Azerbaijani, Azeri Turk

The South Azerbaijanis are the Turkic-speaking people of Iran's northwest, the largest ethnic minority in the country and the largest Azerbaijani population in the world. They call themselves Türk or Azərbaycan türkləri; Persians call them Azari or Tork. Their language, South Azerbaijani (azb), is an Oghuz Turkic language written in Perso-Arabic script and mutually intelligible with North Azerbaijani (azj) of the Azerbaijan Republic, though the Iranian variety carries many more Persian loanwords.

Iranian Azerbaijan was an Iranian-speaking land (the old Azari language, kin to today's Tati and Talysh) until Oghuz Turkic migrations from the 11th century under the Seljuks, and later Mongol-era Turkic tribes, made it Turkic-speaking; by the 14th-15th centuries the region was almost fully Turkicised. The Azerbaijani-speaking Qizilbash tribes carried the Safavids to power in 1501 from Ardabil, and the Turkic Qajar dynasty ruled Iran from Tehran from 1789 to 1925. The Russo-Persian wars ended with the treaties of Gulistan (1813) and Turkmenchay (1828), which drew the border on the Aras River and split the Azerbaijanis between Iran and the Russian Empire; the northern half became today's Azerbaijan Republic. A Soviet-backed Azerbaijan People's Government in Tabriz (1945-46) collapsed for lack of popular support.

Iranian Azerbaijani identity is layered. Most see themselves as both Turks and Iranians, deeply woven into the Shia state: Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had Azerbaijani paternal roots and President Masoud Pezeshkian is an Azerbaijani from West Azerbaijan. A minority movement presses for mother-tongue education and cultural rights, and a smaller current looks to Baku or Ankara. The group includes the Karapapakh (Terekeme) of Naqadeh. Closely related Turkic tribes that speak the same language and share the same Shia culture have their own entries: the Shahsevan (Ilsevan) of Moghan and Ardabil (ilsavan), the Qajar (qajar), the Qaragozlu of Hamadan (qaragozlu) and the Moqaddam of Maragheh (moqaddam). Neighbouring Turkic peoples with their own language or culture, the Qashqai, Afshar, Khalaj and Khorasani Turks, are separate groups.

Azerbaijani culture centres on the bazaar towns of Tabriz, Ardabil, Urmia and Zanjan and on a rural world of wheat, orchards and sheep. Tabriz's covered bazaar, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is one of the largest in the world, and Tabriz alone supplies around 40% of Iran's carpet exports; Ardabil, Heris and Shahsevan rugs and sumak-woven bags are famous. Zanjan is known for knives, silver filigree (malileh) and charoq sandals.

Food is a point of pride: kufteh Tabrizi (giant meatballs with a boiled egg or dried fruit inside), Bonab kebab, dolma, dushbara dumplings, qutab, ash-e reshteh, dovga yoghurt soup and Tabrizi sweets such as qurabiya and baslogh. Hospitality and tea in the samovar are central.

Music is the ashiq tradition: wandering bards who sing epics such as Koroghlu and Asli and Karam to the long-necked saz, alongside urban mugham played on tar and kamancheh. The poet Mohammad-Hossein Shahriar's Heydar Babaya Salam is the best-known modern Azerbaijani poem in Iran. Nowruz is celebrated with the chaharshanbe suri fire-jumping, and Muharram is marked by intense mourning processions, including the Shah Husayn Gouyan stick ritual of Tabriz. Families are patrilineal and close-knit; cousin marriage remains common in villages. Football, especially the Tractor club of Tabriz, is a powerful expression of Azerbaijani identity.

Azerbaijanis embraced Twelver Shiism through the Safavid dynasty, whose founder Shah Ismail I wrote poetry in Azerbaijani Turkic, and the region has supplied many of Iran's senior clergy. Practice centres on the mosque and the hosseiniyeh, Muharram and Ashura mourning (sineh-zani, zanjir-zani, ta'zieh passion plays), pilgrimage to Mashhad, Qom and Karbala, and the shrine of Sheikh Safi al-Din in Ardabil. Vows (nazr), votive meals, protective prayers written by mullahs and visits to local imamzadehs show a strong folk layer, and older customs around Nowruz fires, the evil eye and childbirth persist in villages.

Lived religion varies sharply. Rural communities and the bazaar class remain observant, while young urban Azerbaijanis in Tabriz, Urmia and Tehran share the wider Iranian trend away from institutional religion that national surveys detect. Small Sunni, Ahl-e Haqq and Baha'i minorities exist. A growing number of Azerbaijanis have become Christians, meeting in house churches; their numbers are uncertain and their worship is illegal.

The complete Bible exists in South Azerbaijani in Perso-Arabic script; Elam Ministries published the South Azerbaijani New Testament in 2013 and the Old Testament work was finished by 2014. The Institute for Bible Translation holds a 2008 South Azerbaijani text that is also on eBible. The JESUS film, Global Recordings Network audio and Faith Comes By Hearing recordings are available, and North Azerbaijani materials from Baku are widely understood. Satellite television and Persian and Azerbaijani Christian media reach the region, and many Azerbaijanis read Persian Scripture. Joshua Project estimates about 1.8% Christian adherents and 1.6% evangelical, one of the highest rates among Iran's Muslim peoples, though the figure is hard to verify.

The Karapapakh ("black hats"), also called Terekeme, are Turkic families who left the Russian-ruled South Caucasus after the Treaty of Turkmenchay (1828) and were settled in Solduz around Naqadeh in West Azerbaijan. They now speak Azerbaijani and are counted with the Azerbaijanis.

The Shahsevan ("those who love the Shah"), also called Ilsevan after 1979, are a Turkic tribal confederation of Ardabil, Meshginshahr and the Moghan plain, with branches around Zanjan, Qazvin, Saveh, Hamadan and Tehran (the Baghdadi Shahsevan). Tradition credits Shah Abbas I with founding them; historians date the confederation to the 18th century. By their own account they had 32 tribes. They spoke Azerbaijani (a Shahsevani dialect) and were Twelver Shia. Their nomads summered on the slopes of Mount Sabalan and the Talysh and Arasbaran highlands and wintered on the Moghan steppe, living in dome-shaped felt tents (alachiq) of Central Asian design. Women wove carpets, sumak bags, kilims and verneh felt for which the tribe is famous. Reza Shah's forced settlement and the Moghan irrigation schemes of the 1950s-80s broke up most of the nomadic economy: about 6,000 households were still nomadic in 1986, and perhaps 300,000 people are of Shahsevan descent today, most of them settled villagers and townspeople who identify as Azerbaijanis. Joshua Project lists them as the Ilsavan (98,000) and GRN as 'Shahsavani'; they have their own entry (ilsavan).

The Qajar were a clan of the Bayat Oghuz who backed the Safavids and gave Iran its Qajar dynasty (1789-1925), founded by Agha Mohammad Khan of the Qoyunlu branch from Astarabad (Gorgan). Over 35,000 people still counted themselves Qajar in 1994; they speak Persian and Azerbaijani and are Shia, and today the name is a family lineage rather than a separate community (Joshua Project lists 4,300). The Qaragozlu ("black-eyed") were a Turkic tribal federation settled around Hamadan, key military allies of the Qajar shahs whose khans, such as the Amir Nezam Hamadani, held high office; their descendants speak South Azerbaijani (Joshua Project 2,900). The Moqaddam were a clan of the Otuziki tribe of Karabakh made governors of Maragheh by Shah Abbas I in 1609, a post they held almost continuously until 1925; their descendants in Maragheh speak Azerbaijani (Joshua Project 1,400). None of the three has a separate language or culture from their Azerbaijani neighbours; each has its own entry (qajar, qaragozlu, moqaddam).