizmi.^[16]

Ebn al-Moqaffa’ (d. 142/759) is quoted by ibn Al-Nadim in his famous

Ibn Hawqal mentions that some areas of Armenia are controlled by Muslims and others by Christians.[19]

Al-Moqaddasi (died late 4th century AH/10th century CE) considers Azerbaijan as part of the 8th division of lands. He states: "The languages of the 8th division is Iranian (al-‘ajamyya). It is partly Dari and partly convoluted (monqaleq) and all of them are named Persian".^[20]

Al-Moqaddasi also writes on the general region of Armenia, Arran and Azerbaijan. Ahmad ibn Yaqubi mentions that the "People of Azerbaijan are a mixture of ‘Ajam-i Azari (Ajam is a term that developed to mean Iranian) of Azaris and old Javedanis (followers of Javidan the son of Shahrak who was the leader of Khurramites and succeeded by Babak Khorramdin)."^[21]

Zakarrya b. Moháammad Qazvini's report in Athar al-Bilad, composed in 674/1275, that "no town has escaped being taken over by the Turks except Tabriz" (Beirut ed., 1960, p. 339) one may infer that at least Tabriz had remained aloof from the influence of Turkish until the time.^[22]

From the time of the Mongol invasion, most of whose armies were composed of Turkic tribes, the influence of Turkish increased in the region. On the other hand, the old Iranian dialects remained prevalent in major cities. Hamdallah Mostawafi writing in the 1340s calls the language of Maraqa as "modified Pahlavi"(Pahlavi-ye Mughayyar). Mostowafi calls the language of Zanjan (Pahlavi-ye Raast). The language of Gushtaspi covering the Caspian border region between Gilan to Shirvan is called a Pahlavi language close to the language of Gilan.^[23]

Even after the Turkic invasions and subsequent Turkification of the area, which lasted several centuries, travelers and scholars cited Persian being used up to the 17th century in Tabriz. Even the Ottoman Turkish explorer Evliya Çelebi (1611–1682) mentions this in his Seyahatname. He also reports that the elite and learned people of Nakhichevan and Maragheh spoke Pahlavi, during his tours of the region. Additionally, the old Pahlavi-based language of Azerbaijan is now extinct.

Also, the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, published in 1890, writes that Azerbaijani's are only linguistically Turkic and Iranians by race.^[24] The book Man, published in 1901, comes to the same conclusion.^[25]

Modern Opinions

Professor

The Turkish speakers of Azerbaijan (q.v.) are mainly descended from the earlier Iranian speakers, several pockets of whom still exist in the region. A massive migration of Oghuz Turks in the 11th and 12th centuries gradually Turkified Azerbaijan as well as Anatolia. The Azeri Turks are Shiʿites and were founders of the Safavid dynasty. They are settled, although there are pastoralists in the Moḡān steppe called Ilsevan (formerly Šāhsevan) numbering perhaps 100,000; they, as other tribes in Iran, were forced to adopt a settled life under Reza Shah.^[26]

According to Professor

Azeri material culture, a result of this multi-secular symbiosis, is thus a subtle combination of indigenous elements and nomadic contributions, but the ratio between them remains to be determined. The few researches undertaken (Planhol, 1960) demonstrate the indisputable predominance of Iranian tradition in agricultural techniques (irrigation, rotation systems, terraced cultivation) and in several settlement traits (winter troglodytism of people and livestock, evident in the widespread underground stables). The large villages of Iranian peasants in the irrigated valleys have worked as points for crystallization of the newcomers even in the course of linguistic transformation; these places have preserved their sites and transmitted their knowledge. The toponymy, with more than half of the place names of Iranian origin in some areas, such as the Sahand, a huge volcanic massif south of Tabriz, or the Qara Dagh, near the border (Planhol, 1966, p. 305; Bazin, 1982, p. 28) bears witness to this continuity. The language itself provides eloquent proof. Azeri, not unlike Uzbek (see above), lost the vocal harmony typical of Turkish languages. It is a Turkish language learned and spoken by Iranian peasants.^[27]

Prof. Gernot Windfuhr states that "the majority of those who now speak Kurdish most likely were formerly speakers of a Median dialect."^[28]

Professor. Tadeusz Swietochowski states: "According to the most widely accepted etymology, the name "Azerbaijan" is derived from Atropates, the name of a Persian satrap of the late fourth century b.c. Another theory traces the origin of the name to the Persian word azar ("fire"') - hence Azerbaijan, "the Land of Fire", because of Zoroastrian temples, with their fires fueled by plentiful supplies of oil. Azerbaijan maintained its national character after its conquest by the Arabs in the mid-seventh century a.d. and its subsequent conversion to Islam. At this time it became a province in the early Muslim empire. Only in the 11th century, when Oghuz Turkic tribes under the Seljuk dynasty entered the country, did Azerbaijan acquire a significant number of Turkic inhabitants. The original Persian population became fused with the Turks, and gradually the Persian language was supplanted by a Turkic dialect that evolved into the distinct

The terms "Azerbaijani" and "Azerbaijani" were born only in the 20th century upon the formation of the short-lived Republic of Azerbaijan in 1918, prior to which Azerbaijanis were referred to as Tatars.^[30]

Many place names in the present-day Republic of Azerbaijan and

Archaeological evidence from these regions shows a large influence of Zoroastrianism, a monotheistic Iranian religion, along with an Iranian presence of more than 3000 years, starting with the settlement of the Medes in the area, both of which shaped the Iranian identity of the region that lasted until the Turkic invasions.^[31] However, no evidence has been discovered that the Huns ever created permanent settlements in the area, as some Turkish historians claim.^[32]

Scholars see cultural similarities between modern Persians and Azerbaijanis as evidence of an ancient Iranian influence.

Also, remnants of former Iranian tribes that survived Turkification also provides evidence of the Iranian character of Azerbaijani's. The Talyshs and Tats are both an Iranian people who speak Iranian languages, with Tats speaking a dialect of Persian.^[34][35]

Genetics

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Some new genetic studies suggest that recent erosion of human population structure might not be as important as previously thought, and overall genetic structure of human populations may not change with the immigration events and thus in the Azerbaijanis' case; the Azerbaijanis of the Azerbaijan Republic most of all genetically resemble to other Caucasian people like Armenians,^[36] and the people of the Iranian Azerbaijan region to other Iranians.^[37]

A study from 2007^[38] demonstrated a "strong genetic tie between Kurds and Azerbaijanis of Iran", with the results of the analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) from the same study having "revealed no significant difference between these two populations and other major ethnic groups of Iran."

In another study from 2017,^[39] Iranian Azerbaijani subjects from Tabriz were studied for human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles, which were used to compare their relatedness with other Middle Eastern, Caucasian, Mediterranean and Central Asian populations. According to the study, "genetic distances, Neighbour Joining and Correspondence analyses showed that Azerbaijanis were close to Kurds, who have shown a closer Mediterranean/Caucasus HLA profile, and Gorgan (Turkmen) who have shown a closer Central Asia profile".

It was noted that studies on genetic distances based on both HLA allele and class II haplotype frequencies "place Azerbaijani sample in the Mediterranean cluster close to Kurds, Gorgan,

The neighbor joining (NJ) relatedness dendrogram based on HLA-DRB1 allele frequencies from the same study separated the various populations examined in the study in two well-differentiated clusters: the first cluster grouping North and South Mediterraneans (Europeans and Africans), Middle Easterners, Caucasians and western Siberians, and the second cluster grouping the rest of the analyzed populations (central and eastern Siberians and Orientals). Azerbaijanis were integrated in the first cluster, together with Gorgan (Iranian Turkmen population) and Kurds, and in an intermediate position between Iranian populations and western Siberians, namely the Chuvashes, Mansis, Buryats and Todja (Tozhu Tuvans). Correspondence analyses based on HLA-DRB1 allele frequencies showed similar results.

The HLA genetic distances observed in the study "presented low values in Altaic populations and Mansi with respect to Azerbaijanis, which are shown in a half-way position between Mediterranean and Central Asian, but much close to Todja, Tuvinians and Mansi, in correspondence analyses (Fig 3). These results suggest that “turkification” process caused by Oghuz Turkic tribes could also contribute to the genetic background of Azerbaijani people, as other genetic and historic data argue (Yarshater, 1988; Schonberg et al. 2011)."

The MtDNA subclade U7a4 peaks among the modern inhabitants of Azerbaijan (26%) and Azerbaijani inhabitants of northwestern Iran (16-22%), while occurring in the rest of Iran at frequencies from 2-16%.^{[citation needed]}

According to generalized data from various laboratories, more than half of Azerbaijanis are carriers of Y-haplogroups of Near East origin (E-M35, G-P15, J-P209 and T-CTS6507), which confirms the hypothesis of Neolithic migrations from the Fertile Crescent. East European subclades of the Y-haplogroup

Ancient historians, including Herodotus, Polybius and Strabo, mention the region as a mixed one, with Iranian and non-Iranian groups, such as the Utians, a Caucasian group that still exists in Azerbaijan.^[42]

Oghuz arrival

Oghuz dominance in Southwestern Asia begins in the 11th century, with the

• History of Azerbaijan
• Azerbaijanis
• Turkification
• Genetic history of the Turkish people
• Genetic history of Europe
• Genetic history of the Middle East

Notes