Azerbaijan

To Western people, Azerbaijan is an obscured land. Totally unknown to the majority before independance from the Soviet Union in 1991, even to specialists it stood as little more than an outpost in the Soviet empire, largely Russianized. The reality, however, is much more complicated and much more interesting. In "Cultures of the World Azerbaijan", author David King leads readers into the most challenging set of nations yet published in the "Cultures of the World" series, the Asiatic states of the former Soviet Union. For Azerbaijan, the greatest challenge concerns scarcity of sources, particularly in English. Few books have been published on the history or descriptive culture of Azerbaijan, and of those published, most discuss specific topics such as political relations with Russia or the Nagorno-Karabakh Dispute with Armenia. The author sets the keynote of the book in the Introduction where he comments "Azerbaijan is a nation where the ancient and the modern often exist side by side"(5). He then proceeds to describe the picturesque geography of Azerbaijan, well supplemented by vivid photos. History comes next and now the task of writing becomes very difficult. In the millions of books listed in bookstore Internet catalogues, not a single volume (at least not in English) exists on Caucasian Albania, the distant predecessor state of Azerbaijan which (as best as is known) is unrelated to Albania in the Balkans. Similarly early modern history of Azerbaijan as part of the Russian Empire remains virtually unknown, despite the oil boom of the late nineteenth century making Azerbaijan the world's largest producer and refiner of oil in 1900. While the author can do little more than identify these points, he does draw attention to incredible gaps in the historical record. King continues through chapters ranging from economy to arts to food drawing attention to ancient and modern aspects of Azerbaijani society and culture unfamiliar to the outside world. Two chapters highlight this approach. In Arts the author discusses development of literature and music. One example is "mugam" which started with ashrugs (medieval travelling storytellers) recounting their tales, often while strumming a "kobuz (traditional stringed instruments). This evolved into the modern form of mugam as a performing trio with a singer and two other musicians playing other traditional instruments(94-95). This has been further adapted in more recent times by fusion with jazz to become improvised mugam jazz(96). Lifestyles forms the other highlight chapter. There the author describes stark contrasts between urban and rural life ranging from urbane workers of Baku to hardy, legendary long-life mountain farmers of the Caucasus. Of note in discussion of long-life legends, the author indicates that while subjects to exaggeration and some fraud, all very old age claims cannot be lightly dismissed(69). A further note should be added about the use of photos. As usual with this series