AZERBAIJANI HISTORIAN URGES CONFERENCE ON CAUCASUS ALBANIA TO BE HELD IN AZERBAIJAN, NOT ARMENIA
Trend corr S. Aghayeva
Trend News Agency
Aug 31 2007
Azerbaijan
The venue for a scientific conference on history and other problems
in the Caucasus Albania, which refers to Azerbaijan’s past and
the Azerbaijani people, should be held in Baku, not Yerevan, the
Azerbaijani historian-ethnologist, Professor Rauf Huseynzadeh, said
on 31 August.
He was speaking on the intentions by the Armenian scientists to
organize an international scientific conference in Armenia.
Between 3 to 5 September the Mitk analytical centre will organize,
jointly with the Oriental Studies Institute of the Armenian National
Academy of Sciences, an international conference on ‘Statehood of
Caucasus Albania and its Ethnic and Cultural Heritage’. The main
purpose of the conference is to establish grounds to develop general
historical conceptions on ethnic composition, culture, borders,
and real ethnic and political successors of Caucasus Albania.
"Armenian scientists, who wrongly consider themselves to be direct
successors of the Caucasus Albanians, do not have the right to speak
on Caucasus Albania," the Azerbaijani scientist noted. According to
him, Armenians are just trying to mark another new history of Armenia.
According to Russian and Armenian studies of the 19th and 20th
centuries, Armenians came to the Caucasus, i.e. Asia, from Thrace
which is located at the junction of Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece, i.e.
Europe. The Armenian state was destroyed three times which resulted in
them dispersing throughout the world. Therefore the Armenian diaspora
was realised, Huseynzadeh said. All in all, for the 1,400 years the
Armenians did not have their own state.
According to Huseynzadeh, even Moses Khorenski, who lived in the
5th century and is considered by the Armenians to be the father of
their history, wrote a book entitled ‘History of Armenians’, not the
‘History of Armenia’.
The Albanian state (4th century B.C. – 8th century A.M.), which
actually occupied the same territory for 1,000 years – between the Araz
River in the south and the Big Caucasus Range in the north – played
an important role in the history of the Caucasus people, as well as
in the history of the Azerbaijani people. "It so happened that it is
the Azerbaijani people which are one of the main successors of the
Caucasus Albania’s historical and cultural heritage. Albania is one
of the earliest states which existed in the territory of historical
Azerbaijan," Huseynzadeh said. "We do not invent anything, but rest
upon the very Armenians’ arguments," he said. In her book ‘Source and
Time. Narration about Armenians’ famous Armenian scientist-historian
Viada Arutunova-Fidanyan points 17 Armenian states in the map,
Azerbaijani historian added.
We are preparing a book about the Caucasus which will produce
scientific proof of who the Armenians are, where they came from to
the Caucasus, and why they are not Caucasians of origin. In this book
we rely upon manuals written by Armenian scientists.
The Conference is dedicated to the Caucasus Albania should be held
in Azerbaijan under the patronage of the Institute of History named
after Bakikhanov of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences and
the Caucasus Institute of Strategic Researches.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress