Azerbaijan (Iran)

37°36′N 47°00′E / 37.6°N 47.0°E / 37.6; 47.0 Azerbaijan or Azarbaijan (Persian/Azerbaijani: آذربایجان, romanized: Āzarbāyjān, Persian pronunciation: [ɒːzæɾbɒːjˈdʒɒːn], Azerbaijani pronunciation: [ɑːzæɾbɑjˈdʒɑn]), also known as Iranian Azerbaijan, is a historical region in northwestern Iran that borders Iraq and Turkey to the west and Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the Azerbaijani exclave of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic to the north.

Iranian Azerbaijan includes three northwestern Iranian provinces: West Azerbaijan, East Azerbaijan and Ardabil. Some authors also include Zanjan in this list, some in a geographical sense, others only culturally (due to the predominance of the Azeri Turkic population there). The region is mostly populated by Azerbaijanis, with minority populations of Kurds, Armenians, Tats, Talysh, Assyrians and Persians.

Iranian Azerbaijan is the land originally and historically called Azerbaijan. The toponym Azerbaijan derives from this land's name in Old Persian, Ātṛpātakāna (whence Ancient Greek Ἀτροπατηνή Atropatene), via Middle Persian Adurbadagan. The Azerbaijani-populated Republic of Azerbaijan appropriated the name of the neighbouring Azerbaijani-populated region in Iran during the 20th century. Some people nowadays refer to Iranian Azerbaijan as "Southern Azerbaijan" and to the Republic of Azerbaijan as "Northern Azerbaijan", although others believe that these terms are irredentist and politically motivated.

Following military defeats at the hands of the Russian Empire, Qajar Persia ceded all of its territories in the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia to Russia via the Treaty of Gulistan of 1813 and the Treaty of Turkmenchay of 1828. The territories south of the Aras River, which comprised the region historically known as Azerbaijan, became the new north-west frontier of the Persian Empire and later Iran. The territories north of the Aras River, which were not known by the name Azerbaijan at the time of their capture by Russia, were absorbed into the Russian Empire, renamed the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic during the country's short-lived independence from 1918 to 1920, incorporated into the Soviet Union as the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, and finally became the independent Republic of Azerbaijan when the Soviet Union dissolved.

The name Azerbaijan derives from Old Persian *Ātṛpāta (whence Greek Atropates), the name of a Persian satrap (governor) of Medea in the Achaemenid Empire, who ruled a region found in modern Iranian Azerbaijan which was called Ātṛpātakāna (Atropatene). The name *Ātṛpāta is believed to be derived from the Old Persian roots meaning "protected by fire." The name is also mentioned in the Avestan Frawardin Yasht: âterepâtahe ashaonô fravashîm ýazamaide which translates literally to: "We worship the Fravashi of the holy Atare-pata." According to the Encyclopaedia of Islam: "In Middle Persian the name of the province was called Āturpātākān, older new-Persian Ādharbādhagān (آذربادگان/آذرآبادگان), Ādharbāyagān, at present Āzerbāydjān/Āzarbāydjān, Greek Atropatēnḗ (Ἀτροπατηνή), Byzantine Greek Adravigánon (ἈΑδραβιγάνων), Armenian Atrpatakan (Ատրպատական), Syriac Adhorbāyghān." The name Atropat in Middle Persian was transformed to Adharbad and is connected with Zoroastrianism. A famous Zoroastrian priest by the name Adarbad Mahraspandan is well known for his counsels. Azerbaijan, due to its numerous fire-temples has also been quoted in a variety of historic sources as being the birthplace of the prophet Zoroaster although modern scholars have not yet reached an agreement on the location of his birth.

In the early 19th century, Qajar Iran was forced to cede to Imperial Russia its Caucasian territories north of the Aras River (modern-day Dagestan, Georgia, Armenia, and the Republic of Azerbaijan), through the treaties of Gulistan (1813) and Turkmenchay (1828). Following the disintegration of the Russian Empire in 1917, as well as the short-lived Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, in 1918, the leading Musavat government adopted the name "Azerbaijan" for the newly established Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, which was proclaimed on May 27, 1918, for political reasons, even though the name of "Azerbaijan" had always been used to refer to the adjacent region of contemporary northwestern Iran. Thus, until 1918, when the Musavat regime decided to name the newly independent state Azerbaijan, this designation had been used exclusively to identify the Iranian province of Azerbaijan.

The oldest kingdom known in Iranian Azerbaijan is that of the Mannea who ruled a region south-east of Lake Urmia centered around modern Saqqez. The Manneans were a confederation of Iranian and non-Iranian groups. According to Ran Zadok:

it is unlikely that there was any ethnolinguistic unity in Mannea. Like other peoples of the Iranian plateau, the Manneans were subjected to an ever-increasing Iranian (i.e., Indo-European) penetration.