After touring Georgia for almost two weeks, we flew onto Baku, the capital of, and our only stop in, Azerbaijan for the next few days. Lonely Planet describes the city as "the architectural love child of Paris and Dubai ... albeit with plenty of Soviet genes floating half-hidden in the background. Few cities in the world are changing as quickly and nowhere else in Eurasia do East and West blend as seamlessly or as chaotically." The city, located on the edge of the Caspian Sea and ringed by the desert, would be our introduction to the world's greatest overland trade route known as the Silk Road that we would be exploring more fully in the weeks ahead. There will be more about the 2,000 year old trading route that ran from China to the Roman Empire in future posts.
After a snafu caused by the hotel forgetting to pick us up at the airport, we finally made it to the hotel, dumped our bags and began the trek into the city. The receptionist at the hotel spoke almost no English so trying to find information about getting downtown using public transportation to see the sights was more challenging. It seemed no taxi wanted to pick us up and drive us the 15 minutes it would take to get to the nearest metro station. Well over an hour later, we made it downtown, considering that a major success! Since we only had a few hours left in the day, we started with Baku's UNESCO-listed Old City called Icari Sahar.
The Old City was just a few blocks from the futuristic metro station. On the way we passed the 19th century City Hall otherwise known as Executive Power of Baku City!
The equally grand Institute of Manuscripts was almost next door. Coming from Georgia, we were both amazed at the European influence in Baku and how lovely the buildings were.
The stunning Ismailya Palace looked appealing but wasn't open.
The castle-style Old City was tantalizingly close by.
At last, entrance via the Double Gateway:
Neither of us knew what filling the woman was putting into the dough.
Numerous carpet shops and vendors selling Azeri products were among the first things we spied on entering the area. We would later learn how famous Azerbaijan was for its exquisite carpets.
At the very center of the Old Town was Maiden’s Tower, a tapering 29-meter high stone tower and Baku’s most important historical icon. The original date of construction is unknown but it is believed to be possibly thousands of years old with much of the current structure dating from the 12th century.
The tower's location at the center of the city, the thickness of its walls, the protected entrance and other factors led historians to believe the tower was built for defensive purposes. Before the restoration in the 1960s, there were no floors within the tower and the space below the top platform was empty. That space, as well as the window positions, indicates to some it may have been a religious building used for rituals and ceremonies.
On several floors of the tower were spaces in the walls next to the stairs. One theory is that they held load bearing wooden beams. Another possibility is that lamps were placed there.
The tower was possibly an observatory meant to study the annual cycle of the sun and to study the winter and summer solstices and equinoxes. That was perhaps why the windows and fortress faced the rising sun on important dates as well as the brightest stars from its windows.
Since Steven preferred to sit outside while I visited the tower, I was the first to view the oil-rich Caspian Sea.
From a bird's eye view, the Maiden's Tower resembles the buta, a popular motif in Azerbaijan which signifies the sun and fire. Buta was also the name of the airline we'd flown into Baku from Tbilisi, Georgia earlier in the day.
In the next few days, Steven and I explored much of what I was lucky to see from the tower's rooftop.
That former market square area of the Old City, known as Medieval Market Square, was now being used as an open-air exhibition of historic stones.
As you can see, the Azeri alphabet was much closer to the Latin alphabet we use than the infinitely harder to understand Armenian and Georgian alphabets we'd just experienced for a few weeks. All I could figure out from the sign was that the mosque was built in Baku in 1899.
More shots of Icari Sahar that was more appealing at every turn:
Past quiet back alleys, up and down steps, it felt like we were back in Istanbul as we tried to find another palace.
A good while later, we reached the Palace of the Shirvanshahs, the seat of northeastern Azerbaijan's ruling dynasty during the Middle Ages. The builder was Ibrahim the First who was a Sufi follower of Islam.
We were mighty relieved to find out that the palace was still open even though we'd enjoyed strolling through so much of the Old City.
As I remarked in one of the Armenia posts, there is no love lost between the residents of Armenia and Azerbaijan because of an area of land both countries lay claim to. Bullet holes on the side of the palace remained from when, according to a sign, in early 1918 Armenian Dashnaks killed "12,000 innocent Azerbaijani civilians" in what they referred to as genocide.
Construction of the residential building was begun in the 12th century and was later extended in the 14th and 15th centuries.The upper floor was the Shah's living space while the ground floor served as the household needs of the palace.
Some exhibits documented the three shahs of Shirvan during the 15th century.
Some ethnographic displays:
Hundreds of beautiful stone friezes surrounded part of the palace complex.
The Shah's Mosque included two praying halls, a large one intended for the Shah and his courtiers and a small one for Court women.
The palace's Bath House was discovered during archaeological excavations carried out in 1939. The inside and outside were decorated with tiles. Water for the bath house was supplied by an underground water reservoir which was constructed in 1436.
After a snafu caused by the hotel forgetting to pick us up at the airport, we finally made it to the hotel, dumped our bags and began the trek into the city. The receptionist at the hotel spoke almost no English so trying to find information about getting downtown using public transportation to see the sights was more challenging. It seemed no taxi wanted to pick us up and drive us the 15 minutes it would take to get to the nearest metro station. Well over an hour later, we made it downtown, considering that a major success! Since we only had a few hours left in the day, we started with Baku's UNESCO-listed Old City called Icari Sahar.
Behind the statue we caught our first glimpse of the Old City, the city's historic heart.
The Azeri name for the tower, Qiz Qalasi, normally translates to Maiden's Tower which made me think of fictitious fairy tales. A better translation would be Virgin Tower because of its military impenetrability instead of any association with tragic females. The walls of the massive structure were over fifteen feet thick at its base, an impressive accomplishment for its era.
After climbing a gazillion steps, I had a great view of the Flame Towers, just part of the eye-popping architecture that has made Baku an exciting place to visit.
Immediately in front of the tower were archaeological ruins that some people consider to be the location where Jesus' disciple St. Bartholmew was martyred.
Just beyond the square was Cuma Mosque. Neither of us could enter that day because Steven was wearing shorts and I didn't have my head scarf with me. As Azerbaijan is a Muslim country, we wouldn't be visiting any churches as we had in both Armenia and Georgia.
This unusually large bronze bust honored Azeri poet Aliaga, also known as Vahid who also translated Oriental writers' works into Azeri.
How fun it was wandering the narrow cobble stoned ancient streets of old Baku!
Lovely carpets adorned the residential building's entrance.
The reproductions of 12th century decorative wall tiles were attractive. The Islamic ceramic tiles were known as Kashi from the Persian city of Kashan, renowned as one of the important ceramic centers of the Islamic world.
There was no lavish furniture and few museum artifacts because the palace was heavily looted during the Ottoman and Russian imperial times.
Off the ceremonial courtyard that we had entered initially was a gateway to a courtyard of the Divankhana, an open, octagonal rotunda, constructed in 1428 to be either the Shah's tomb or where he assembled his court. If the latter, I could only think his court had to be very small because the structure was so tiny.
I decided Steven could enter another tomb all by himself as it was located underground!
The palace complex just went on and on and on! We evidently weren't done seeing tombs as we next came across the Tomb of Shirvanshahs' Family which dated from 1435-1436!
As this Palace was built atop a hill, there was a magnificent view of Baku with the famous Flames towers. The unusual sculpture just outside the palace represented The Seven Beauties, a ballet by the famous Azeri composer Gara Garayev.
Steven made sure I take a picture of this to add to my 'bathroom sign collection!'
Next post: Seeing the Old City and the Palace had whetted our appetite to explore Baku's Museum Center and surely the world's one and only Carpet Museum!
Posted on September 15th, 2018, from Karakol, Kyryyzstan.
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