Azeri
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The Azeri are the dominant Turkic people of Azerbaijan and Arran, which were a part of Persia, until the Azeri khanates north of the Araks River were overrun and absorbed into Tsarist Russia in the early 19th century. When Persia remonstrated, the Tsarist foreign office maintained that all of the northern Azeri khanates had been independent and that Persian claims of sovreignty were invalid.
Consequently, in modern times some Azeri live in Azerbaijan, where they form the overwhelming majority, and some in northern Iran—the Iranian Azarbaijan—where Azeri constitute 24% of the population as a whole [1] (http://www.exxun.com/enpp/dy_ethnic_groups_4.html). Among the Azerbaijanis, who comprise all the citizens of Azerbaijan, a 1998 estimate recorded Azeri 90%, Dagestani 3.2%, Russian 2.5%, Armenian 2%, other 2.3% Almost all the Armenians reported lived in the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh region [2] (http://www.exxun.com/enpp/dy_ethnic_groups_4.html). The minority of Azeri formerly living in Armenia emigrated by the end of 1993, after intense ethnic clashes.
Azeri is the official language of Azerbaijan, under the Constitution ratified in 1995; under Soviet rule it had been written in Cyrillic and had taken second place to Russian as the prestige language. It is identified with Azerbaijan citizenship to such an extent that it is often referred to as the "Azerbaijani language".
Among connoisseurs, the Azeri people are known for the distinctive patterns of their knotted carpets.
External links
- Exxun.com: Dictionary of Ethnic Groups (http://www.exxun.com/enpp/dy_ethnic_groups_4.html)
