THE INVENTION OF HISTORY: AZERBAIJAN, ARMENIA, AND THE SHOWCASING OF IMAGINATION
AZG Armenian Daily
30/07/2009
History
Rouben Galichian has written a new book, The Invention of History:
Azerbaijan, Armenia, and the Showcasing of Imagination.
Mr. Galichian’s new book focuses on the history of Azerbaijan. He
argues that Azerbaijan as an entity north of the River Araks is
an invention of 1918, and that the edifice of Azerbaijani national
history is built with bricks that have their Armenian inscriptions
hacked off of them.
The falsification of Azerbaijan’s history, especially as it relates
to Karabakh, concerns Mr. Galichian. But he is especially concerned
by Azerbaijani efforts to propagate a novel history of Armenia,
one that does not include Armenians until the beginning of the
nineteenth century.
Historical maps have been a major focus of Mr. Galichian’s interest
until now. He is the author of Historic Maps of Armenia: The
Cartographic Heritage^A (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004), Countries of the
Caucasus in Medieval Maps: Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan^A (London:
Gomidas Institute, 2007), and a book about Armenia in world maps.
In an interview with Armenian Reporter editor Vincent Lima Rouben
Galichian said that the reason he wrote the book is exactly that
"in 1918, when the countries south of the Caucasus Mountains became
independent, the country that is now called the Republic of Azerbaijan
was originally supposed to be called the Southeastern Transcaucasian
Republic. But the Musavat nationalist party decided on the name
Azerbaijan, purely for political reasons.
The political reason was that they were trying to establish an
Islamic belt of countries that started from Turkey toward Central
Asia. Azerbaijan was going to be one of them. Another reason was that
they intended to take control of the Iranian province of Azerbaijan
too.
The Iranian province of Azerbaijan, which Armenians call Atpatakan,
is about 2,000 years old, and in the past has been part of Lesser
Media. The name Atpatakan – or Atropatakan – comes from the name of the
general Atropat, who protected the country and wouldn’t let Alexander
the Great conquer it. It had always been south of the River Araks,
never to the north of it. Suddenly in 1918, north of the River Araks,
a country appears, with the same name. It is analogous to today’s
Macedonia and Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
But that was not enough.
The newly established country wanted to show the world that it had
all of the cultural and historical background [of a legitimate nation].
It was a mixture of various races: Persian, Turkic, Tatar, Mongol,
local Albanians – who had evolved and converted to Islam and became
Lezgins – and Shirvanis, and God knows how many peoples. According
to the ancient historians there were 26 tribes living in Caucasian
Albania in ancient times.
But there was a problem. There were some Islamic monuments there,
which they could point to and say, "This is our heritage," but
a majority of the monuments were Christian. There were churches,
there were tombs, there were khachkars, and all sorts of things that
could not be Islamic. Therefore the Azerbaijani authorities began a
campaign saying, "We are actually the descendants of the Caucasian
Albanians. They were our ancestors. They used to be Christian and
they converted to Islam. And we are them."
At the same time, to be in Turkey’s good books, they claimed that they
are the descendants of the Oghuz Turks – the Kara Koyunlu, Ak Koyunlu,
etc. – and the various tribes.
This is a contradiction. One is a central Caucasian tribe; the other is
a Central Asian tribe. How could you have two ancestors so different
from each other? You must be a mixture of races. Well, they said no,
we are Albanian and the Turkish population has been in this part of
the world for over 2,500 years".