Azerbaijanis are Aryan Iranian

Azerbaijanis are Aryan Iranian

There have been rumors going around that Babak of 9^th century AD who, for over twenty years, has campaigned against Arabo-Islamic forces in Azarapadagan was a Turk. Also the same small group of Azari people has been seeking the independence of Azerbaijan.

The ignorance of these people from the history of Azerbaijan really makes me wonder. There was no such a thing as Turk in Azarapadagan at the time of Babak the great. The Turkish invasion to Iran started centuries later. Those Azerbaijanis who call themselves Turks and seek independence are the misinformed Aryan Iranians and I will explain to you why, based on my research in history of Iran backed by archaeological facts.

Azarapadagan is one of the oldest regions of Aryan-land (Iran Zamin).  Samuel N. Kramer, an American philologist/archaeologist, professor in University of Pennsylvania in mid. 20^th century who specialized in study of Sumerian civilization in his book "The Sumerians, Their history, Culture, and Character" refers to a country located around “Lake Urumieh" called "Aratta" which was considered an advanced country and had a good relationship with the Sumerians (who were the most civilized people of that period). 

The major reason for their good relation was that Arattans used to worship one of Sumerian goddess “Innaana”. Also according to Kramer Arattans Mountains were rich in precious stones and people of Aratta were expert in stone cutting and used to export sculptured statues of gods of other nationalities made out of colorful precious stones. The rich Sumerians, with their numerous gods and goddesses and no mountains on their lands, were the major customers of the Arattans.

Actually once a war broke down between the two nations over the sale and shipment of statue of Innaana to Sumer that the government of Aratta had refused to sell. Gilgamesh the king of superpower Sumer invaded Aratta and forced the shipment of the statue to Sumer. That was as far back as 3,500 BC.

According to Xenophon, in 401 B.C. the present day Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, and an area called Alorodio used to be satrap # 18th of the Persian Empire and at that time Azerbaijan was called Urartu or Ararat.
After Alexander's death the satrap in question went under command of one of Alexander's generals. Some times in 320 s B.C. an Iranian by the name of Atropat or Azarpad conquered the land and received its independence from the Greeks and the name was changed to Atropatan, or Azarpadgan.

The ancient Azari language was an Indo-European language; a sub branch of family of “Iranian Languages” very similar to Kurdish and Geelaki dialect. 
Unfortunately the Azari language gradually became a dead language after Shah Ismail Safavi came to power. Pleas see the map of Iranian languages. 

As it can be seen on the above map the “Persian language” is not a major branch of Indo-European languages but a sub-branch Of “Iranian languages” which that in turn is a sub-branch of “Indo-Iranian” languages and the latter one is considered one of the major branches of Indo-European languages.

Within Iranian Languages, Persian is a language equal to other Iranian dialects such as; Avestan (a dead language like Latin in European languages), Pashtu, Dari-Persian, Kurdish, ancient Azari and many more. But Persian language became internationally known as the language of Iranian people after the formation of Persian Empire in 550 BC by Achaemenid whose language was Persian. Now it is referred to as “Old Persian”.

Now back to subject of Azerbaijan; the first Turkic tribe that invaded Azerbaijan was the Kharazmian which occurred in 9th and 10th century AD. At that time there were hundreds of thousand of Aryan Azaries living in Azerbaijan. How could a few thousands Turks change the ethnicity of hundreds of thousands of Azaries?

Today's Azaries, as far as race and ethnicity is concerned are Aryans and real Iranian. Their language first began becoming influenced by the Turks and Mongols due to prolonged perpetual occupations by the Turks and Mongols. But the real change of language in Azerbaijan did not occur until as recently as Safavied era that used to speak Turkish in their day to day lives and also later-on in their administration.

There were two major reasons that Safavies, the descendants of Sheikh Safi who was a pure Iranian from Geelan, were more comfortable with Turkish language:

         a) Sheikh Safi was a Sunni preacher from Geelaan who moved to Tabreez in latter years of 13^th century AD. His grandson Khaajeh Ali, who got into politics, was a famous “Shaafei-Sunni” preacher who’s fame  acquired the respect of religious fanatic Taymoor Lang who defeated more than a dozen Tartar-Turkish tribes and took more than thirty thousands prisoners. On his way beck to Samarghand Taymoor went to visit Khaajeh Ali in Ardabil to pay his respect. Khaajeh Ali requested from Taymoor the release of entire prisoners that saved them from a certain death.

That action of Khaajeh Ali made all those Tatar-Turkish tribes to become beholden to him and to his descendant.  From that point-on, for several generations, these Tartar tribes played an essential role in the success of Safavi family all the way to Shah Ismail and beyond.

          b) Sheikh Janeed, the grandson of Khaajeh Ali married a Turkish woman from the royal family of Ottomans. That woman fixed her own cousin for their son Shaykh Haydar, a politician and religious leader, who converted into “Soofigarri” to create a front to curtail the influence of Ottoman Empire in Azerbaijan.  His son Ismail also married a Turk within the same family. Ismail, later-on Shah-Ismail, under the influence of his teacher “Sheikh Shamsaldin Geelani”, a Shiia mullah, has converted into “Shiagarry” again for the purpose of confronting the powerful Sunny Ottomans.

As we can see, three generations in the family had Turkish mothers and grandmothers and also almost entire Ismail’s army called "Qizilbash" , and two generations before him, consisted of Tartar Turkish tribesmen who could not speak Persian at that time. and they also used to work in administrative positions of the Safavi dynasty. 
Note: Ismail's Tartars consisted of; Ustaclu, Shamlu, Rumlu, Tekelu, Zhulkadir, Afshar, Qajar and Varsak tribes.
Consequently, after the occupation of Azerbaijan by Ismail in 1501, the native Azari speaking people of Azerbaijan had to learn Turkish language to be able to communicate with the Turkish speaking governmental officials. To learn more about the Safavied please read my article on this blog: What is wrong with us the Iranians: http://maziaraptin.blogspot.com/2012/02/what-is-wrong-with-us-iranians.html

Consequently beginning from Shah Ismail period the language of Azari people gradually started changing to Turkish. There are still people in remote villages of Azerbaijan who speak ancient Azari mixed with some Turkish words in it. It would be a good idea if the Turkic speaking Azaries would consider reviving their ancient native language instead of insisting to promote the Turkish; this is something to think about. We the Parsi speaking Iranians are trying to remove Arabic words from Persian as much as possible why not you do the same?

With above in mind if Azaries prefer to call themselves Turks, just because of their language, then the rest of Iranians should call themselves “half-Arabs” because their language is polluted with more than fifty percent of Arabic words and verbs. If it was not because of Great Ferdowsi of Toos, today we Iranians would be speaking in Arabic and, like most Islamic countries of today, would be calling ourselves an Arab. 

Abdolnaser of Egypt has done that as recently as 1956 while at the present time the race of the people of Egypt is over 98 percent “Hams” (race of ancient Egyptians) not Arab. See 'World Almanac by New York Times

 With above in mind my Azari brothers; if I, along with the rest of Iranians, am calling myself an Aryan Iranian not a half-Arab why should you be calling yourself a Turk! Our Azari brothers are feeling alienated from the rest of the Iranian people because of their present day Turkish language and a few of them have been seeking independence. Our Kurdish brothers have been feeling alienated because of their Sunni sect majority and a few of them have been calling for independence as well.

 Independence may solve the language problem for the Azaries and the sectarian problem for the Kurds but will create much bigger problems of becoming a small nation with all its disadvantages which; that by itself is a subject of different discussion.

In my opinion the above problems must be solved through changing the constitution of Iran, with the participation of all Iranians, which would include; full autonomy for all states of Iran under one Federal government formed by equal participation of people of all regents and ethnicity of the country, very similar to the United State’s governmental structure. We may not like the conduct of American government but their constitution and the structure of their government is something to be considered for future secular Iran. 

In brief; as an Azari, your civilization is over 6, 000 years old. Do not let a 500 years language change wipe out your rich Aryan identity.

So many great civilizations have been vanished the same way such as Sumerians, Babylonians, Ashurian, etc. For example while the great Egyptian civilization still has kept its geographic boundaries the people, with racially 98% Hams (the ancient Egyptian race),  call themselves Arabs just because their language has been changed to Arabic. In other word the Arabs have destroyed the Egyptian civilization by language change. Do not let the Turks destroy your Aryan civilization by the change of your ancient Azari language to Turkish.

In brief; Just because the population of a country speak certain language, it does not mean that language represent their race or nationality.

For example; Iraqis, Syrians, Egyptians, and a few other Arabic speaking nations have less than five percent Arab race among them. By the same token, there are great number of ex-colonized African nations that their languages are English, or French but they are almost 100% black Africans.

An email response from "KURUS", an Azerbaijani gentleman.

Great post! 

This study further confirms that we are genetically the same: 

http://ijb.nigeb.ac.ir/index.php/ijb/article/viewFile/746/319 

"The Azeri population speaks Azeri, which is one of 
the Ural-Altaic languages; however, subjects in the 
present study were genetically different from other 
Central and East Asian populations that speak the 
Azeri language (Table 3). Almost 82% of the Azeri 
subjects in the Northwest of Iran had European haplogroups, and were similar to other Iranians; however, 
the other Azeri speaking people who live in Asia had 
mostly the Asian haplogroups, with the European haplogroups being of low frequency among them. For 
example, the European haplogroup in 7 Azeri speaking 
populations in Southern Siberia was 16.7% (Derenko 
et al., 2003), in Turkmens 46.3%, and in Uzbeks 
47.7% (Quintana-Murci et al., 2004). "