South Azerbaijan

South Azerbaijan is the historical Azerbaijani land south of the Aras River in north-western Iran. Today the region is divided mainly into four provinces: East Azerbaijan (Tabriz), West Azerbaijan (Urmia), Ardabil and Zanjan. Azerbaijani Turks also live in Qazvin, Hamadan and Markazi provinces and form large communities in Tehran and Karaj. They often simply call themselves "Türk".

Iran holds no ethnic census, so there is no exact figure. Unofficial estimates put the number of Azerbaijani Turks at 35–40 million, about 40% of Iran's population. In January 2012 Iran's foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi said openly in Ankara that 40% of Iranians speak Turkish.

History

From the 8th–11th centuries the arrival of the Oghuz Turks and then the Seljuks turned the region Turkic. Many of the dynasties that ruled Iran for centuries came from here: the Safavids (1501–1736), who rose in Ardabil; the Afsharid state of Nader Shah, of the Turkmen Afshar tribe; and the Qajars (1796–1925). In the 18th century the region was home to the khanates of Tabriz, Urmia, Khoy, Maku, Maragheh, Sarab, Ardabil and Qaradagh.

The Treaty of Turkmenchay (1828), signed after the Russo-Persian War of 1826–1828, divided Azerbaijan along the Aras River: the north passed to Russia — today's Republic of Azerbaijan — while the south remained under the Qajars.

During the Constitutional Revolution of 1906–1911 Tabriz became the heart of the freedom movement; Sattar Khan and Bagher Khan defended the city for months and the people hailed them as "Sardar-e Melli" and "Salar-e Melli". In 1945–1946 the Azerbaijan National Government was set up in Tabriz; in its short life it opened Turkic-language schools and laid the foundations of the University of Tabriz. Under the Pahlavis, by contrast, education in Turkic was banned and many Turkic place names were replaced with Persian ones.

Culture

South Azerbaijan is one of the great centres of Turkic literature: Mohammad-Hossein Shahriar's poem "Greetings to Heydar Baba" is loved across the Turkic world. The Tabriz bazaar is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and Tabriz carpets are famous worldwide. Lake Urmia, the region's natural jewel, has been shrinking in recent years, and saving it is a concern shared by the whole people.