Caucasian Albania is a modern exonym for a former state located in ancient times in the Caucasus, mostly overlapping the region of present-day 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.
The name Albania is derived from the Ancient Greek name and Latin , created from Greek sources that incorrectly translated the Armenian language. The prefix "Caucasian" is used to avoid confusion with Albania in the Balkans, which has no geographical or historical connections to Caucasian Albania.
Little is known of the region's prehistory, including the origins of Caucasian Albania as a geographical and/or ethnolinguistic concept. In the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD, the area south of the Greater Caucasus and north of the Lesser Caucasus was divided between Caucasian Albania in the east, Caucasian Iberia in the center, Colchis in the west, Armenia in the southwest and Atropatene to the southeast.
In 252, Caucasian Albania acknowledged the suzerainty of the Sasanian Empire, appearing among its provinces in Shapur I's inscription at the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht. The kingdom would remain an integral part of the empire until its fall. By the end of the 3rd century, the kings of Caucasian Albania were replaced with an Arsacid family, and would later be succeeded by another Iranian royal family in the 5th century AD, the Mihranids.
Geonyms
Aghuank (Old Armenian: Աղուանք Ałuankʿ, Modern Armenian: Աղվանք Aġvank’) is the Armenian name for Caucasian Albania. Armenian authors mention that the name derived from the word "ału" («աղու») meaning amiable in Armenian. The term Aghuank is polysemous and is also used in Armenian sources to denote the region between the Kur and Araxes rivers as part of Armenia.History of Armenia composed by abbot Chamchian, Mikayel. Պատմութիւն Հայոց (History of Armenia). Venice, 1786, p. 131. In the latter case it is sometimes used in the form "Armenian Aghuank" or "Hay-Aghuank".A. Yanovskiy, About the Ancient Caucasian Albania (А. Яновский, О древней Кавказской Албании. Журнал МНЛ, 1864, ч. II, с. 180.)S. V. Yushkov, On question of the boundaries of ancient Albania. Moscow, 1937, p. 137. (С. В. Юшков, К вопросу о границах древней Албании. «Исторические записки АН СССР», т. I, М., 1937, с. 137.)Ghevond Alishan, Aghuank (Ղևոնդ Ալիշան, «Աղուանք»), Venice: "Bazmavep", 1970, N 11-12, p. 341.
The Armenian historian of the region, Movses Kaghankatvatsi, who left the only more or less complete historical account about the region, explains the name Aghvank as a derivation from the word ału (Armenian for sweet, soft, tender), which, he said, was the nickname of Caucasian Albania's first governor Arran and referred to his lenient personality.The History of Aluank by Moses of Kalankatuyk. Book I, chapter IV Movses Kaghankatvatsi and other ancient sources explain Arran or Arhan as the name of the legendary founder of Caucasian Albania (Aghvan) or even of the Iranian tribe known as Alans (Alani), who in some versions was a son of Noah's son Yafet. James Darmesteter, translator of the Avesta, compared Arran with Airyana Vaego which he also considered to have been in the Araxes-Ararat region,Darmesteter, James (trans., ed.). "Vendidad". Zend Avesta I (SBE 4). Oxford University Press, 1880. p. 3, p. 5 n.2,3. although modern theories tend to place this in the east of Iran.
The Parthian name for the region was Ardhan (Middle Persian: Arran). The Arabic was ar-Rān.V. Minorsky. Caucasica IV. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 15, No. 3. (1953), p. 504 In Georgian, it was known as რანი (Rani). In Ancient Greek, it was called . What its inhabitants were called is unknown.
Geography In pre-Islamic times, Caucasian Albania/Arran was a wider concept than that of post-Islamic Arran. Ancient Arran covered all of eastern Transcaucasia, which included most of the territory of the modern-day Azerbaijan Republic and part of the territory of Dagestan. However, in post-Islamic times the geographic notion of Arran reduced to the territory between the Kura and Aras rivers.
Ancient Caucasian Albania lay on the south-eastern part of the Greater Caucasus mountains. It was bounded by Caucasian Iberia (present-day Georgia) to the west, by Sarmatia to the north, by the Caspian Sea to the east, and by the provinces of Artsakh and Utik in Armenia to the west along the Kura river.Anon. Armenian "Geography" («Աշխարհացոյց»), Sec. IV, Asia, The lands of Greater Asia. These boundaries, though, were probably never static—at times the territory of Caucasian Albania included land to the west of the Kura river.
Albania or Arran in Islamic times was a triangle of land, lowland in the east and mountainous in the west, formed by the junction of the Kura and Aras rivers,C. J. F. Dowsett. "The Albanian Chronicle of Mxit'ar Goš", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 21, No. 1/3. (1958) p. 475: "In Albania, Xacen, part of the old province of Arcax, had preserved its independence, and we know that it was partly at the request of one of its rulers, Prince Vaxtang, that Mxit'ar composed his lawbook". Mil plain and parts of the Mughan plain, and in the pre-Islamic times, corresponded roughly to the territory of the modern-day Republic of Azerbaijan.
The districts of Albania were:
Cambysene Getaru Elni/Xeni Begh
Xolmaz Kapalak Hambasi Gelavu Hejeri Kaladasht
The kingdom's capital in antiquity was Qabala (Gabala; Kapalak).Strabo had no knowledge of any city in Albania, although in the 1st century AD Pliny mentions the initial capital of the kingdom - Qabala. The name of the city has been pronounced in many different ways including Gabala, Kabalaka, Shabala, and Tabala.
Classical sources are unanimous in making the Kura River (Cyros) the frontier between Armenia and Albania after the conquest of the territories on the right bank of Kura by Armenians in the 2nd century BC.
The original territory of Albania was approximately 23,000 km2. Yeremyan, Suren T. «Հայաստանը ըստ «Աշխարհացույցի» (Armenia According to the "Ashkharhatsuyts"). Yerevan: Armenian Academy of Sciences, 1963, p. 34. After 387 AD the territory of Caucasian Albania, sometimes referred to by scholars as "Greater Albania," grew to about 45,000 km2. In the 5th century the capital was transferred to Partav in Utik', reported to have been built in the mid-5th century by the King Vache II of Albania,Minorsky, Vladimir. A History of Sharvan and Darband in the 10th-11th Centuries. Cambridge, 1958. but according to M. L. Chaumont, it existed earlier as an Armenian city.
In a medieval chronicle "Ajayib-ad-Dunia", written in the 13th century by an unknown author, Arran is said to have been 30 farsakhs (200 km) in width, and 40 farsakhs (270 km) in length. All the right bank of the Kura River until it joined with the Aras was attributed to Arran (the left bank of the Kura was known as Shirvan). The boundaries of Arran have shifted throughout history, sometimes encompassing the entire territory of the present-day Republic of Azerbaijan, and at other times only parts of the South Caucasus. In some instances, Arran was a part of Armenia.Abi Ali Ahmad ibn Umar ibn Rustah, al-A'laq Al-Nafisah, Tab'ah 1, Bayrut : Dar al-Kutub al-ʻIlmiyah, 1998, pg 96-98.
Medieval Islamic geographers gave descriptions of Arran in general, and of its towns, which included Barda, Beylagan, and Ganja, along with others.
Ethnogenesis
Originally, at least some of the Caucasian Albanians probably spoke Lezgic languages close to those found in modern Dagestan; overall, though, as many as 26 different languages may have been spoken in Caucasian Albania.
According to the linguist Jost Gippert, the ancestors of the peoples of the Lezgic language group—including the Budukhs, Kryts, Lezgins, Rutulians, Tsakhurs, and others—historically lived in the territory of Caucasian Albania.
After the Caucasian Albanians were Christianized in the 4th century, part of the population was assimilated by the Armenians (who dominated in the provinces of Artsakh and Utik that were earlier detached from the Kingdom of Armenia) and Georgians (in the north),Ronald G. Suny: What Happened in Soviet Armenia? Middle East Report, No. 153, Islam and the State. (Jul. - Aug., 1988), pp. 37-40. while the eastern parts of Caucasian Albania were Islamized and absorbed by IranianИстория Востока. В 6 т. Т. 2. Восток в средние века. М., «Восточная литература», 2002. (History of the East. In 6 volumes. Volume 2. Moscow, publishing house of the Russian Academy of sciences «East literature»): At this time the multi-ethnic population of left-bank Albania was increasingly adopiting the Persian language. Mainly, this applies to the cities of Aran and Shirvan, as the two main regions on the territory of Azerbaijan began to be called in the 9th-10th centuries. With regard to the rural population, it would seem that they mostly retained for a long time their old languages, related to the modern Daghestanian languages, especially Lezgin. (Russian text: Пестрое в этническом плане население левобережной Албании в это время все больше переходит на персидский язык. Главным образом это относится к городам Арана и Ширвана, как стали в IX-Х вв. именоваться два главные области на территории Азербайджана. Что касается сельского населения, то оно, по-видимому, в основном сохраняло еще долгое время свои старые языки, родственные современным дагестанским, прежде всего лезгинскому.) and subsequently Turkic peoples (modern Azerbaijanis). Small remnants of this group continue to exist independently, and are known as the Udi people. The pre-Islamic population of Caucasian Albania might have played a role in the ethnogenesis of a number of modern ethnicities, including the Azerbaijanis of Qabala, Zaqatala, Shaki, and Oguz; the Armenians of Oghuz and Shaki; the Georgians of Kakhetia and Hereti (Ingiloy); the Rutulians, the Laks, the Lezgins and the Tsakhurs of Daghestan.
Alphabet and languages
Caucasian Albanian language