Background Following the Russo-Persian Wars of
1804–13 and
1826–28, the Caucasian territories of
Qajar Iran were ceded to the
Russian Empire. The
Treaty of Gulistan in 1813 and the
Treaty of Turkmenchay in 1828 finalized the borders between the Russian Empire and Qajar Iran. The areas to the north of the river
Aras, including the territory of the contemporary Republic of Azerbaijan, were Iranian territory until they were occupied by Russia over the course of the 19th century. As a direct result of Qajar Iran's forced ceding to Russia, the Azerbaijanis are nowadays parted between two nations:
Iran and
Azerbaijan. Despite living on two sides of an international border, the Azerbaijanis form a single ethnic group.
Russo-Persian War (1826–28) The burden of the
Russo-Persian War (1826–28) was on the tribes of
Qaradağ region, who being in front line, provided human resources and provision of the Iranian army. In the wake of the war, a significant fraction of the inhabitants of this area lived as nomadic tribes (ایلات). The major tribes included; Cilibyanlu 1,500 tents and houses, Karacurlu 2500, Haji Alilu 800, Begdillu 200, and various minor groups 500. At the time
Ahar, with 3,500 inhabitants, was the only city of Qaradağ.
Persian Constitutional Revolution During the
Persian Constitutional Revolution,
Tabriz was at the center of battles which followed the ascent to the throne of
Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar on 8 January 1907. The revolutionary forces were headed by
Sattar Khan who was originally from
Arasbaran.
Haydar Khan Amo-oghli had significant contribution in the inception and progression of the revolution, and introducing leftist ideas into Iranian mainstream politics. During the following tumultuous years,
Amir Arshad, the headman of Haji-Alilu tribe, had a major impact on the subsequent political developments in Iran in relation to the status of
Iranian Kurds. He is credited with fending off communism from Iran.
Persian nationalism (also known as Akhundov), celebrated ethnic
Azerbaijani author, playwright, philosopher, and founder of modern literary criticism. Born in
Nukha to a family originally hailing from
Iranian Azerbaijan. The ill-fated
Constitutional Revolution did not bring democracy to Iran. Instead,
Rezā Shāh, then Brigadier-General of the
Persian Cossack Brigade, deposed
Ahmad Shah Qajar, the last
Shah of the
Qajar dynasty, and founded the
Pahlavi dynasty in 1925 and established a despotic monarchy. His insistence on ethnic
Persian nationalism and cultural unitarism along with forced
detribalization and
sedentarization resulted in suppression of several ethnic and social groups, including Azerbaijanis. Ironically, the main architect of this totalitarian policy, which was justified by reference to racial ultra-nationalism, was
Mirza Fatali Akhundov, an intellectual from Azerbaijan. In accordance with the Orientalist views of the supremacy of the
Aryan peoples, he idealized pre-Islamic
Achaemenid and
Sassanid empires, whilst negating the 'Islamization' of
Persia by Muslim forces." This idealization of a distant past was put into practice by both the
Pahlavi kings, particularly
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi who honored himself with the title
Āryāmehr,
Light of the Aryans.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in an interview concisely expressed his views by declaring, "we Iranians are
Aryans, and the fact that we are not adjacent to other Aryan nations in
Europe is just a geographical anomaly.".
Mirza Fatali Akhundov is not the only Azerbaijani intellectual in framing Iranian ultra-nationalism.
Hassan Taqizadeh, the organizer of "Iran Society" in
Berlin, has contributed to the development of Iranian nationalism. Since 1916 he published "Kaveh" periodical in Farsi language, which included articles emphasizing the racial unity of Germans and Iranians.
Ahmad Kasravi,
Taqi Arani, Hossein Kazemzadeh (Iranshahr) and Mahmoud Afshar advocated the suppression of the Azerbaijani language as they supposed that the multilingualism contradicted the racial purity of Iranians.
Pan-Turkism The failure of the Democrats in the arena of Iranian politics after the Constitutional movement and the start of modern state-building paved the way for the emergence of the titular ethnic group's cultural nationalism. Whereas the adoption of integrationist policies preserved Iran's geographic integrity and provided the majority of Iranians with a secure and firm national identity, the blatant ignoring of other demands of the Constitutional movement, such as the call for the formation of a society based on law and order, left the country still searching for a political identity. The ultimate purpose was to persuade these populations to secede from the larger political entities to which they belonged and join the new pan-Turkic homeland. It was the latter appeal to Iranian Azerbaijanis, which, contrary to
Pan-Turkist intentions, caused a small group of Azerbaijani intellectuals to become the strongest advocates of the territorial integrity of Iran. This government autonomously ruled the province from November 1945 to November 1946. However, the Soviet soon realized their idea was premature, the mass of the population did not support separatism; under largely Western pressure, the
Soviet troops withdrew in 1946, which resulted in the quick collapse of the
Azerbaijan People's Government. In the Soviet times, the word was borrowed into the Russian slang of
Ashkhabad and was used to refer to forestallers. Iranian Azerbaijanis often worked menial jobs, including on
dyer's madder plantations in
Guba where 9,000 out of 14,000 Iranian Azerbaijani contract workers were employed as of 1867. In the 1886 economic report on the life of the peasantry of the Guba district, Yagodynsky reported frequent cases of intermarriage between the Iranian work migrants and local women which prompted the former to settle in villages near Guba and quickly assimilate. Children from such families would be completely integrated in the community and not be regarded as foreigners or outsiders by its residents. , Iranian Azerbaijani, was a key figure in the
Iranian Constitutional Revolution and is held in great esteem by many Iranians. Starting from the late nineteenth century, Baku was another popular destination for Iranian Azerbaijanis, thanks to its highly developing oil industry. By the beginning of the twentieth century, they already constituted 50% of all the oil workers of Baku, and numbered 9,426 people in 1897, 11,132 people in 1903 and 25,096 people in 1913.
Amo-oghli and
Sattar Khan notably worked in the Baku oil fields before returning to Iran and engaging in politics. In 1925, there were 45,028 Iranian-born Azerbaijanis in the
Azerbaijan SSR. Of those, 15,000 (mostly oil workers, port and navy workers and railway workers) had retained Iranian citizenship by 1938 and were concentrated in Baku and
Ganja. In accordance with the 1938 decision of the
Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, residents of Azerbaijan with Iranian citizenship were given 10 days to apply for Soviet citizenship and were then relocated to
Kazakhstan. Those who refused (numbering 2,878 people) became subject to deportation back to Iran immediately. Some naturalized Iranian Azerbaijanis were later accused of various anti-Soviet activities and arrested or even executed in the so-called "Iranian operation" of 1938. After the fall of the
Azerbaijan People's Government in 1946, as many as 10,000 Iranian Azerbaijani political émigrés relocated to Soviet Azerbaijan, fleeing the inevitable repressions of the Shah's government.
Islamic republic era and present-day However, with the advent of the
Iranian Revolution in 1979, the emphasis shifted away from nationalism as the new government highlighted religion as the main unifying factor. Within the Islamic Revolutionary government there emerged an Azerbaijani nationalist faction led by
Ayatollah Kazem Shariatmadari, who advocated greater regional autonomy and wanted the constitution to be revised to include secularists and opposition parties; this was denied. Azerbaijanis make up 25% of
Tehran's population and 30.3% – 33% of the population of the
Tehran Province. Azerbaijanis in Tehran live in all of the cities within
Tehran Province. They are by far the largest ethnic group after
Persians in Tehran and the wider Tehran Province. In October 2020, several protests erupted in Iranian cities, including the capital Tehran and Tabriz, in support of
Azerbaijan in its
conflict with Armenia over the
Nagorno-Karabakh region. Iranian Azerbaijani demonstrators chanted pro-Azerbaijan slogans and clashed with Iran's security forces. ==Politics and society==