Caucasian Albania is a modern exonym for a former state located in ancient times in the Caucasus, mostly in what is now Azerbaijan. The modern endonyms for the area are Aghwank and Aluank, among the Udi people, who regard themselves as descended from the inhabitants of Caucasian Albania. However, its original endonym is unknown.
Azerbaijan or Azarbaijan, also known as Iranian Azerbaijan, is a historical region in northwestern Iran that borders Iraq and Turkey to the west, and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, Armenia, and the Republic of Azerbaijan proper to the north.
A prayer rug or prayer mat is a piece of fabric, sometimes a pile carpet, used by Muslims, some Christians, especially in Orthodox Christianity and some Baha'i during prayer.
Shusha or Shushi is a city in Azerbaijan, in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Situated at an altitude of 1,400–1,800 metres (4,600–5,900 ft) in the Karabakh mountains, the city was a mountain resort in the Soviet era.
The culture of Azerbaijan combines a diverse and heterogeneous set of elements which developed under the influence of Iranic, Turkic and Caucasian cultures. Azerbaijani culture includes its distinct cuisine, literature, folk art, and music.
Shamakhi is a city in Azerbaijan and the administrative centre of the Shamakhi District. The city's estimated population as of 2010 was 31,704. It is famous for its traditional dancers, the Shamakhi Dancers, and also for perhaps giving its name to the Soumak rugs.
An oriental rug is a heavy textile made for a wide variety of utilitarian and symbolic purposes and produced in "Oriental countries" for home use, local sale, and export.
The Quba Khanate was one of the most significant semi-independent khanates that existed from 1747 to 1806, under Iranian suzerainty. It bordered Caspian sea to the east, Derbent Khanate to the north, Shaki Khanate to the west, and Baku and Shirvan Khanates to the south. In 1755 it captured Salyan from the Karabakh Khanate.
Abbasgulu agha Bakikhanov, Abbas Qoli Bakikhanov, or Abbas-Qoli ibn Mirza Mohammad (Taghi) Khan Badkubi was an Azerbaijani writer, historian, journalist, linguist, poet and philosopher. He was son of the third khan of Baku Mirza Muhammad Khan II. Served as an officer in the Imperial Russian Army and participated in the Russo-Persian War of 1826–1828, he later retired and settled in Quba.
The khanates of the Caucasus, also known as the Azerbaijani khanates, Persian khanates, or Iranian khanates, were various administrative units in the South Caucasus governed by a hereditary or appointed ruler under the official rule of Iran. The title of the ruler was khan, which was identical to the Ottoman rank of pasha. Following the assassination of Nader Shah in 1747, internal chaos erupted in Iran, particularly in the South Caucasus, where semi-autonomous khanates emerged as a result of the lack of a centralized government. The khans neither had territorial or religious unity, nor an ethnic/national identity. They were mostly interested in preserving their positions and income.
Azerbaijani carpet is a traditional carpet (rug) made in Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani carpet is a handmade textile of various sizes, with a dense texture and a pile or pile-less surface, whose patterns are characteristic of Azerbaijan's many carpet-making regions. Traditionally, the carpets were used in Azerbaijan to cover floors, decorate interior walls, sofas, chairs, beds and tables.
A subtype of the Kuba rug, antique Seychour rugs are made in the small town of Yukhari-Zeykhur in Azerbaijan in the Northeast Caucasus. Prized for the detailed precision of their drawing and design as well as for their saturated colors, antique Seychour rugs popularly display designs such as cabbage rose and the Seychour cross. Differing from other Caucasian rugs, antique Seychour rugs do not share the same symmetry in their borders; they do however, share a similar flat-woven structure. In these particular rugs, one half of the knot is hidden.
Bessarabian rugs and carpets are the commonly given name for rugs in pile and tapestry technique originating in Russian provinces as well as Ukraine and Moldova during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.1 Some scholars will classify flat-woven carpets as Bessarabian, while referring to knotted-pile carpets as Ukrainian.2 They are predominantly from an area corresponding to modern Bulgaria and Romania.3 Produced under late Ottoman rule, they stand right on the cusp of European and Oriental carpet weaving.
In 1292, Marco Polo was the first to make mention of the Konya carpets in writing when he called them the most beautiful in the world. Konya carpets are named for the region in which they were made. Renamed from the Greek “Iconium” when the Seljuk Sultans of Rum made it their capital, Konya is one of the largest, oldest and continuously occupied cities in Asia Minor.
Soumak is a tapestry technique of weaving sturdy, decorative fabrics used for carpets, rugs, domestic bags and bedding, with soumak fabrics used for bedding known as soumak mafrash.
Anatolian animal carpets represent a special type of pile-woven carpet, woven in the geographical region of Anatolia during the Seljuq and early Ottoman period, corresponding to the 14th–16th century. Very few animal-style carpets still exist today, and most of them are in a fragmentary state. Animal carpets were frequently depicted by Western European painters of the 14th–16th century. By comparison of the few surviving carpets with their painted counterparts, these paintings helped to establish a timeline of their production, and support our knowledge about the early Turkish carpet.
The toponym "Azerbaijan" was historically used to refer to the region located south of the Aras River- today known as Iranian Azerbaijan, located in northwestern Iran. Historians and geographers usually referred to the region north of the Aras River as Arran, but the name "Azerbaijan" has also been extended to this area as well. On May 28, 1918, following the collapse of the Russian Empire, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was proclaimed to the north of the Aras.
Armenians have had a longstanding historical presence in the Shamakhi District. From the 16th century up until the 18th century, Armenians formed the majority population of the capital, Shamakhi. Armenians retained a significant presence in the Shamakhi district until the First Nagorno-Karabakh war, which resulted in the forced displacement of the remaining unassimilated Shamakhi Armenians to Armenia.
Caucasian pile carpets of the ‘dragon’ type are some of the earliest preserved woven productions of the Caucasus region, dating back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries CE. They feature dragon motifs, more or less stylized.
