Baku

Baku or Baki, capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, on the Abşeron Peninsula in the east of the country. A port on the west coast of the Caspian Sea, the city is close to major petroleum fields near the border with Iran, and oil refining is its chief industry. Many residents work in refineries, in factories producing equipment for oil production, and at nearby drilling centres. Pipelines carry oil products to Batumi, Georgia, on the Black Sea. Baku also has shipyards and factories producing metal cable, cotton, leather, and foodstuffs. Although the city saw some civil strife in the early 1990s as the country gained independence from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the continuing productivity of the oil fields offers Baku greater prospects for prosperity than for most cities in the region.

The old quarter (9th century) of Baku contains the large fortress of Icheri-Shekher (with narrow streets, mosques, a minaret dating from 1078, and 12th-century city walls) and the Shirvanshah (khan’s) palace (15th century, now a museum). An underground railway was opened in the city in 1967. Baku is the site of Baku State University (1919), an opera house, and several theatres and museums.

Petroleum was extracted in the Baku region as early as the 8th century, and Baku itself is older. The first documented settlement is of a 9th-century town, from which buildings still stand. The city’s prime harbour location has attracted several invading armies over the centuries. In the 12th century the city became the seat of the Shirvan khans. The flourishing market centre of Baku was then under Persian rule from 1509 until 1723, when it was captured by the Russians; it was returned to Persia in 1735. In 1806 the city was again incorporated into tsarist Russia, and by the late 19th century it had begun its rapid economic growth. From 1918 to 1920 Baku was the capital of an anti-Bolshevik regime. After the Soviet victory over the republic, the Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic was declared in 1922, with Baku as its capital. Baku served as the capital of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic from 1920 to 1922 and from 1936 to 1991. In 1991 Azerbaijan became an independent republic.

Baku and other parts of Azerbaijan were gripped by violence when Moscow eased control on the country in the early 1990s. Several citizens were killed when Soviet infantry and tanks forced their way into the city in 1990, after nationalist rebels blockaded the city’s harbour and barricaded the streets. In the same year, tensions flared between ethnic Azerbaijanis and the city’s minority Armenian population. In 1994 Baku was the scene of terrorist attacks and large demonstrations against the government. These problems have subsided in recent years, and Baku is now poised to benefit from the massive foreign investments that are pouring into the region’s oil industry. The old walled city, together with the Shirvanshah Palace, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000 as an outstanding example of Azerbaijani architecture. Population 1,816,000 (2003 estimate).