Located on the peripheries of
Turkey,
Iran, and
Russia, the region has been an arena for political, military, religious, and cultural rivalries and expansionism for centuries. Throughout its history, the Caucasus was usually incorporated into the
Iranian world. At the beginning of the 19th century, the
Russian Empire conquered the territory from
Qajar Iran. The site yields the earliest unequivocal evidence for the presence of early humans outside the African continent; and the Dmanisi skulls are the five oldest
hominins ever found outside
Africa.
Antiquity Kura–Araxes culture from about 4000 BC until about 2000 BC enveloped a vast area of approximately 1,000 km by 500 km, and mostly encompassed, on modern-day territories, the Southern Caucasus (except western Georgia), northwestern Iran, the northeastern Caucasus, eastern Turkey, and as far as Syria. Under
Ashurbanipal (669–627 BC), the boundaries of the
Assyrian Empire reached as far as the Caucasus Mountains. Later ancient kingdoms of the region included
Armenia,
Albania,
Colchis and
Iberia, among others. These kingdoms were later incorporated into various
Iranian empires, including
Media, the
Achaemenid Empire,
Parthia, and the
Sassanid Empire, who would altogether rule the Caucasus for many hundreds of years. In 95–55 BC, under the reign of the Armenian king
Tigranes the Great, the
Kingdom of Armenia included Kingdom of Armenia, vassals Iberia, Albania, Parthia,
Atropatene,
Mesopotamia,
Cappadocia,
Cilicia,
Syria,
Nabataean kingdom, and
Judea. By the time of the first century BC,
Zoroastrianism had become the dominant religion of the region; however, the region would go through two other religious transformations. Owing to the strong rivalry between Persia and
Rome, and later
Byzantium. The Romans first arrived in the region in the 1st century BC with the annexation of the kingdom of Colchis, which was later turned into the province of
Lazicum. The next 600 years was marked by a
conflict between Rome and
Sassanid Empire for the control of the region. In western Georgia the eastern Roman rule lasted until the Middle Ages. at the peak of its might at the beginning of the 1st century B.C.
Middle Ages at the peak of its might, early 13th century. As the
Arsacid dynasty of Armenia (an eponymous branch of the
Arsacid dynasty of Parthia) was the first nation to adopt Christianity as
state religion (in 301 AD), and
Caucasian Albania and
Georgia had become Christian entities,
Christianity began to overtake
Zoroastrianism and pagan beliefs. With the
Muslim conquest of Persia, large parts of the region
came under the rule of the Arabs, and
Islam penetrated the region. In the 10th century, the
Alans (proto-
Ossetians) founded the Kingdom of
Alania, that flourished in the
Northern Caucasus, roughly in the location of latter-day
Circassia and modern
North Ossetia–Alania, until its destruction by the
Mongol invasion in 1238–39. During the Middle Ages,
Bagratid Armenia, the
Kingdom of Tashir-Dzoraget, the
Kingdom of Syunik, the
Principality of Khachen and the greater local Armenian population faced multiple threats after the fall of the antiquated
Kingdom of Armenia.
Caucasian Albania maintained close ties with
Armenia and the
Church of Caucasian Albania shared the same Christian dogmas with the
Armenian Apostolic Church and had a tradition of their Catholicos being ordained through the Patriarch of Armenia. In the 12th century, the Georgian king
David the Builder drove the Muslims out of the Caucasus and made the
Kingdom of Georgia a strong regional power. In 1194–1204 Georgian
Queen Tamar's armies crushed new Seljuk Turkish invasions from the southeast and south and launched several successful campaigns into Seljuk Turkish-controlled Southern Armenia. The Georgian Kingdom continued military campaigns in the Caucasus region. As a result of her military campaigns and the temporary fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1204, Georgia became the strongest Christian state in the whole
Near East area, encompassing most of the Caucasus stretching from Northern Iran and Northeastern Turkey to the North Caucasus. The Caucasus region was conquered by the
Ottomans,
Turco-Mongols, local kingdoms and khanates, as well as, once again,
Iran.
Modern period , by
Pyotr Gruzinsky Up to and including the early 19th century, most of the
Southern Caucasus and southern
Dagestan all formed part of the
Persian Empire. In 1813 and 1828 by the
Treaty of Gulistan and the
Treaty of Turkmenchay respectively, the Persians were forced to irrevocably cede the Southern Caucasus and Dagestan to
Imperial Russia. In the ensuing years after these gains, the
Russians took the remaining part of the Southern Caucasus, comprising western Georgia, through several wars from the
Ottoman Empire. In the second half of the 19th century, the Russian Empire also conquered the North Caucasus. In the aftermath of the
Caucasian Wars, the Russian military perpetrated an
ethnic cleansing of Circassians, expelling this indigenous population from its homeland. Between the 1850s and World War I, about a million North Caucasian Muslims arrived in the Ottoman Empire as refugees. Having killed and deported most of the Armenians of Western Armenia during the
Armenian genocide, the Turks intended to eliminate the Armenian population of
Eastern Armenia. During the 1920
Turkish–Armenian War, 60,000 to 98,000 Armenian civilians were estimated to have been killed by the Turkish army. In the 1940s, around 480,000
Chechens and
Ingush, 120,000
Karachay–
Balkars and
Meskhetian Turks, thousands of
Kalmyks, and 200,000
Kurds in Nakchivan and
Caucasus Germans were
deported en masse to Central Asia and Siberia by the Soviet security apparatus. About a quarter of them died. in the mid-20th century, when it included a number of territories in the North Caucasus. The Southern Caucasus region was unified as a single political entity twice – during the
Russian Civil War (
Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic) from 9 April 1918 to 26 May 1918, and under the
Soviet rule (
Transcaucasian SFSR) from 12 March 1922 to 5 December 1936. Following the
dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991,
Georgia,
Azerbaijan and
Armenia became independent nations. The region has been subject to various territorial disputes since the collapse of the Soviet Union, leading to the
First Nagorno-Karabakh War (1988–1994), the
East Prigorodny Conflict (1989–1991), the
War in Abkhazia (1992–93), the
First Chechen War (1994–1996), the
Second Chechen War (1999–2009),
Russo-Georgian War (2008), the
Second Nagorno-Karabakh War (2020) and the
2023 Azerbaijani offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh. ==Mythology==