Azeri 
The Azerbaijani language. Traditionally Shiite Muslim people of Azerbaijan and adjacent areas of Armenia and northern Iran; an Azerbaijani.
The Azerbaijanis are a Turkic ethnic group mainly in northwestern Iran and the Republic of Azerbaijan. Commonly referred to as Azeris/Āzarīs or Azeri Turks, they also live in a wider area from the Caucasus to the Iranian plateau. The Azeris are predominantly Shia Muslim and have a mixed cultural heritage of Iranic, Caucasian, and Turkic elements.

Despite living on two sides of an international border since the treaties of Gulistan (1813) and Turkmenchay (1828), after which Iran losts its northern territories to Russia, the Azeris form a single ethnic group. However, northerners and southerners differ due to nearly two centuries of separate social evolution in Russian/Soviet-influenced Azerbaijan and Iranian Azarbaijan. The Azerbaijani language unifies Azeris, and is mutually intelligible with Turkmen, Qashqai and Turkish (including the dialects spoken by the Iraqi Turkmen), all of which belong to Oghuz, or Western, group of Turkic languages.

Following the Russian-Persian Wars of the 18th and 19th centuries, Persian territories in the Caucasus were ceded to the Russian Empire. This included parts of the current Republic of Azerbaijan. The treaties of Gulistan in 1813 and Turkmenchay in 1828 finalized the border between Russia and Persia (today known as Iran).

As a result of this separate existence, the Azeris are mainly secular in Azerbaijan and religious Muslims in Iran. Since Azerbaijan's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, there has been renewed interest in religion and cross-border ethnic ties.

By far the largest ethnic group in Azerbaijan (over 90%), the Azeris generally tend to dominate most aspects of the country. Unlike most of their ethnic brethren in Iran, the majority of Azeris are secularized from decades of official Soviet atheism. The literacy rate is high, another Soviet legacy, and is estimated at 98.8%. Whereas most urban Azeris are educated, education remains comparatively lower in rural areas. A similar disparity exists with healthcare.

Azeri society has been deeply impacted by the war with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, which has displaced nearly 1 million Azeris and put strains upon the economy.[88] Azerbaijan has benefited from the oil industry, but high levels of corruption have prevented greater prosperity for the masses.[89] Many Azeris have grown frustrated over the political process in Azerbaijan as the election of current president Ilham Aliyev has been described as "marred by allegations of corruption and brutal crackdowns on his political opposition". Despite these problems, there is a renaissance in Azerbaijan as positive economic predictions and an active political opposition appear determined to improve the lives of average Azeris.

Azeris in Iran

Azerbaijanis in Iran are mainly found in the northwest provinces: East Azerbaijan, West Azerbaijan, Ardabil, Zanjan, Kordestan, Qazvin, Hamedan, and Markazi. Many others live in Tehran, Fars Province, and other regions. Generally, Azeris in Iran were regarded as "a well integrated linguistic minority" by academics prior to Iran's Islamic Revolution. In fact, until the Pahlavi period in the twentieth century, "the identity of Iran was not exclusively Persian, but supra-ethnic", as much of the political leadership, starting from the eleventh century, had been Turkic. The Iranian and Turkic groups were integrated until twentieth century nationalism and communalism began to alter popular perception.[3] Despite friction, Azerbaijanis in Iran came to be well represented at all levels of, "political, military, and intellectual hierarchies, as well as the religious hierarchy."


The Azerbaijanis speak Azerbaijani (sometimes called Azerbaijani Turkish or Azeri), a Turkic language that is mutually intelligible with Turkish despite minor variations in accent, vocabulary and grammar. Other mutually intelligible Turkic languages include Turkmen and the Turkish spoken by the Turkomans of Iraq and the Qashqai. The Azerbaijani language is descended from the Western Oghuz Turkic language that became established in Azerbaijan in the 11th century CE. Early Oghuz was mainly an oral language. It began to develop as a literary language by the 13th century. Early oral Azerbaijani, derived from the Oghuz language, began with history recitations (dastans), including the Book of Dede Korkut and Koroglu, which contained Turkic mythology. Some of the earliest Azeri writings of the past are traced back to the poet Nasimi (died 1417) and then decades later Fuzûlî (1483–1556). Ismail I, Shah of Safavid Persia wrote Azeri poetry under the pen name Khatâ'i. Modern Azeri literature continued with a traditional emphasis upon, humanism, as conveyed in the writings of Samad Vurgun, Shahriar, and many others.

Azeris are generally bilingual, often fluent in either Russian (in Azerbaijan) or Persian (in Iran). Around 5,000,000 of Azerbaijan's roughly 8,000,000 population speaks Russian. Moreover, in 1999, around 2,700 Azeris in the Azerbaijan Republic (0.04% of the total Azeri population) reported Russian as their mothertongue.[106] An Iranian survey (2002) revealed that 90.0% of the sample household population in Iran is able to speak Persian, 4.6% can only understand it, and 5.4% can neither speak nor understand Persian. Azeri is the most spoken minority language in an Iranian household (24%).

Christianity in Azerbaijan

 is a minority religion. 3.8% of the population (1998) belong to the Russian Orthodox Church (1998). The Russian Orthodox Church has the Eparchy of Baku and the Caspian region with a seat in Azerbaijan.

There are eleven Molokan communities. The Molokans are a Christian minority which is centered on the Bible and who reject church hierarchy.
There is only one Roman Catholic congregation. A Roman Catholic church in Baku has opened in 2007.
The Albanian-Udi church is a minority of 6000 persons in Azerbaijan.
The Armenian Apostolic Church has no communitiy outside Nagorno-Karabakh.
There likely are less than 7000 Protestants.