Antiquity s in
Gobustan National Park dating back to the
10th millennium BC indicating a thriving culture The earliest evidence of human settlement in the territory of Azerbaijan dates back to the late
Stone Age and is related to the
Guruchay culture of
Azykh Cave. Early settlements included the
Scythians during the 9th century BC. The area was conquered by the Achaemenids leading to the spread of
Zoroastrianism.
From the Sasanid period to the Safavid period The
Sasanian Empire turned
Caucasian Albania into a
vassal state in 252, while King
Urnayr officially adopted Christianity as the state religion in the 4th century. Despite Sassanid rule, Caucasian Albania remained an entity in the region until the 9th century, while fully subordinate to Sassanid Iran, and retained its monarchy. Despite being one of the chief vassals of the Sasanian emperor, the Albanian king had only a semblance of authority, and the Sasanian
marzban (military governor) held most civil, religious, and military authority. In the first half of the 7th century, Caucasian Albania, as a vassal of the Sasanians, came under nominal Muslim rule with the
Muslim conquest of Persia. The
Umayyad Caliphate repulsed both the Sasanians and
Byzantines from the
South Caucasus and turned Caucasian Albania into a vassal state after Christian resistance led by King
Juansher was suppressed in 667. The power vacuum left by the decline of the
Abbasid Caliphate was filled by numerous local dynasties such as the
Sallarids,
Sajids, and
Shaddadids. At the beginning of the 11th century, the territory was gradually seized by the waves of migrating
Oghuz Turks from Central Asia, who adopted a
Turkoman ethnonym at the time. The first of these Turkic dynasties established was the
Seljuk Empire, which entered the area by 1067. The pre-Turkic population spoke several
Indo-European and Caucasian languages, among them
Armenian and an
Iranian language,
Old Azeri, which was gradually replaced by a
Turkic language, the early precursor of the
Azerbaijani language of today. Some linguists have also stated that the
Tati dialects of
Iranian Azerbaijan and the Republic of Azerbaijan, like those spoken by the
Tats, are descended from Old Azeri. Locally, the possessions of the subsequent Seljuk Empire were ruled by
Eldiguzids, technically vassals of the Seljuk sultans, but sometimes
de facto rulers themselves. Under the Seljuks, local poets such as
Nizami Ganjavi and
Khaqani gave rise to a blossoming of
Persian literature in the region. in 1538,
Tahmasp I established
Shirvan (in present-day Azerbaijan) as an administrative unit of the
Safavid Iran.
Shirvanshahs, the local dynasty of Arabic origin that was later Persianized, became a vassal state of
Timurid Empire of
Timur and assisted him in his war with the ruler of the
Golden Horde Tokhtamysh. Following Timur's death, two independent and rival Turkoman states emerged:
Qara Qoyunlu and
Aq Qoyunlu. The Shirvanshahs returned, maintaining for numerous centuries to come a high degree of autonomy as local rulers and vassals as they had done since 861. In 1501, the
Safavid dynasty of Iran subdued the Shirvanshahs and gained its possessions. In the course of the next century, the Safavids
converted the formerly Sunni population to Shia Islam, as they did with the population in what is modern-day Iran. The Safavids allowed the Shirvanshahs to remain in power under Safavid suzerainty until 1538, when Safavid King
Tahmasp I completely deposed them and made the area into the Safavid
province of Shirvan. The Sunni Ottomans briefly managed to occupy present-day Azerbaijan as a result of the
Ottoman–Safavid War of 1578–1590; by the early 17th century, they were ousted by Safavid Iranian ruler
Abbas I. In the wake of the demise of the Safavid dynasty,
Baku and its environs were briefly occupied by the Russians as a consequence of the
Russo-Persian War of 1722–1723. Remainder of present Azerbaijan was
occupied by the Ottomans from 1722 to 1736. Despite brief intermissions such as these by Safavid Iran's neighboring rivals, the land remained under Iranian rule from the earliest advent of the Safavids up to the course of the 19th century.
Modern history between 1795 and 1801 After the Safavids, the area was ruled by the Iranian
Afsharid dynasty. After the death of
Nader Shah in 1747, many of his former subjects capitalized on the eruption of instability.
Numerous khanates with various forms of autonomy emerged. The rulers of these khanates were directly related to the ruling dynasties of Iran and were vassals and
subjects of the Iranian shah. The khanates exercised control over their affairs via international trade routes between Central Asia and the West. Thereafter, the area was under the successive rule of the Iranian
Zands and
Qajars. From the late 18th century,
Imperial Russia switched to a more aggressive geo-political stance towards Iran and the
Ottoman Empire. Russia actively tried to gain possession of the Caucasus region which was, for the most part, in the hands of Iran. In 1804, the Russians
invaded and sacked the Iranian town of Ganja, sparking the
Russo-Persian War of 1804–1813. The militarily superior Russians ended the war with a victory. Following Qajar Iran's loss, it was forced to concede suzerainty over most of the khanates, along with Georgia and Dagestan to the Russian Empire, per the
Treaty of Gulistan. during the Russo-Persian War of 1804–1813The area to the north of the Aras River was Iranian territory until Russia occupied it in the 19th century. About a decade later, in violation of the Gulistan treaty, the Russians invaded Iran's
Erivan Khanate. This sparked the final bout of hostilities between the two, the
Russo-Persian War of 1826–1828. The resulting
Treaty of Turkmenchay forced Qajar Iran to cede sovereignty over the Erivan Khanate, the
Nakhchivan Khanate and the remainder of the
Talysh Khanate. Despite the Russian conquest, throughout the entire 19th century, preoccupation with
Iranian culture,
literature, and language remained widespread among Shia and Sunni intellectuals in the Russian-held cities of Baku, Ganja and Tiflis (
Tbilisi, now Georgia). Within the same century, in post-Iranian Russian-held East Caucasia, an Azerbaijani national identity emerged at the end of the 19th century. As a result of the Russian conquest, the
Azerbaijanis are nowadays parted between two nations: Iran and Azerbaijan. After the collapse of the Russian Empire during
World War I, the short-lived
Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic was declared, constituting the present-day republics of Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia. It was followed by the
March Days massacres that took place between 30 March and 2 April 1918 in Baku and adjacent areas of the
Baku Governorate. When the republic dissolved in May 1918, the leading
Musavat party declared independence as the
Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR), adopting the name of "Azerbaijan", a name that prior to the proclamation of the ADR was solely used to refer to the adjacent
northwestern region of contemporary Iran. Among the important accomplishments of the Parliament was the extension of suffrage to women, making ADR the first Muslim nation to grant women equal political rights with men. Independent Azerbaijan lasted only 23 months until the
Bolshevik 11th Soviet Red Army invaded it, establishing the
Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic on 28 April 1920. Although the bulk of the newly formed Azerbaijani army was engaged in putting down an Armenian revolt that had broken out in
Karabakh, Azerbaijanis did not surrender their brief independence of 1918–20 quickly or easily. As many as 20,000 Azerbaijani soldiers died resisting what was effectively a Russian reconquest. Within the ensuing early Soviet period, the Azerbaijani national identity was forged. On the other hand, Armenia was awarded the region of
Zangezur and Turkey agreed to return
Gyumri (then known as Alexandropol). During
World War II, Azerbaijan played a crucial role in the strategic energy policy of the
Soviet Union, with 80 percent of the Soviet Union's oil on the
Eastern Front being supplied by Baku. By decree of the
Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union in February 1942, the commitment of more than 500 workers and employees of the oil industry of Azerbaijan were awarded orders and medals.
Operation Edelweiss carried out by the German
Wehrmacht targeted Baku because of its importance as the energy (petroleum) dynamo of the USSR. Some 250,000 people from Azerbaijan were killed on the front. More than 130 Azerbaijanis were named
heroes of the Soviet Union. Azerbaijani Major-General
Azi Aslanov was twice awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union.
Independence trooper during the
Black January tragedy in 1990 Following the politics of
glasnost initiated by
Mikhail Gorbachev, civil unrest and ethnic strife grew in various regions of the Soviet Union, including
Nagorno-Karabakh, an autonomous region of the Azerbaijan SSR. The disturbances in Azerbaijan, in response to Moscow's indifference to an already heated conflict, resulted in calls for independence and secession, which culminated in the
Black January events in Baku. Later in 1990, the
Supreme Council of the Azerbaijan SSR dropped the words "Soviet Socialist" from the title, adopted the "Declaration of Sovereignty of the Azerbaijan Republic" and restored the flag of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic as the state flag. As a consequence of the failed
1991 Soviet coup attempt in Moscow, the Supreme Council of Azerbaijan adopted a Declaration of Independence on 18 October 1991 which was affirmed by a nationwide referendum in December, while the Soviet Union officially ceased to exist on 26 December. The early years of independence were overshadowed by the
First Nagorno-Karabakh war with the ethnic Armenian majority of Nagorno-Karabakh backed by Armenia. By the end of the hostilities in 1994, Armenians controlled 14–16 percent of Azerbaijani territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh. During the war many atrocities and pogroms by both sides were committed including the massacres at
Malibeyli, Gushchular and
Garadaghly and the
Khojaly massacre, along with the
Baku pogrom, the
Maraga massacre and the
Kirovabad pogrom. Furthermore, an estimated 30,000 people were killed and more than a million people were displaced (more than 800,000 Azerbaijanis and 300,000 Armenians). Four
United Nations Security Council resolutions (
822,
853,
874, and
884) demand for "the immediate withdrawal of all Armenian forces from all occupied territories of Azerbaijan." Many Russians and Armenians fled Azerbaijan as refugees during the 1990s. According to the 1970 census, there were 510,000 ethnic
Russians and 484,000 Armenians in Azerbaijan.
Aliyev family rule, 1993–present In 1993, democratically elected President
Abulfaz Elchibey was overthrown by a military insurrection led by Colonel
Surat Huseynov, which resulted in the rise to power of the former leader of Soviet Azerbaijan,
Heydar Aliyev. In 1994, Huseynov, by that time the prime minister, attempted another military coup against Heydar Aliyev, but he was arrested and charged with treason. In 1995
another coup was attempted against Aliyev, this time by the commander of the Russian
OMON special police unit,
Rovshan Javadov. The coup was averted, resulting in the death of Javadov and disbanding of Azerbaijan's OMON units. At the same time, the country was tainted by rampant corruption in the governing bureaucracy. In October 1998, Aliyev was re-elected for a second term.
Ilham Aliyev, Heydar Aliyev's son, became chairman of the
New Azerbaijan Party as well as
President of Azerbaijan when his father died in 2003. He was
re-elected to a third term as president in October 2013. In April 2018, Aliyev secured his fourth consecutive term in the
election that was boycotted by the main opposition parties as fraudulent. On 27 September 2020, clashes in the unresolved
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resumed along the
Nagorno-Karabakh Line of Contact. Both the armed forces of Azerbaijan and Armenia reported military and civilian casualties. The
Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement and the end of the six-week
war between Azerbaijan and Armenia was widely celebrated in Azerbaijan, as they made significant territorial gains. Despite the much improved economy, particularly with the exploitation of the
Azeri–Chirag–Guneshli oil field and
Shah Deniz gas field, the Aliyev family rule has been criticized with election fraud, high levels of economic inequality and
domestic corruption. In September 2023, Azerbaijan
launched an offensive against the breakaway
Republic of Artsakh in Nagorno-Karabakh that resulted in the dissolution and reintegration of Artsakh on 1 January 2024 and the
expulsion of nearly all ethnic Armenians from the region. On 8 August 2025, Azerbaijani President
Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinyan signed a joint declaration at the
White House, committing to a
peace deal facilitated by the
Trump administration that would end nearly four decades of conflict between the two countries. ==Geography==