Rouben Galichian chronicles the invention of Azerbaijan and its history
by Vincent Lima
Published: Wednesday June 03, 2009

Yerevan - Rouben Galichian has written a new book, The Invention of History: Azerbaijan, Armenia, and the Showcasing of Imagination.

The title is reminiscent of the classic collection, The Invention of Tradition, edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. So many national traditions sources of national pride or marks of national distinctiveness seem to have long pedigrees. In The Invention of Tradition, the authors show that Scottish "clan tartans" are a 19th-century invention, the Scottish kilt was invented by an Englishman, no less, in 1730, many British royal rituals originate in the 19th and 20th centuries, and so on.

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 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004), Countries of the Caucasus in Medieval Maps: Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan (London: Gomidas Institute, 2007), and a book about Armenia in world maps.

Armenian Reporter editor Vincent Lima caught up with Rouben Galichian at Mr. Galichian's apartment in Yerevan on May 31 and asked him some questions.

Armenian Reporter: Mr. Galichian, thank you for taking the time to talk to me about your book, The Invention of History. This is your fourth book?
Rouben Galichian: Yes, it is.

AR: All of your books have been about historical geography. This time you have focused on questions about the history of Azerbaijan. The first point you make in the book is that the Republic of Azerbaijan is an invention of 1918.

RG: The reason I wrote this book is exactly that.

Borrowing a name
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.

Borrowing an identity
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.

The reason for their claim is that once they establish that they are Albanian, they can tie the Christian monuments to Albanians, not Armenians. Suddenly, lo and behold, you're the owner of a huge tradition of buildings, churches, monasteries, etc., that belong to your ancestors, and they built it. Well, it is not true; it is a complete fallacy.

First of all, the Caucasian Albanians disappeared in the ninth and tenth centuries; most of them converted to Islam. A very small minority remains Christians today: 68 thousand Udis. The churches and monuments are mostly from the 12th to 18th centuries. How could a people who had disappeared build those Christian monuments? They had converted to Islam. How could they have built those Christian monuments?
Armenians as newcomers

And at the same time the Azerbaijani authorities have started saying that Armenians are newcomers in the southern Caucasus: They came here during the early part of the 19th century; the Russian army brought them there.

To prove it, they cite one monument that exists in a village in Karabakh. A community that had moved to that village set a memorial stone there in the 1970s, saying Maraga is 150 years old. So it brings back the Maraga people to the region in about 1827, 1828 [which is the time the Czarist Empire annexed the area from the Persian Empire]. This is a small community, part of only tens of thousands of Armenians who moved with the Russian forces in the 1820s, escaping the Ottoman yoke. And there were hundreds of thousands of Armenians already living there.

The Azerbaijanis also say that even Shah Abbas the Great was their king, an Azerbaijani king. My question is this: If he was indeed an Azerbaijani king and there were no Armenians living in that area, the south Caucasus, how could he move 34 hundred thousand Armenians from the Nakhichevan area to Persia for his scorched earth policy? Where did these Armenians come from?
AR: And why would he destroy his native Azerbaijan with his scorched-earth policy?
Destroying a heritage they claim

RG: There are contradictions. The Azerbaijanis say this is their heritage and at the same time they start destroying it. The most recent example is the medieval Armenian cemetery at Julfa, which they called an Albanian cemetery, and then they destroyed it in front of the eyes of the world. It has been filmed. The DVD is included in the book. If it's your heritage, why do you destroy it?

In 2005 the Armenian Catholicos wrote to the Sheikh-ul-Islam, saying that we've heard that this destruction is going on; the khachkars are destroyed. The Sheikh-ul-Islam said, No, the cemetery is protected; the information given to you is wrong. So he admitted there was a cemetery.
And also the Azerbaijani ambassador in Germany, replying to a question of the assistant foreign minister of Germany, said that these tombstones had been standing in an earthquake-prone area, and the reason they have fallen is seismic movements. In other words, he too says there was a cemetery.
If you ask the Azerbaijani authorities now, everybody will say there has never been a cemetery. So within a few years, their stories have changed with their political agenda.
The Aliyev Foundation

But the main reason for me to write the book is that during the last few years the Aliyev Foundation is spending millions publishing literature and books with the information that there were no Armenians in the Caucasus. They say all monuments belong to Caucasian Albanians, Azerbaijanis are the Caucasian Albanians, and therefore, by default, they belong to Azerbaijanis.
They are distributing these books to all libraries, to political think tanks, embassies, etc. I tried to obtain one of the books, and hearing an Armenian surname, they said it was not available. End of story.

AR: Have you seen the book?

RG: I eventually found a way of getting the book. On one of the books, the cover shows a map of Armenia and says, "Western Azerbaijan."

Now if you want to go into more detail, Etchmiadzin is called an Armeno-Turkic temple. Urartian fortresses [14th to 6th century B.C.E.] are called Turkic fortresses. Khor Virap [where according to tradition, Saint Gregory the Illuminator was imprisoned] is called a Turkish temple. All the monuments in Armenia are Turkish or Turkic.

AR: But it sounds so outrageous, so ahistorical when you talk about something like Urartu that predates the Turks [and Armenians, for that matter] to call it a Turkic temple. It's hard to take it seriously. Does anyone take this kind of literature seriously?
Dreams of a greater Azerbaijan

RG: Anybody who knows anything of the history will not take it seriously. The case was proven to me in the European Union, when I was discussing my book with European commissioners. But if you're a student, you enter a library in 50 years' time, and there are 50 books on Azerbaijani history, dating it back to the Urartian era, and there's nothing correcting the record, because Armenians hadn't taken the time to reply to this book, to write something against this policy, would you start believing that this is the truth? If you're a layperson, not a specialist?

AR: Let me go back to the beginning for a minute, when you were talking about the historicity of Azerbaijan, and try to bring up a contemporary question.

In the West sometimes the idea is put forth of the secession of the Iranian provinces of Azerbaijan from Iran and the creation of a joint republic north and south of the Araks. To me this sounds very farfetched because Iranian Azerbaijanis are so fully integrated into the fabric of Iranian society that it would be completely against their interests to secede from Iran.

RG: In 194546, when the Turkish Democratic Party had some power in Tabriz during the last days of the war and after the war

AR: You were there. This is in your memory from Tabriz.

RG: I was a small boy. I remember the gunfights, etc., but not the politics of it. I read about that later on.

They tried to join Iranian Azerbaijan with Soviet Azerbaijan. And if you recall [Azerbaijani President] Abülfaz Elçibay in 1992, I believe, claimed that it's time for "Our southern brethren to join us and create a unified Azerbaijan." It's always in their minds.

AR: In the south as well as the north?

RG: Foreign powers have instigated riots in Iranian Azerbaijan. Only threefour days ago, there was a riot in Tabriz, where they wanted more autonomy. These are all based on the Azerbaijan republic's propaganda that they are separated as two countries, whereas they are one in fact.
In fact, they are not one.

The language of the Iranian Azerbaijanis was a Pahlavi dialect until the 14th15th century. During that time, under the Mongol yoke, they were forced to change their language. And there are still words left, and villages in that part of the world that speak the old Pahlavi dialect. The population of the area that is now the Republic of Azerbaijan, meanwhile, was Albanian-speaking, and when they disappeared, the Turkish language came to dominate because they were overrun by the Mongols and the Tatars and the various Oghuz tribes.

A Canadian parallel
AR: A parallel might be Quebec. On the one hand you have the prime minister of Canada being Quebecois. On the other hand you have people trying to see Quebec secede from the country in which they are so integrated and powerful that one of them is prime minister. In Iran, where Azerbaijanis are on every level of government, commerce, and everything else in the country, you would think it would be ridiculous to think of losing your access to the oil wealth and the strength of Iran for the sake of seceding. But that kind of sentiment can exist.

RG: You are right. Azerbaijanis are on all levels of politics and running the country in Iran. They have high positions, but that doesn't stop the Republic of Azerbaijan from trying to join the Iranian Azerbaijanis with them, saying that they are separated brothers who should reunite.
In the case of Quebec, Canada is a new country. Everyone knows this country is very new. So it doesn't go back to the historical background so much.

AR: And how important is history here in the Caucasus? There are always academics debating these issues. But how much are the facts on the ground, in terms of Karabakh, and the territories around Karabakh, influenced by perceptions of history?
RG: History is never far from anybody's mind. If we don't learn from history, we're bound to repeat it. This is not what I am saying; this is a well-known fact. You always have to look back in history to know what to expect in the future and what not to do in the future.
Sowing hatred

There are two historians who have written the history of Karabakh in the Persian language. One book is from 1770; the other is from 1840. They're both written about the Armenian towns of Karabakh, where all of the population was Armenian. They're about the Five Principalities of Karabakh, where the meliks used to rule. When the Azerbaijani authorities today translate them into the Azerbaijani language, any reference to Armenians is changed to Albanian or Caucasian or whatever, and any chapter dealing purely with Armenians is removed.

It is the falsification of history on the one hand and the invention of history on the other. Everything is based on history. Their claims are based on history, untruthfully. Those things can be proven from their own literature....

AR: Is part of your concern that the young generation is Azerbaijan would end up being more radicalized

RG: It's not "would end up being."
In Brussels, in April, when I was presenting the book, there were five Azerbaijani political activists of the younger generation, between 25 and 35 years old. They truly believed what had been preached to them was true.

It's not too far from the Soviet historical model. Thirty years ago, anybody in Armenia would know the Soviet version of history and would think it was the gospel truth. The same has happened and is happening in Azerbaijan.

The Azerbaijani authorities claim to be following the line of the European Union: the European Union preached being friends with your neighbors, trying to develop friendly relationships; Azerbaijan concurs and says, "We are trying." But at the same time, they are printing these books daily and distributing them, and they are full of propaganda, anti-Armenian propaganda.
Engineering, cartography, and charity

AR: Let's talk about your background a little. You're from Tabriz originally.
RG: I was born in Tabriz. I started school in Tabriz and left Tabriz when I was about 12 years old. I went to Tehran, and then I had the opportunity to study engineering in the U.K., and went back to Iran and turned out to be a gas, oil, and petrochemical engineer and project manager.
But my interest in history and geography has always been there, particularly for the last 40 years. I've been reading all these materials, collecting various data and materials, particularly cartographic data, which resulted in my eventually sitting down and deciding to work on my books on history and historical maps and countries south of the Caucasus and so on.

AR: So you are retired now from your petrochemical

RG: I've been retired for five, six years, and since then I've devoted my time fully to this research.

AR: Where do you live now? London? Yerevan? Or both?
RG: I live about seven months of the year in Yerevan and the other five months in London. I also spend some time on some charitable projects. We collect funds in the U.K. and spend them in Armenia in various rural areas, students, helping children, and the younger generation.

AR: Children working with clay
RG: We have a small crafts workshop in the Armavir region, which we built. This is a private thing in memory of my son, who passed away when he was 39. He was an artist; he used to work with bronze and all sorts of things. Mikayel Mkrchian, the artist, runs it. There are twothree teachers there.

AR: And Samvel Rostomian's

RG: The charity also helps various projects, such as Samvel Rostomian's group, Hay Chambar. They take children to Lake Sevan. For the last four years, we funded all the camp activities, including art classes in Yerevan. They do painting, clay figures, etc.

AR: My daughter attended the clay figure workshops for a long time. She loved it.

RG: Good, good. That's another part of the work we do.
An honorary doctorate

AR: And you got an honorary doctorate from the National Academy of Sciences.

RG: In November, in appreciation of my work on the cartography of Armenia, the academy decided to give me an honorary doctorate.

AR: Is there any reaction to this book, The Invention of History, yet?

RG: It's very new. We presented it in Brussels, to members of the European Commission and others. There was quite an interesting discussion, particularly with the Azerbaijani youngsters. When I told them this is based on facts taken from your own literature, they couldn't reply; they couldn't argue any more.
They said, "This is history. We're going to have to take it to our historians to come and discuss it with you."
I said, "By all means, do that. I'll be very glad to discuss with your historians openly, in front of everybody's eyes and ears."
At the end of the session, two of them came and thanked me for the information I'd given them. Maybe they'll start thinking about this.

Persian texts
And we talked particularly the translation of the Persian texts into Azerbaijani. I asked one of them whether any of them spoke Persian, whether they could read and write Persian. They said no, but one of them said, "My mother is Persian." I suggested they go and take a copy of the original handwritten photocopy of the book written by Mirza Jamal Javanshir Qarabaqi.

AR: Which George Bournoutian has translated into English. [Two Chronicles on the History of Karabagh: Mirza Jamal Javansir's Tarik-e Karabag and Mirza Adigozal Beg's Karabag-Name ]

RG: Yes, which Bournoutian has translated into English. And there's another book, The Heavenly Rose-Garden by Abbas Qoli Aqa Bakikhanov, written in 1770. He called it "A History of Shirvan and Daghestan"; there's no mention of Azerbaijan. He talks about Azerbaijan, but it's always Iranian Azerbaijan: Tabriz, etc.

His book speaks about Armenians. It has been translated into Russian. The chapter about Armenians has been removed. The original is in Farsi. I suggested to the young Azerbaijanis they go find the original and compare it to the translation they have been given.
Preserving the Azerbaijani heritage

AR: Do you ever talk about the history of Yerevan, which 100 years ago had a substantial Azerbaijani population?

RG: Possibly even a majority, but not just Azerbaijani. The Muslim population included a lot of Persians. Why not?

AR: The book is heavily illustrated.

RG: Azerbaijanis claim that Armenians have destroyed their heritage, which is completely false.
In their recent book, War against Azerbaijan, they said there were a number of monuments in the Karabakh area that were destroyed by Armenians. I have photos in the book where you can see the monuments are still standing there.

I have also given samples of what they have done to our monuments.
They have been rubbing off all the Armenian inscriptions on Armenian churches. In one case, in the case of Nij, a Norwegian charity had given the funds to renovate this church. It had Armenian inscriptions on the door, and they hacked these away. The Norwegian ambassador protested, and all the ambassadors boycotted the opening of this church, because the Armenian inscriptions had been removed. Ambassador Steinar Gil wrote to me, and I have his letter in the book.

AR: How can people get the book in the United States?

RG: Through the Gomidas Institute: info@garodbooks.com

AR: Thank you very much.

RG: Thank you.

Rouben Galichian, The Invention of History: Azerbaijan, Armenia and the Showcasing of Imagination, with DVD insert. London: Gomidas Institute, and Yerevan: Printinfo Art Books. 72 maps and photographs. 130 pages, ISBN 978-1-903656-86-0. $30.00. hardcover.

Azeris still uncertain as to what culture they belong to
22 June.2009

PanARMENIAN.Net/ Our problem is that we perfectly see what Azerbaijan is doing, but keep our mouths shut, and close our eyes to everything, Armenianhouse.org electronic librarys director Karen Vrtanesyan told today a press conference, commenting upon Azeri media reports. While Armenian side views it as a noble gesture, Azerbaijan considers it as a sign of weakness.

Any other country would have filed complaint against Azerbaijan. But what are we doing? We are just laughing, avoiding to see the reality, Mr. Vrtanesyan said. Azerbaijani society uses hatred for Armenians as a tool in the process of its formation, Vrtanesyan said, adding that Azeris themselves are still uncertain as to what culture they belong to. Over the past 100 years, they were unable to decide who they were. First they called themselves Caucasian Tatars, then Turks, and later Azerbaijanis. Now they are called Azeris.

In his turn, Military psychologist David Djamalyan added the following, In 2005, Region journal conducted survey to find out whether Azeris hated Armenians more or vice versa. The results were quite predictable. If we believe that Turks or Azeris will ever change while we will not, then we engage ourselves in self-deception.

Azeris style and attitude to Armenians reminds me of Nazi Germany. Likewise Germans who accused Jews of everything, Azeris accuse us Armenians in order to justify themselves. How can we live with a neighbor who builds his state based on hatred for us, Vrtanesyan said.

We are not against free countries, and are not against their being our neighbors. Let them build their state, but not at our expense, Djamalyan stated.

I was able to find the above mentioned book in AMAZON.COM