By the Safavid period, the Turkic nature of Azerbaijan increased with the influence of the Qizilbash, a Turkic group that was the backbone of the Safavid Empire. Azerbaijanis are by far the largest ethnic group in The Republic of Azerbaijan (over 90%), holding the second-largest community of ethnic Azerbaijanis after neighboring Iran. [70][71]:2 The name Atropates is the Hellenistic form of Old Persian Aturpat which means 'guardian of fire'[72] itself a compound of ātūr () 'fire' (later garbled into ādur (آذر) in (early) New Persian, and is pronounced āzar today)[73] + -pat () suffix for -guardian, -lord, -master[73] (-pat in early Middle Persian, -bod (بُد) in New Persian). MtDNA analysis indicates that Persians, Anatolians and Caucasians are part of a larger West Eurasian group that is secondary to that of the Caucasus. The new Central Asia. Later, in the 10th and 11th centuries, parts of Azerbaijan were ruled by the Kurdish dynasty of Shaddadid and Arab Radawids. Similarly, customs among Azerbaijani villagers do not appear to differ markedly from those of Persian villagers. [85] In the 11th century AD with Seljukid conquests, Oghuz Turkic tribes started moving across the Iranian Plateau into the Caucasus and Anatolia. In the middle of the eleventh century, the Seljuq dynasty overthrew Arab rule and established an empire that encompassed most of Southwest Asia. [179] Large Azerbaijani populations can also be found in central Iran (Tehran # Alborz) due to internal migration. [222] In Azerbaijan, traditions from other religions are often celebrated in addition to Islamic holidays, including Norouz and Christmas. [59][61] The ADR was the first modern parliamentary republic in the Turkic world and Muslim world. [169] Protests in defiance of government bans are dispersed through violence, as on 12 June 2006 when female demonstrators in Haft Tir Square in Tehran were beaten. [168], Resentment came with Pahlavi policies that suppressed the use of the Azerbaijani language in local government, schools, and the press. Present-day name Azerbaijan is the Arabicized from of Āzarpāyegān (Persian: آذرپایگان) meaning 'the guardians of fire' later becoming corrupted to Azerbaijan (Persian: آذربایجان) due to the phonemic shift from /p/ to /b/ and /g/ to /j/ which is a result of the medieval Arabic influences that followed the Arab invasion of Iran, and is due to the lack of the phoneme /p/ and /g/ in the Arabic language. Turkification of the Azerbaijanis derives from the Turkic settlements in the area now known as Azerbaijan, which began and accelerated during the Seljuk period. — СПб., 1890—1907. Conformément à l'article 10 de la loi n° 527-IQ «Sur la citoyenneté de la République d'Azerbaïdjan» daté du 30 Septembre 1998 . [147] The continued presence of pockets of Iranian speakers; Talysh and Caucasian Tats are present in the Republic of Azerbaijan. The Arabs made Caucasian Albania a vassal state after the Christian resistance, led by Prince Javanshir, surrendered in 667. L’Azerbaïdjan (en azéri : Azərbaycan [a] [ɑ z æ r b ɑ j ˈ d͡ʒ ɑ n]), en forme longue la république d'Azerbaïdjan (en azéri : Azərbaycan Respublikası [b] [ɑ z æ r b ɑ j ˈ d͡ʒ ɑ n r e s p u b l i c ɑ ˈ s ɯ]), est un pays du Caucase situé sur la ligne de division entre l'Europe et l'Asie.Sa capitale est Bakou, sa langue officielle est l'azéri et sa monnaie est le manat. Greenwood Publishing Group. [155][156] While genetic analysis of mtDNA indicates that Caucasian populations are genetically closer to Europeans than to Near Easterners, Y-chromosome results indicate closer affinity to Near Eastern groups. [219] An unknown number of Azerbaijanis in the Republic of Azerbaijan have no religious affiliation. Chess is another popular pastime in the Republic of Azerbaijan. After the collapse of the Russian Empire during World War I, the short-lived Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic was declared, constituting what are the present-day republics of Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia. CIA and Library of congress estimates range from 16 to 24 percent—that is, 12–18 million people if we employ the latest total figure for Iran's population (77.8 million). Caucasian Albania's ruler, King Urnayr, went to Armenia and then officially adopted Christianity as the state religion in the fourth century AD, and Albania remained a Christian state until the 8th century. [90] Ancient Iranian people of the Medes forged a vast empire between 900 and 700 BC, which the Achaemenids integrated into their own empire around 550 BC. [148], There is evidence that, despite repeated invasions and migrations, aboriginal Caucasians may have been culturally assimilated, first by Ancient Iranian peoples and later by the Oghuz. Modern Azerbaijani literature continued with a traditional emphasis upon humanism, as conveyed in the writings of Samad Vurgun, Shahriar, and many others. [163] No Azerbaijanis were recorded in the 2001 census in Armenia,[164] where the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resulted in population shifts. When the Southern Caucasus became part of the Russian Empire in the nineteenth century, the Russian authorities, who traditionally referred to all Turkic people as Tatars, defined Tatars living in the Transcaucasus region as Caucasian or Aderbeijanskie (Адербейджанские) Tatars in order to distinguish them from other Turkic groups.