59 Fun Facts About Azerbaijan

Which country, the world's largest with no ocean coast, lies north-east of Azerbaijan across the Caspian?

Kazakhstan lies across the water and shares no land border with Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan counts as landlocked too, despite its long shore, because the Caspian is in effect a lake: the largest inland body of water on Earth.

Which medieval traveller described an oil spring, usually taken to be near Baku, that could fill a hundred ships?

Marco Polo called the oil no good to eat but good to burn, and wrote that people came from vast distances to fetch it, because the countries all around had no other oil.

Only two national capitals lie below sea level: Baku, the lowest of all, and which European city?

Amsterdam is the only other one, and Baku lies far lower: the Caspian on whose shore it stands is an inland lake, and its surface sits more than 25 metres beneath the level of the oceans.

The khazri from the north and the gilavar from the south give Baku which nickname?

City of Winds: the khazri is cold and the gilavar warm, and between them they blow all year. The name Baku itself is popularly traced to an old phrase meaning wind-pounded.

Yanar Dag, a hillside near Baku that has burned continuously for decades, is fed by what?

A natural gas seep feeds the flames through the porous hillside; guides say it has burned for 4,000 years, though other accounts hold it was only set alight in the 1950s.

Azerbaijan's long-standing nickname is the Land of what?

Fire is the word the country sells itself with: 'Azerbaijan, Land of Fire' ran across Atlético Madrid's shirts in the season the club won La Liga and reached the Champions League final.

Which conqueror reinstated the satrap Atropates, Azerbaijan's likely namesake?

Alexander the Great reinstated Atropates as satrap of Media after first replacing him; when Alexander died, Atropates refused to obey his generals and made the province his own kingdom, Atropatene.

Which two treaties, in 1813 and 1828, forced Qajar Iran to cede its Caucasian territories to Russia?

Gulistan and Turkmenchay ended two wars that Iran lost, and the new frontier cut the Azerbaijani people in two, a split that still runs between the Republic of Azerbaijan and Iran.

Which river became the border between Russia and Iran after the 1828 treaty?

The Aras still marks the line, and it left a people divided: more Azerbaijanis now live south of it, in Iran, than in the Republic of Azerbaijan itself.

The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic of 1918 was the first Muslim-majority state to do what?

Grant women equal voting rights with men: the 1918 republic did it two years before the United States, and a decade before Britain let women vote on the same terms as men.

Whose invasion in April 1920 ended the independent Azerbaijan Democratic Republic after just 23 months?

The Red Army crossed the border on 27 April 1920 as Baku's Bolsheviks handed parliament an ultimatum; the deputies voted to give up power rather than see blood shed in the capital.

Germany's 1942 plan to seize Baku's oil fields was code-named after which flower?

Edelweiss, the Alpine flower, named the drive over the Caucasus; Baku's capture was fixed for 25 September 1942 and Hitler's generals gave him a cake of the Caspian, but the army never got there.

Which Swedish industrial family arrived as investors in Baku's oil fields in 1873?

The Nobels built Branobel into one of the world's largest oil firms, and about 12 percent of the fortune Alfred Nobel left to fund the Nobel Prizes came from his shares in it.

Baku's seafront museum of which craft is built to look like its own exhibit, rolled up?

Carpets run through family life here: special ones were woven for weddings, births and mourning, and since 2014 the museum has sat in a building shaped like a rolled rug.

Which region, long home to an ethnic Armenian majority, was at the centre of two wars between Azerbaijan and Armenia?

Nagorno-Karabakh was run by its Armenians for three decades; Azerbaijan retook it in 2020 and 2023, and within weeks more than 100,000 of its roughly 120,000 Armenians had left.

Before he ran Soviet Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev headed the republic's branch of which Soviet organisation?

The KGB made his name: he became head of its Azerbaijani branch in 1967, took over the whole republic two years later, and in 1982 was promoted to the Soviet Politburo in Moscow.

Ilham Aliyev, who became Azerbaijan's president in 2003, is what relation to his predecessor Heydar Aliyev?

His son: the ailing Heydar made Ilham prime minister in August 2003, two months before the election, and in 2017 Ilham appointed his own wife, Mehriban, as vice-president.

Nakhchivan, an autonomous republic of Azerbaijan, is unusual because it is what?

An exclave cut off by Armenia, Nakhchivan still shaped the whole country: Heydar Aliyev was by official account born there, retreated there after Moscow dropped him, and came back from it to take power in 1993.

Which biblical figure is linked by folk etymology to the name Nakhchivan, "place of the first descent"?

Noah, the story goes, settled there after the Ark came to rest on nearby Mount Ararat, and the city still shows visitors a tomb it calls his; scholars treat the link as folklore rather than the name's real root.

Azerbaijan's shortest land border, only about ten miles long, is with which country?

Turkey touches Azerbaijan only along that short riverside strip, yet the two are so close that Heydar Aliyev's phrase for them, 'one nation, two states', became the motto of the alliance.

Mount Bazardüzü, Azerbaijan's highest peak at 4,466 m, sits on the border with which country?

It is also the highest point of Dagestan, and Russia's southernmost point lies a few kilometres away.

Which is the longest river in Azerbaijan, entering the country from Georgia?

The Kura rises in Turkey and runs through Tbilisi before crossing Azerbaijan, where dams built for power and irrigation have slowed it and created the vast Mingachevir reservoir.

Which endangered animal, known for its speed and golden coat, is the national animal of Azerbaijan?

The Karabakh horse, a mountain breed named for the region that raised it, is down to fewer than 1,000 animals, and the state now runs stud farms to keep it from dying out.

On Azerbaijan's flag, red stands for progress and green for Islam; what does the blue stand for?

Turkic identity: the three stripes answer an early nationalist slogan, 'Turkify, Islamize, Europeanize', so blue marks Turkic roots, green the faith and red the push to modernise.

Azerbaijan's first flag, in 1918, was modelled on the red banner of which empire?

The Ottoman Empire: the 1918 flag was a white crescent and eight-pointed star on red, the old Ottoman pattern; within months the republic swapped it for the tricolour but kept the crescent and star.

The 1937 novel 'Ali and Nino' follows a Muslim Azerbaijani boy in Baku who loves a Christian girl from which country?

Georgia: Nino is a Georgian princess, and the love story came to be seen as Azerbaijan's national novel even though its author hid behind the pen name Kurban Said.

Since independence in 1991, Azerbaijani in the Republic has been written in which script?

Latin: the third switch in a century; Arabic script gave way to Latin in 1929, Stalin ordered Cyrillic in 1939, and independence reversed him, while Azerbaijanis in Iran kept the Arabic script throughout.

Which is the flagship dish of Azerbaijani cuisine, made to dozens of regional recipes?

Saffron-rice plov is traditionally served in parts, unlike its Uzbek cousin: the rice is cooked alone and brought on its own platter, with the meat, dried fruit and herbs on others.

Azerbaijanis drink black tea from a narrow-waisted glass called an armudu, a name meaning what?

Pear-shaped: armud is the word for pear, and the pinched waist has a job, keeping the tea below it hot while the wider top cools enough to sip and to hold.

Narsharab, the tart sauce served with grilled sturgeon in Azerbaijan, is made from which fruit?

Pomegranate juice is slowly boiled down until it is thick and sour, then poured over fish and grilled meat, and the town of Goychay throws a festival for the fruit every year.

A recording of Azerbaijani mugham music has been flying away from Earth since 1977 aboard which NASA spacecraft?

The Voyager probes each carry a golden record of Earth's sounds, and beside Bach and Chuck Berry sits a mugham, the improvised classical music of Azerbaijan, played on a reed pipe and taped by Radio Moscow.

Ell and Nikki won the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest for Azerbaijan with which song?

"Running Scared" was written by two Swedes and a Briton and handed to two soloists who had never sung as a duo; it won with only the country's fourth entry and sent the 2012 final to Baku.

Which purpose-built venue on Baku's coastline hosted the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest?

Crystal Hall was a race: work began only in August 2011, after the win, and ended the following April, and on the night its LED skin lit up in the flag colours of each country as its act took the stage.

Nizami Ganjavi, the 12th-century poet born in Ganja, wrote his famous Khamsa in which language?

Persian, not Azerbaijani: he spent his whole life in Ganja writing Persian epics for local rulers, and his 'Layla and Majnun' travelled far enough to give Eric Clapton's 'Layla' its name.

Which landmark of Baku's Old City is a mystery even to scholars, who cannot agree what it was built for?

The Maiden Tower keeps its secret: a Zoroastrian temple, a defensive keep and an observatory have all been argued for, and one popular legend has a girl demand it be built, then leap from the top into the sea.

Which architect designed Baku's Heydar Aliyev Center, a swooping building with hardly a sharp angle in it?

Zaha Hadid, who also drew London's Olympic pool, folded walls, roof and plaza into one flowing surface as a deliberate break from Baku's rigid Soviet blocks; London's Design Museum named it Design of the Year in 2014.

Why did the 'eternal' flame at Baku's Ateshgah temple go out in 1969?

Decades of drilling drained it: the shrine, built by Indian settlers over a burning vent, lost its flame as the oilfields around it grew, and today's fire comes from the city mains, lit for visitors.

Gobustan, a semi-desert reserve south-west of Baku, is famous for what prehistoric feature?

Rock carvings cover the boulders here, more than 6,000 of them, and their sickle-shaped boats looked so like Norway's that Thor Heyerdahl came to believe Scandinavians' ancestors had set out from Azerbaijan.

Which Baku-born chess world champion fled the city during the January 1990 pogroms?

Garry Kasparov, whose mother was Armenian, chartered a plane from Moscow as the anti-Armenian violence spread and filled its seats with relatives, friends and other Armenians fleeing the city.

Baku-born Lev Landau won a Nobel Prize for explaining why ultracold liquid helium can do what?

Flow without friction: Landau's theory of superfluid helium won him the 1962 prize, but a car crash that January left him too badly hurt to travel, so Sweden's ambassador handed it over in Moscow.

Baku-born Lotfi Zadeh gave machines a way to reason with vague terms like 'fairly warm'; what did he call it?

Fuzzy logic was ridiculed by fellow academics, partly for its name, until Japanese engineers put it to work in the 1980s, running a subway's brakes, washing machines, vacuum cleaners and rice cookers.

Azerbaijan's only medal at its first Olympics as an independent nation, in 1996, came in which sport?

Freestyle wrestling: flyweight Namig Abdullayev took silver in Atlanta, the country's only medal of those Games, then went one better with gold in Sydney four years later.

Qarabag FK reached the 2017 Champions League despite what?

Decades in exile: Aghdam fell to Armenian forces in July 1993 and was emptied into a ghost town, so the club rebuilt itself in Baku and in 2017 became the first Azerbaijani side in the group stage.

Who won the first race officially titled the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, in 2017?

The Baku street circuit had first hosted F1 a year earlier as the European Grand Prix.

Which Baku-born cellist had new works written for him by Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Britten?

Mstislav Rostropovich was stripped of Soviet citizenship in 1978 for backing dissidents, and in November 1989 he sat down at the Berlin Wall and played Bach as crowds tore it down.

The khan's palace in Sheki has stained-glass windows of thousands of wooden pieces, assembled without what?

Nails or glue: a shebeke window is thousands of slivers of wood and coloured glass slotted together so tightly that nothing else holds them, a show of the silk money behind the 18th-century palace.

Lerik, a remote district in southern Azerbaijan, is famous for residents said to do what?

Live past 100: the Lerik shepherd Shirali Muslimov was reportedly 168 when he died in 1973 and was regarded in the Soviet Union as the oldest man alive, though he had no birth certificate to prove it.

The Khinalug language has a few thousand speakers, nearly all from one Azerbaijani what?

Highland village: in Khinalug, more than 2,000 metres up in the Caucasus, children grow up speaking it at home, then switch to Azerbaijani for school and anything written.

The Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline carries Caspian crude to a port on which sea?

Mediterranean: before the pipe opened in 2005, most Caspian oil reached buyers through Russian pipelines; this one heads west through Georgia to Turkey's port of Ceyhan, so the oil neither crosses Russia nor comes from the Middle East.

Baku's metro opened in November 1967, on the eve of which 50th anniversary?

The October Revolution: the first five stations were inaugurated in time for the jubilee, yet passengers had to wait, because regular trains only began running on 25 November.

Which annual spring holiday in Azerbaijan derives from the Zoroastrian New Year?

Novruz Bayram was pushed out of public life in Soviet times and at points banned outright, yet it outlived the state that banned it: families still leap over small bonfires and sprout trays of green wheat called semeni.

Baku hosted the inaugural edition of which multi-sport event in 2015?

European Games: Baku was the only city to bid for the first edition, and Azerbaijan flew in Lady Gaga to sing a single song, John Lennon's Imagine, at the opening ceremony.

Which ancient kingdom covering much of modern Azerbaijan shares its name with a place in southern Europe?

Caucasian Albania has no link to the Balkan country; the name comes from Greek and Roman writers. Its king Urnayr was baptised in the 4th century, and it spent centuries as a vassal of Persia's Sasanian kings.

Which Iranian dynasty subdued the Shirvanshahs in 1501 and converted the population to Shia Islam?

The Safavids were led by Ismail I, a boy whose father had died fighting the Shirvanshah; he defeated and killed that same ruler in revenge, was crowned shah at fourteen and made Shia Islam the faith of his realm.

'Leyli and Majnun', premiered in Baku in 1908 by a 22-year-old composer, is known as the Muslim East's first what?

Opera: Uzeyir Hajibeyov set the old love story to improvised mugham singing, and because custom kept women off the stage, the heroine Leyli was sung by a tea-house waiter he had to talk into the part.

Baku named a stadium after Tofiq Bahramov, the linesman who awarded which country's disputed goal in the 1966 World Cup final?

England: Bahramov persuaded the referee that Geoff Hurst's shot had crossed the line, and England won 4-2. He was long wrongly known as 'the Russian linesman', and in 2004 Hurst came to Baku to see a memorial to him unveiled.

The 1921 treaty fixing Turkey's border with the Soviet Caucasus republics is named after which city that it left in Turkey?

Kars, a fortress city tsarist Russia had annexed in 1878, stayed Turkish, and Article V of the same treaty made Nakhchivan an autonomous territory under Azerbaijan's protection.

Along with the Greater and Lesser Caucasus, which range is Azerbaijan's third mountain system?

The Talysh Mountains stand over the wettest corner of the country, which is why the humid subtropical lowlands between their slopes and the Caspian are where Azerbaijan grows its tea and citrus.

Red Town, facing the city of Quba across a river in northern Azerbaijan, is home almost entirely to which community?

Mountain Jews: an 18th-century khan of Quba gave them sanctuary across the river from his own city, and the settlement that grew there is often described as the only all-Jewish town outside Israel.