History Of Baku
Edit ThisSprung on the coasts of the silvery Khazar (the Caspian), Baku as one of the holy centers of Zoroastrianism, after the discovery of oil, within a very short historical period changed into a very important commercial city. Its advantageous geographical location and abundance of valuable raw materials as oil, salt, maroon, saffron and others helped its rapid growth. With the development of feudalism a lot of small feuds appeared in the territories near Baku. There were built small but strong family towers - donjons in the center of their lands and they formed together a single system of warning in the case of dangers. Baku still remained as the biggest populated locality on the entire western coast of the Caspian Sea. The earliest description of Baku of that period was made by the native geographer of the Middle Ages Abd or-Rashid al-Bakuvi. In his work written 1403 named "Kitabi Talhis as-Asor, Va'aja'ib al-malik alkahhar" he writes: ".. the city has two extraordinarily fortified strong stone castles. One of them, the biggest, is near the sea, and the waves waste its walls. This is the castle, which the Tartars (Mongols) could not capture. The other castle is higher than the first one. Its top is destroyed by balusters. A special feature of this city is the constant wind which is blowing day and night. Sometimes it is so strong that it is impossible for a man to go against the wind, horses and sheep in winter are often swept into the sea because they can not hold themselves on land. Here are deposits of tar and oil, oil is extracted daily for more than two hundred camel pack-loads. Near them, there is another oil spring, which is ceaselessly pouring out oil day and night, this oil is as white as jasmine oil, its rental estimates thousand dirharns. Near the oil-wells there is hard soil of yellow color, which burns like a candle. People break off pieces of it and take it back to the town for heating their houses and baths".
The town, a territory of about 22 ha located on the hills, was surrounded by the city walls. According to a number of archeological, historical, graphical, architectural and other data, we can assume that the most ancient, "assimilated" part of the Baku castle was its coastal part. It is not surprising that the earliest memorials have been preserved in that part. These memorials include the minaret of the mosque Mohammed ibn Abu Bakr, known as "Sinik-gala"(1078) and "Giz Galasi" ("Maiden Tower") the lower part of which was probably built in VI-VII centuries B.C.
The highest rise of Baku in the epoch of feudalism was at the time when, as a result of a destructive earthquake in Shirvan the capital of the state was moved from Shemakhi to Baku. Exactly in the following hundred years the planning of the castle starts to take shape. And the Shirvanshahs Palace, unique in beauty and grace, was founded on the highest place in the castle. The Palace includes nine buildings serving various purposes. Virtuosity of its creators, who "knitted" the finest laces of stone ornaments on portals of "Divan-khane" and the family burial-vault of Shirvanshahs, created an organically integral unit for their design and then combined these structures into one indivisible whole, demonstrating the skills and artistic taste of the medieval craftsmen of Azerbaijan
With the growth of significance of Baku as a commercial city, the caravan-sarays built around the Maiden Tower, were a kind of medieval hotels, which as a rule, belonged to some merchant guilds of different cities, each bearing the name of its owner. There were merchants living and trading in Baku, they came not only from nearby towns, but also from the farthest towns of the Caucasus, Iran, Central Asia, Russia and other countries. For example, the merchants from Panjab, Hujarat and Rajputana lived in the caravan-saray "Multani". "Butchery" was a place for the concentration of merchants from the Central Asia which was situated near it. As a whole, development of such places is an evidence of a considerable growth of cultural, commercial and political contacts of the state of Shirvan, which also included Baku, with the neighboring and distant countries in XV-XVI centuries. It is enough, as we think, to give just one fact, as a proof of it that in 1572 Baku was visited by the agents of the English trade company, who displayed interest in the Baku oil. F. Decket, a members of that mission informed that ".. there is a strange phenomenon near a city called Baku.
There is an extraordinary amount of oil coming out into the surface of the earth and people from distant corners of all Persia come to get In XVII-XVIII centuries, as a result of considerable changes in socle-political and economical life of the country, due to the colonization of the western and southwestern coast of the Caspian Sea, the central part of the Baku castle lost its importance as a place for location of the residence of the Head of the State, and the center, as a place of business and commerce moved from the Shirvanshahs" Palace towards the city's main commercial line, which connected the so-called "Shemakhi Gate" with the coastal part of the city, then changed its direction near the Maiden Tower and went towards the "Salyan Gate".
The same line connected two bazaars: the Yukhari (Upper) Bazaar with its rows ofjewelery and other goods, with the Ashagi (Lower) Bazaar with its groceries and workshops of small craftsmen. This street was distinguished not only for its length, it almost enclosed all the Baku castle, but also for its considerable width in comparison with the main streets of cities in the in Middle Ages. This line, in essence, was the main composition of the city, its pivot. Other streets, the minor ones, coming through city blocks from all directions, were considerably narrower. Moreover, they were crooked, sometimes ending in blind-alleys. All these made the castle like a large labyrinth created in the course of many centuries. The Russian traveller I. Berezin, who visited Baku in the middle of the XIX century described the of Baku as follows: "... they are so narrow and entangled, that after a month in Baku I did not know, where a street began and where it ended". Though we do not object against the above-said, still we must note that this chaotic style of building had its advantages in defending the city from invaders, as well as for softening the gusts of the Baku winds. These winds were piercing through everything.
The natural and climatic conditions of the Absheron Peninsula played an important role in the formation of the urban structure of Baku in the Middle Ages. The curvilinear planning of streets not only assisted in stopping the gusts of the ice-cold North wind of Baku in winter, but also created coolness in day time, owing to the shadow falling from walls of houses in streets. There were small inner yards spontaneously surrounded by houses in the castle and there grew nothing in these yards except one or two fig or mulberry trees or rose bushes. In the same yards, as a rule, there were water wells there to provide the inhabitants with water through complicated but at the same time a perfect system of "kahrizes" - the medieval underground water supplies, pierced in thick continental rocky soil. For the common use of water there were "ovdans" built in some places of Ichery Sheher. They were semi-underground installations for filling water. It should be added that since the XV century there was a perfect, composed of separate ceramic elements, underground sewer system, connected to all houses located here, in the Baku castle. The majority of houses in the city were one or two - storied with flat floors and plane roofs covered with tar and small cupolas draining the smoke. Silhouettes of these houses, arising like shelves over slopes of the hilly relief of the castle, were interrupted by massive minarets and smooth twists of cupolas of mosques and baths in some places. This combination of different architectural configuration was the most distinguished feature of the feudal Baku.
