Even as the opening days of winter alternate with the final days of autumn, a few outsiders still flock to Baku from other parts, especially from Azerbaijan and from the Caucasus, like us, also from the World.
The city is captivated by pockets of falling vegetation that gild and beautify it. On a sunny Thursday, we admire how this gold goes with the sandstone that predominates in the historic heart of the capital.
We interrupted our stroll through its narrow streets and decided to climb the old Maiden Tower to discover the surrounding views that we had already been told about.
Along the way, on Asef Zeynally Street, next to the walls that protect the Juma Mosque, we passed two surveyors.
Surveyors work in the old city of Baku. A policeman looks on.
They wear dark clothes, like almost all Azeri and Caucasian men, and are not given to cheerful tones, let alone ostentation.
The duo is busy. Engaged in a lively debate about some intervention. An intrigued police officer joins the conversation.
The Maiden Tower, Monument and Legacy of Baku's Medieval Genesis
When we reached the base of the tower, one of his colleagues had already done the same. The four employees were justifying their state salaries as much as possible.
The Maiden Tower
We entered.
We take a look at a few models that illustrate the pioneering urban planning of old Baku, said to have been inaugurated there between the 7th and 12th centuries by the shirvanshahs, the medieval lords of Shirvan, as Azerbaijan was known at the time.
A more precise assessment of its age is yet to be achieved.
Houses in Baku, Azerbaijan
It is known that these leaders decided to move the capital of the empire they were expanding there.
And that, in the 1723th and XNUMXth centuries, the Mongols invaded it and interrupted their yoke, as did Peter I (the Great) in XNUMX, who only returned the lands of Shirvan to their Persian owners twelve years later.
View of the Old Town, with the Maiden Tower in the background
From then on, the History It is Russian, Soviet and Azeri. We will address it later.
We cut short the model study so that we were not prepared. Much less in that rounded interior that only the yellowish artificial lighting saved from the gloom. We reached the top open to the clear, blue sky.
View from the top of Maiden Tower, Baku Old Town
Only young people who are interested in taking selfies with parts of Baku that they consider to be the most photogenic in the background share it. In this group of visitors, we detect the first examples of the cultural and religious intersection that is so characteristic of Baku.
Everyone wears tight jeans. A few girls even wear Lycra stockings under skirts or dresses that are well above the knee.
Women combining more modern outfits with traditional Muslim outfits
Among the girls and women, some keep their long, black hair uncovered.
Others cover them and the face with kelaghayis, a type of hijab that extends over the chest.
A Icherisheher, as the original area of Baku is known locally, offers distinct variations.
A few shops and stalls around its base offer papakhas for purchase or rental.
Display of papakhas wool hats
These are voluminous hats made of sheep's wool that have long protected Caucasians from the freezing winters of their mountainous domains.
The men's set is complete with chokhas ou Cherkeskas, tunics also made of wool. As we have seen, women can travel back in time in long, satin dresses, crowned by generous veils.
Women in traditional Caucasian costumes
Contemporary Baku preserves little of this more colorful era.
The Flame Towers, above Baku's affluent modernity
The largest of the capitals of the Caucasus is, in fact, one of the cities that stands out most from the vast rural world to the west of the Caspian Sea.
From that same panoramic terrace, we could see the shapes and tones of the old city all around. In the distance, a more recent city.
And, standing out, high above the porticos and domes of the Juma Mosque, as of every building and plan, the “Flame Towers”, the bold, blue-tinted architectural work, iconic of the strength and avant-garde of the Azerbaijani capital. The tallest tower of the trio measures 182 meters.
Two of the Flame Towers, in a shot above the Juma Mosque.
Together, they form a glass and steel representation of the epithet “Tierra del Fuego" attributed to Azerbaijan. We must, of course, add that the reason for this epithet was to make them viable and finance them.
Azerbaijan, the Caucasian Land of Fire
Modern Azerbaijan earned its nickname due to the profusion of flames rising from the bowels of the Earth, a symptom of the existence of natural gas.
In these parts of the planet, the worshippers of the Persian prophet Zarathustra saw these flames as divine, especially those of Ateshgah, the Fire Temple of Baku, and those of Yanar Dag, a field in permanent natural combustion, on the outskirts of the city.
This proved, however, to be mere mythological and religious worship of the phenomenon.
The raw material in its genesis, side by side with the no less abundant and profitable oil, endowed the leaders, the elites and, ultimately, the Azeri people with an enviable economic and financial benefit.
Night falls over Baku's Old City, with the Flame Towers illuminated in the background
The “Flame Towers” were built between 2007 and 2012 at an estimated cost of 350 million dollars.
A group of people raised them holdings that claims to be linked to companies off-shore held by Azerbaijan's long-ruling Aliyev clan, led by Azeri President Ilham Aliyev.
Due to its longevity and tentacular spread, this clan stands out in Azerbaijan among so many other rulers and businessmen who have profited from the abundant fossil fuels of the Caspian Sea.
From the First Drillings to the Domination of Exports to Europe
Awareness of local oil and natural gas dates back much earlier, but it was Ivan Mirzoev, an ethnic Armenian, who was the first to drill an oil well in Baku in 1840.
Neon oil tower, next to the Baku waterfront.
For this achievement, Mirzoev became known as the father of the city's oil industry. Large-scale extraction began thirty-two years later.
In 1872, the Russian imperial authorities auctioned off the Baku lands in installments to private investors. Among the interested parties and followers of Mirzoev were the Nobel brothers and the no less famous Jewish Rothschild family.
Until 1910, Baku's population grew faster than Paris or even New York. It is estimated that at the beginning of the 1941th century, half of the oil traded on international markets came from Baku. In XNUMX, Adolf Hitler therefore made the Azerbaijani oil fields an unavoidable target on the way to conquering Stalingrad.
At the political and geographical crossroads in which it evolved after the outcome of Operation Barbarossa and World War II, Baku is the scene of the most dazzling anachronies and contradictions.
We return to the ground.
The Various Eras and Facets of the Capital Baku
On black stone sidewalks, we keep an eye on the antiques and treasures displayed in antique shops and souvenir shops near the caravanserai Multani, a secular inn that Kichik Kala Street, parallel to Asef Zeynally, connects to the even older Muhammad Mosque.
In these parts, as in most of Azerbaijan, Baku is Muslim.
Soviet souvenirs of Lenin in Baku's Old Town
Yet among the relics that vendors foist on us, above a golden Azeri teapot, are banners with the profile of Lenin.
The Soviet Marxist, protagonist of the banning of religion in the USSR in which, in 1922, independent Azerbaijan, recently defeated by Bolshevik forces, found itself a part.
A few blocks away, between craft and souvenir shops, a sign that reads “POLICE” identifies a police station. Its doors, full of carved squares, seem to have been borrowed from a palace.
Old Lada at the door of a police station in the Old City of Baku
Parked in front of the main road, a decrepit yellow Soviet Lada reminds us that the profits and modernity driven by oil and natural gas have failed to erase much of Baku's still most valuable historical and cultural legacy.
The examples follow one after the other, of different types and dimensions.
Old Lada at the door of a police station in the Old City of Baku
We were amazed by the architectural enormity of the House of Government, built shortly after Baku's integration into the USSR and which still houses several Azeri ministries.
It is just the most grandiose Soviet-inspired building in the area. Countless others remain, from the heart of Baku to the outskirts.
We come across the Independence Museum, which celebrates the 1991 Azeri liberation, surrounded by Greek columns, with an obvious Hellenic inspiration.
It does not compete, in terms of opulence, with its government neighbor.
Pedestrians pass in front of the House of Government in Baku
The Caspian Rim Also Watched from Baku
Hours later, the weather worsens drastically.
Still, we followed the plan to walk along the Baku Promenade, along the Caspian Sea which meets the base of the Absheron Peninsula.
In the extension of the Independence Museum, we turn south, along a viewing point pompously named Baku View Point.
Passers-by on the Caspian Sea promenade, with the Flame Towers in the background
We admired how the Flame Towers lit up in a lighter blue than the dark sky in the background, contrasting with the tawny hue of the illuminated trees beyond the riverbank.
We reached the end of the pier.
Night lights up the Caspian Sea shore and the Flame Towers of Baku
Two couples were dating, indifferent to the views.
More concerned with preserving a privacy that, elsewhere, Baku's countless cameras and surveillance agents would compromise.
Couples on the Baku View pontoon
We photographed the pier. Then, the lighting of the Flame Towers.
An undercover agent emerges from the depths of the structure.
He warned them that they were going too far.
Baku is all of these things. Azeri, Post-Soviet, Wealthy and Advanced. Muslim, Traditionalist, Moralistic, Dictatorial and Oppressive.
The Azerbaijan Independence Museum at dusk
How to go
Book your Azerbaijan program including Baku with Travel Quadrant: quadranteviagens.pt
