Early history According to Russian and later Soviet ethnographer Grigory Chursin, another wave of Kurdish immigration in western parts of modern Azerbaijan may have taken place in 1589, at the time of the
Ottoman–Safavid War, when "victorious Safavid soldiers" chose to stay in the conquered lands.
Safavids resettled Shi'a Kurds where borders of the historical regions of
Karabakh and
Zangezur met. In the eighteenth century, many Kurdish tribes had formed tribal unions with Azeris in Karabakh lowlands. Nineteenth-century Russian historian Peter Budkov mentioned that in 1728, groups of Kurds and
Shahsevans engaged in semi-nomadic cattle-breeding in the
Mughan plain applied for Russian citizenship. In 1807, amidst the
Russo-Persian War over the South Caucasus, a tribe chief by the name of Mehmed Sefi Sultan moved from
Persian to the
Karabakh khanate followed by 600 Kurdish families. By the second half of the nineteenth century, Kurds were found in large numbers in the uyezds of
Zangezur,
Javanshir and
Jabrayil. Small populations of Kurds were also found in the uyezds of
Nakhchivan,
Sharur-Daralagoz and
Aresh. Mass migration of Kurds from Persia and to a lesser degree from the
Ottoman Empire into mountainous regions of present-day Azerbaijan continued all throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, until 1920 when Azerbaijan became part of the
Soviet Union. The Kurdish population of the South Caucasus was prone to internal immigration. In the 1920s, a number of Kurds from Azerbaijan relocated to Armenia where they settled mainly in the
Azeri-populated regions, Common religion (unlike the majority of Kurds, Kurds of Azerbaijan are predominantly
Shi'a Muslim like most Azeris) and shared elements of culture led to rapid assimilation of Azerbaijan's Kurdish population already by the end of the nineteenth century. Statistical data from 1886 shows that Kurds of
Jabrayil,
Arash and partly
Javanshir spoke
Azeri as a first language. According to the first Soviet census of 1926, only 3,100 (or 8.3%) of Azerbaijan's Kurdish population (which at the time numbered 37,200 people) spoke Kurdish.
Red Kurdistan After the establishment of the Soviet rule in Azerbaijan, the Central Executive Committee of the
Azerbaijan SSR created in 1923 an administrative unit known as
Red Kurdistan in the districts of
Lachin,
Qubadli and
Zangilan, with its capital in Lachin. According to the 1926 census, 73% of its population was Kurdish and 26% was Azeri. In 1930 it was abolished and most remaining Kurds were progressively recategorized as
Azerbaijani. In the 1930s, a traditional Kurdish puppet theatre
kilim arasi in
Aghjakand and a Kurdish Pedagogical College in Lachin still functioned. Kurds continued to assimilate into the dominant culture of the neighbouring Azeris. Historically mixed Azeri-Kurdish marriages were commonplace. Due to the Azerbaijani language being dominant and most Kurds in Azerbaijan being linguistically assimilated, the Kurdish language was rarely passed on to the children in such marriages. During the
perestroika era in the 1980s, there was a resurgence in the nationalist aspirations of Soviet Kurds, leading to the formation of the
Yekbûn organization in 1989, which aimed to reestablish Kurdish autonomy. The government of the USSR under
Gorbachev attempted to help the Kurds, but aspirations for an autonomous Kurdish state within the Soviet Union failed after the
1991 collapse of the USSR and significant hostility to the plan by
Turkey.
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and Kurdish Republic of Lachin The
First Nagorno-Karabakh War between Armenia and Azerbaijan spilled across the region of
Nagorno-Karabakh into the traditionally Kurdish populated areas in both of these countries. In the late 1980s, up to 18,000 Kurds left Armenia for Azerbaijan. In 1992–1993, Armenian troops advanced into Kalbajar, Lachin, Qubadli and Zangilan, forcing the non-Armenian civilian population out. As much as 80% of the Kurdish population of those regions settled in IDP camps in
Aghjabadi. Nonetheless, in 1992, after the capture of
Lachin by Armenian forces during the
First Nagorno-Karabakh War, a new organization, the "Caucasian Kurdistan Freedom Movement", led by Wekîl Mustafayev, declared the establishment of the
Kurdish Republic of Lachin on the former territory of Red Kurdistan. However, by then the vast majority of the Kurdish population had fled on account of the war, hence this attempt failed and the ephemeral state dissolved itself the same year. Mustafayev later took refuge in Italy. Lachin then came under the administration of the Armenian-backed
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. As a result of the
2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, Azerbaijan retook Kalbajar, Lachin, Qubadli and Zangilan. According to the
2020 Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement, internally displaced persons and refugees shall return to the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent areas under the supervision of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. ==Demographics==