# Bahaism in Azerbaijan

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Leyla Melikova, Bahaism in Azerbaijan, bahai-library.com.
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> Vol. 1 (5), 2007                                                                                        93
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> GEOCULTURE
> 
> Leyla MELIKOVA
> 
> Junior research fellow
> at the Academician Buniyatov Institute of Oriental Studies,
> National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan
> (Baku, Azerbaijan).
> 
> BAHAISM
> IN AZERBAIJAN
> 
> Abstract
> 
> T
> he author traces the history of Baha-             Husayn Ali Nuri (1817-1892), known as
> ism in Northern Azerbaijan, the reli-             Baha Ullah, and analyzes the present and
> gious movement born in 1844 in Iran               future of Bahaism in the context of the re-
> that assumed its final shape in 1863 under             lations between the state and society in
> the influence of its founding father Mirza             Azerbaijan.
> 
> I n t r o d u c t i o n
> Due to its geopolitical specifics, Azerbaijan (tucked in between Europe and Asia) has been al-
> ways open to all sorts of cultural, spiritual, religious, public, and political influences and their synthe-
> sis. This enriched the Azeris’ religious and cultural identification and made it possible to preserve it
> throughout the centuries.
> In the late 1980s, after the prolonged stagnation of the Soviet period, Azerbaijan attracted nu-
> merous confessional groups, trends, and sects of all sorts, which entered into fierce competition for
> new followers. Some of the newcomers left deep marks in the history of Azerbaijan’s religious life.
> Bahaism, the religious doctrine that appeared in the mid-19th century in Iran and assumed its
> final shape in 1863, is one such confession, the followers of which are actively seeking the status of
> a world religion. Indeed it comes second after Christianity in terms of geographic distribution, Islam
> and Buddhism, two traditional world religions, trailing behind. According to different sources, there
> are about 6 million Bahais across the world. The Bahai community is a well-organized hierarchical
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> structure with branches functioning in over 200 countries; the Encyclopedia Britannica cites the fig-
> ure of 5,742,000 Bahais.1
> 
> How Bahaism Came to and
> Developed in Azerbaijan
> Bahaism in Northern Azerbaijan has evolved through several stages and ascended several lev-
> els. At the first stage, which ended together with the 19th century, it lived through several very differ-
> ent levels. It was brought to Azerbaijan and taught by families of Iranian subjects who fled the coun-
> try to avoid persecution. Due to its geographic location, Southern Azerbaijan had been open to Bahai
> influence earlier. In Northern Azerbaijan, however, where Islam had been the dominant religion for
> many centuries, the new religion was not readily embraced. Until the late 19th century, Bahaism in
> Northern Azerbaijan remained limited to the groups of those who had brought it into the country. The
> Iranian refugees were gradually assimilated: the natural process promoted by many factors (ethnic,
> linguistic, and partly mental closeness in particular) helped Bahaism spread far and wide. The Bahai
> organizational mechanisms encouraged the proselytizing activities of the Bahai adepts.
> Bahaism came to Northern Azerbaijan in 1860 when Baha Ullah was still alive; the echoes of
> the Iranian developments that accompanied the emergence of Babism (the precursor of Bahaism)
> reached Nakhchyvan even earlier, in 1844. In Ordubad, where the competing madhabs and Tariqahs
> remained locked in struggle, people embraced Babism in great numbers. They sided with Molla
> Sadyh Vanandli and Aga Mirkerimli of the village of Vanand. The supporters of the traditional Shi‘a
> clergy represented by the Usuli School tried to gain control, similar to that of the secular authorities,
> over the local people. The theologians, however, remained disunited. Mujtahid Aga Ali, for example,
> a pupil of famous Sheikh Ahmad Ahsai (1753-1826), the founder of the Shi‘a sect of Sheikhits, was
> against the Usuli School. For obvious reasons he preferred Sheikhism. The warring sides looked at the
> several thousand people who closed ranks under the banner of Babism as a nuisance or even a real threat.
> To keep the Babis in check Mujtahid Aga Ali sided with General Bekhbudov and his 5,000-strong army
> dispatched from Russia. Shikhalibek naib, the khan of Nakhchyvan (who was also a sheikhi), spent a
> lot of money to secure a victory for the sheikhi.2 The Babis were defeated and dispersed; the riot was
> cruelly quenched to scare the local people. The ground for a new teaching (Babism transformed into
> Bahaism), however, had been tilled. Several years later, in the same region (or rather its border areas)
> there were Bahai villages. Such was the Evoglu village between Julfa and Hoi, on both banks of the
> Gotur.3 Well-known Azeri writer M. Ordubadi left descriptions of patriarchal rules in many of the
> Bahai families even though the Bahai ethics insisted on equal rights and freedoms for women. The
> Bahais believed that it was their faith’s great advantage over Islam.
> The fact that the events coincided with the Iranian developments is easily explained, first, by the
> territorial proximity of the two countries divided by a common border and the steady inflow of Babis
> forced to emigrate to avoid persecutions. Second, at that time the people of Northern and Southern
> Azerbaijan shared Imamate Shi‘a as the dominant spiritual and religious idea dating back to the 16th
> century (the very beginning of the Safavid dynasty).
> The polemics between Sheikh ul-Islam of the Transcaucasus Akhund abd-us-Salam Akhund-
> zade and the Bahais supplies a lot of interesting information about the relations between the two reli-
> gions at Bahaism’s early stages.
> 
> See: “Year in Review 1993: Religion,” in: Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, available at [http://
> members.eb.com/bol/topic?eu=125258&sctn=1], 10 March, 2000.
> See: M.S. Ordubadi, My Life and My Circle, Azerneshr Publishers, Baku, 1996, p. 7 (in Azeri).
> See: Ibid., p. 42.
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> Sheikh ul-Islam criticized the book by Baha Ullah Kitabi Igan in the press. Published in pam-
> phlet form, his remarks were sent to Akka in Palestine, home of the Bahai leaders. One of them,
> pastry-cook Aga Riza Shirazi, wrote a book of counterarguments, to which Akhund abd-us-Salam
> Akhundzade responded with a book of his own entitled My Defenses against Enemy Objections about
> the Babism Faith,4 which appeared in Tiflis in 1896. (At that time, the Bahais were still known as
> Babis). In Farsi, the language of the original, the book was called Mutalie-i Kitab-i Igan dar radde
> miatalibi an (Reading Kitabi Igan to Refute its Propositions).5
> S. Umanets pointed out that while criticizing Kitabi Igan in pamphlet form, Sheikh ul-Islam
> remained within certain limits, his later book left no stone unturned to reveal the new religion’s incon-
> sistency from the point of view of Muslim theology. His arguments were refuted point by point by
> well-known Bahai ideologist and head of the Ashghabad Bahai community Mirza Abu’l-Fazl Gol-
> paegani in his Faraid, a work that also discussed the main principles of the new religion. Later, in
> 1903, it appeared in book form in Cairo.6
> Starting in 1863, Bahai communities openly and actively functioned in Baku, Ganja, Bard,
> Salyan, Geychay, Sheki, and Nakhchyvan. Baku and Balakhany were the two largest Bahai centers:
> by the 1880s, they had already attracted several hundred followers. There is a document confirming
> purchase of house No. 216 in Chadrovaia (now Mirzaaga Aliev) Street dated to 1887 in the archives
> of the Baku Bahai community. In Balakhany, there is still an old Bahai cemetery with old tombstones
> still bearing Kurrat-ul Ain verses and other sacred Bahai texts.
> On the whole, the early history of Bahaism in Northern Azerbaijan was free from complica-
> tions; the local authorities and the clergy did not try to check its progress. Clashes and other petty
> incidences were of a limited nature. The murder of Molla Sadykh in 1901, son of prominent Islamic
> theologian Akhund Ibrahimkhalil who, enraged by his son’s conversion to Bahaism, issued a fatwa on
> the murder of his son, was described in literature as an exception rather than the rule.
> This is explained by the Russian authorities’ benevolence toward the Bahais mainly living in
> Russian Turkestan. This was the natural choice on their part: in Ashghabad the local people were
> Sunni Muslims; in Shi‘a Azerbaijan, on the other hand, geographically a more logical choice, their
> presence could have created tension with unpredictable results. At that time, Northern Azerbaijan was
> part of the Russian Empire, which explains the relative loyalty of the local authorities and the clergy
> to the Bahais.
> Historical writings mention another fact that testifies, albeit indirectly, to the status of Baha-
> ism in Baku early in the 20th century. In 1909 and 1910, Leo Tolstoy corresponded with engineer
> Mirza Alekper Mamedkhanov, a Bahai. It was through him that the great Russian writer received
> Bahai publications and communicated with Abd-ul-Bakh; Azeri writings speak of him as Mirza Ali
> Akper of Nakhchyvan; his son Aliullah Nakhchyvan, born in 1919, served for 40 years, from its
> very first day in 1963, as a member of the Universal House of Justice, the Bahais’ highest admin-
> istrative structure.
> 
> Bahaism in Public and
> Spiritual Life of Azeri Society
> at the Beginning of the 20th Century
> At the turn of the century, when the oil industry of Azerbaijan began earning big money, Baha-
> ism, a faith well adjusted to bourgeois society, turned to the newly rich in Baku and drew many of
> 
> See: S.I. Umanets, Sovremenny Babism, Tiflis, 1904, p. 31.
> See: G. Mamedli, “Shekh ul-Islam Akhundzade,” Azerbaijan, 2 November, 1990, p. 4 (in Azeri).
> See: S.I. Umanets, op. cit., p. 31.
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> them to its side. For several years, Musa Nagiev (1849-1919), a rich oil industrialist and patron of
> arts, was a member of the Spiritual Meeting of Baku. His personal authority raised the Bahai commu-
> nity prestige as well.7
> This was a time when the idea of social changes by destroying obsolete dogmas looked very attrac-
> tive, especially in the context of the acute crisis of the traditional religious ideas. For this reason many
> progressive-minded people found Bahaism attractive. Azerbaijan was no exception in this respect.
> Bahai sources allege many outstanding cultural figures of Azerbaijan to be Bahais. They even
> name Mirza Abdulgadir Ismailzade, father of poet Mikail Mushfig, as one of the early propagandists
> (since 1860) of Bahaism in the village of Khyzy and in Baku; teacher of poet Aliaga Vakhid was also
> a Bahai. Some people insist that Mirza Alekper Sabir (1862-1911), the great poet of Azerbaijan, was
> also a Bahai; at least he was in close contact with the Bahai community of Balakhany and took part in
> religious disputes. Another well-known poet Seyyd Azim Shirvani (1835-1888), poet and playwright
> Huseyn Javid (1884-1941), founder of professional musical art in Azerbaijan Academician Uzeir
> Gadjibekov (1885-1948), and others were also Bahais.
> This information cannot be accepted at face value—neither can it be disproved. The religious
> and spiritual atmosphere of Azerbaijan at the turn of the 20th century suggests that the educated and
> creative part of the Azeri society could not reconcile itself to ignorant mullahs and the obscurantism
> of a Muslim society torn apart by inner contradictions. The poetry of Mirza Alekper Sabir, well
> known for his satirical writings, reflects the attitude to enlightenment and to everything progressive.
> Not without irony, he described a talk between two philistines who looked at those striving for knowl-
> edge, be it in the form of a university course or reading of the Mollah Nasreddin magazine, as apos-
> tasy readily identified with Babism.8
> The Azeri literature of the early 20th century amply covered the relations between Bahaism and
> Azeri society of the time seen from all angles, a phenomenon that deserves special investigation.
> Careful investigation of the prose and poetry of this period disproves what the contemporary
> Azeri Bahais say. Indeed, the poem “Shamakhy babiliari khaggynda” (On Shemakha Babis) by one of
> the best Azeri poets Seyyd Azim Shirvani could hardly have been written by a Bahai. The poem reads
> like a biting satire of Bahaism as a force hostile to Islam that disorients the already morally disorient-
> ed common people. The poet spared no words to criticize the very conception of the prophetical cy-
> cles and some other elements of the religious and philosophical platform of Babism-Bahaism. To
> sound more convincing, the poet deliberately distorted some of them and condemned all Bahais.9
> At that time, Bahaism stood little chance of becoming a popular movement: in the early 20th
> century, the Azeri enlighteners were brought together by the idea of cultural resurrection of the Islam-
> ic world (which was in deep crisis at that time). Later their ideas assumed political overtones and
> became the national-liberation ideas realized in 1918-1920 in the form of the Azerbaijan Democratic
> Republic (ADR). Those who started the movement needed an attractive mobilizing ideology rooted in
> Islamic traditions; at the early stages the progressive-minded people could have been attracted by
> Bahaism’s Islamic roots, which could have served as the reformist basis. Closer scrutiny, however,
> revealed principles (cosmopolitism, public alienation from Islam, and obvious orientation toward the
> colonial world) absolutely alien to the national intelligentsia and its aims.
> Later, thanks to the sympathies of part of the progressive-minded intelligentsia, Bahaism in
> Azerbaijan assumed certain traits of religious modernism.
> The press of that time accused writer and playwright Huseyn Javid of attempting to carry out
> religious modernization. The memoirs of his relatives confirm that he had shared certain Bahai ideas:
> at critical moments he used to say “Allahu Abha!” to warn that an outsider was present. The margin-
> alia on his poem “In the Mosque,” which appeared in the Azer collection, testify that he was familiar
> 
> See: A. Jafarov, Bahai Faith in Azerbaijan, Baku, 2004, p. 21 (in Azeri).
> See: M.A. Sabir, Hophopname, Yazychi Publishers, Baku, 1992, pp. 251-216 (in Azeri).
> See: S.A. Shirvani, Poems, Azerneshr Publishers, Baku, 1963, pp. 118-120 (in Azeri).
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> with the Bahai conception of progressive divine revelation. He interpreted the religion in his own way
> and believed that life itself was the supreme expression of philosophy and religion.10
> 
> Bahaism under Soviet Power
> For some time, before the Bolsheviks came to power and afterwards, the Bahai community of
> Azerbaijan developed under favorable conditions. In 1929-1930, there were 5 merchants, 2 handi-
> craftsmen, 1 civil servant, and 1 broker among the nine members of the Spiritual Meeting of Baku.
> According to the academic publications, the Baku and Balakhany Bahais actively promoted their own
> religious publications.11
> As the Soviet regime was tightening its grip on society during the Stalin period, the Soviet press
> described Bahaism as an anti-socialist teaching alien to Soviet ideology. Azerbaijan was no exception
> in this respect. Azeri periodicals described the Bahais as “wolves in sheep’s clothing, instruments
> used by capitalists to exploit the working people.”12
> In the mid-1920s, some of the Bahais were deported along with huge numbers of people of
> Iranian extraction. From that time on, the community was operating under strict control; meetings
> were no longer allowed, and their verbatim reports and religious literature were confiscated. Proof of
> this can be found in the archives of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs of the Azerbaija-
> nian S.S.R. For example, the file dated 17 July, 1926 contains information “about the charter and lists
> of the executive structures of the Bahai community in the prayer house in Balakhany, Ramany-
> Sabunchinskiy District, Baku Uezd.” The document says that the commune had 14 members: 3 peas-
> ants, 3 handicraftsmen, 1 hairdresser, while the others were workers.
> Mirzaaga Kerimov, drilling foreman born in 1901, was the community’s head. The community
> lived by its Charter, which outlined its key goals and tasks as: “…gather every day or regularly for col-
> lective prayer; manage the property received under contracts from the local Soviet structures; enter into
> private legal deals; elect clergy to perform religious rites; participate in congresses of various confes-
> sional communities; spread the Bahai teaching only among adults,” etc. The commune had the right to
> collect voluntary donations for everyday needs and banned regular membership dues. It should seek
> permission from state structures every time the community intended to publish a book or start a period-
> ical or deliver a lecture; the same rule applied to changing and amending the community’s Charter.13
> Another document that contains “Information about Non-Profit Societies, Unions, and Allianc-
> es Registered in the Azerbaijanian S.S.R. (as of 1 September, 1926)” mentions three Bahai communi-
> ties, with 23 members from the governing bodies: there were 3 workers, 11 peasants, 3 civil servants,
> and 6 people engaged in other spheres in them.14 The document entitled “Information about Sects”
> provides much more exact information about the number of Bahais: 153, in Baku; 58, in Balakhany,
> and 73, in Ganja.15
> The letter of 29 March, 1927 the Bahais sent to the Central Committee of the Communist Party
> of Azerbaijan provides a complete picture about the state of affairs in the Bahai community of Soviet
> Azerbaijan in the late 1920s. The authors, speaking in the name of “all Caucasian Bahais,” asked the
> government to annul the decision on deportation of the “preacher of the teaching of Bahaism Mirza
> Mamed Pertevi,” who had been living in Baku for four years and who was the only Bahai preacher in the
> 
> See: R. Huseynov, Above Our Time, Ishyg Publishers, Baku, 1988, pp. 210, 344 (in Azeri).
> See: B. Rizaev, Who are Bahais, Azerneshr Publishers, Baku, 1930, pp. 22-23 (in Azeri).
> B. Rizaev, op. cit., pp. 24-25; Revolution and Culture (No. 2-3), Azeneshr Publishers, Baku, 1930 (in Azeri).
> The Central State Archives of Political Parties and Public Movements of Azerbaijan, rec. gr. 27, inv. 1, f. 287,
> sheets 1-2.
> Ibid., rec. gr. 27, inv. 1, f. 357, sheet 1.
> Ibid., rec. gr. 27, inv. 1, f. 342, sheets 183-1–184 (rev.).
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> Caucasus. He had been instructed “to leave the U.S.S.R. in a week’s time.” The letter also said: “The
> Soviet country did not allow us (the Bahais.—M.L.) to study the international language Esperanto…
> The permission the Spiritual Council had received several months earlier to call the annual conference
> of the Caucasian Bahais was annulled and the conference banned without explanation.” The letter was
> signed by A. Zargarov, the community’s chairman, and M. Kiazim-Zade, its secretary.16
> A week later, on 7 April, 1927, the C.C. All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) issued a clas-
> sified document entitled “On Sectarianism,” which outlined special treatment of the religious groups
> and communities. The document, which envisaged numerous bans and limitations, suggested that
> those religious communities, “the charters of which speak of their positive attitude toward all state
> duties, military service in particular,”17 should be treated loyally. The Bahai community, which re-
> fused to interfere into political processes and made universal peace and harmony one of its major
> principles, did not fit the document’s conditions.
> This explains why the new circular the Extraordinary Commission of the Council of the Peo-
> ple’s Commissars of Azerbaijan “On the Need to Force the Sects to Accept Conscription” issued in
> July 1926 created numerous problems for the Bahais. The document ordered that “the question of
> obligatory and unquestioned acceptance of armed military service be raised” before all religious com-
> munities. The document pointed out that the “departments of Internal Administrations should refrain
> from pressure and should limit themselves to communal meetings and verbatim reports.” Special in-
> structions would follow, said the document. “It is a combat mission not to be postponed.”18
> In 1929, when the real estate of all religious organizations was transferred to the state under a
> special decree, the Baku community had to lease building No. 216 on Chadrovaia Street from the
> state. In the 1930s, the authorities demanded that the community discontinue its activities. The Bahais
> had to obey: activities remained suspended until 1934, when collective meetings and conferences
> were permitted all of a sudden. In April 1934, elections to the Local Spiritual Meetings were held in
> fourteen cities across the Soviet Union; the Baku, Ganja, Barga, Balakhany, and Salyan communities
> resumed their activities.19
> In the mid-1930s, the Baku Bahai community had over 200 members; it was headed by Faraj
> Kasumov, a well-known and highly respected expert in world religions with good command of Ara-
> bic and Farsi. In the small hours of 14 October, 1937, the wave of Stalin terror engulfed the Bahais:
> arrests, deportations, and executions became common features of their everyday life. Faraj Kasumov,
> nephew of the already arrested in Leningrad Iusif Kasumov, who had filled an important post in the
> C.C. Communist Party of Azerbaijan, was arrested and executed not because he belonged to the fam-
> ily of an “enemy of the people.” He died together with other Bahais accused of “undermining and
> anti-state activities.”20
> The accusations of fascist propaganda were absurd: the Bahais preached pacifism, universal
> harmony, and peace. The document dated 12 May, 1938 mentions: “The File on the Bahai Spying
> Organization” (allegedly headed by engineer Bagban Zade Javad) opened during the deportation of
> Iranian subjects out of the Soviet Union. He was accused of spying in favor of Iran, fascist propagan-
> da, and contacts with the Bahai organizations in Great Britain, Germany, Palestine, and Iran. Seven
> people were arrested.21
> The arrests in Baku, Balakhany, Bard, Ganja, Salyan, Khylly (today Neftchala), and Nakhchy-
> van crippled some of the communities forever. Repressions did not stop until 1949.
> 
> The State Archives of Azerbaijan (formerly the State Archives of the October Revolution), rec. gr. 1, inv. 74,
> f. 216, sheet 41.
> Ibid., rec. gr. 1, inv. 74, f. 224, sheet 62.
> The Central State Archives of Political Parties and Public Movements of Azerbaijan, rec. gr. 27, inv. 1, f. 343,
> sheet 92.
> See: A. Jafarov, op. cit., p. 24.
> The Wave, 3-9 June, 1992, p. 3 (in Azeri).
> The State Archives of Azerbaijan, rec. gr. 1, inv. 88, f. 400, sheet 3.
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> After 1956 all the repressed Bahais were rehabilitated and the political tension slackened, but until
> the late 1980s the movement remained fairly passive in Azerbaijan for several reasons: first, Bahais had
> been exterminated en masse; second, those who survived lived under strict state control. In the 1950s,
> the Local Spiritual Meetings had to cut down the number of its members from 9 to 5 or 6. It was not until
> the mid-1960s that the Bahais were given a chance to contact, at least sporadically, Bahais abroad. Re-
> ligious holydays concealed as jubilees and birthday parties were held on weekdays.22
> This went on until the late 1980s when, encouraged by the democratic changes, the Bahais re-
> sumed their activities. At the end of 1990, they elected the Baku Spiritual Meeting; the Ganja, Bala-
> khany and later Sumgayit, Nakhchyvan, and Salyan communities returned to the scene. In 1992 they
> elected the National Spiritual Meeting. The 1992 Law of the Republic of Azerbaijan on the Freedom
> of Conscience permitted the Bahai Community of Baku to function with the approval of the Ministry
> of Justice; in 2001 it was repeatedly registered with the State Committee for Working with Religious
> Organizations; the Sumgayit community was registered at that time too. Today, Bahais live in the
> republic’s18 settlements (half of them have Bahai communities), in the others there are not enough
> Bahais to form communities.23
> 
> Bahaism Today in Azerbaijan:
> Present and Future
> The Bahais feel very much at home in Azerbaijan, which is well known for its religious toler-
> ance. Their community is well-organized and rich enough to help its followers survive personal and
> financial crises. The materials accumulated from personal talks with Bahais testify that they only ask
> for help on rare occasions: illnesses, surgery, deaths in the family, and special occasions such as
> marriages. This possibility will inevitably attract even more supporters.
> According to experts, in some countries (Russia among them) the correlation between secular
> and religious ideologies is of different dimensions because some of the new religions are concerned
> with world problems (such as Bahaism), while the traditional religions prefer to address them indi-
> rectly by dealing with national and regional issues. This places the new religions apart from the tradi-
> tional religious and ideological structures when it comes to addressing the most important and urgent
> social problems. In this context, the new religions look preferable. People side with them because
> they feel disappointed with the official ideology, either secular or religious, and its approach to spir-
> itual and material problems. Those who turn to the new religions, Bahaism in our case, hope that, if
> realized, the utopian program of spiritual perfection of the individual and society will resolve all
> problems which pester contemporary civilization and each of its members separately.
> Throughout its history Bahaism has invariably attracted progressive-minded people in Azerba-
> ijan and elsewhere. Bahaism came to Azerbaijan in the 1860s. Since 1863, its communities have been
> functioning in Baku, Ganja, Bard, Salyan, and Geychay; until the 1930s they developed under rela-
> tively favorable conditions. Today, after a long interval caused by political circumstances, Bahaism is
> rapidly regaining its lost position.
> Since ancient times Azerbaijan has been a Muslim country—the position of Islam remain as
> strong as ever, but we should admit that today Islam is represented there by Shi‘a and Sunni, which,
> in turn, consist of various madhabs (Shafiite and Hanafi) divided into several Tariqahs (Wahhabism,
> all kinds of Sufi brotherhoods, followers of Seyyd Nursi and Fethullah Gülen, etc.). We can hardly
> expect ethno-confessional unity in a country where there is any number of non-traditional cults, sects,
> and new religious movements.
> 
> See: A. Jafarov, op. cit., p. 25.
> [http://www.bahai.az/links_ru.shtml].
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> 
> It would be wrong to ascribe the spread of Bahaism in Azerbaijan to internal factors. We should
> bear in mind that the Bahais rely on rich proselytizing experience. On top of this, there are always
> those who see the meaning of life in “God-seeking” and who are unable to merely accept traditional
> religious beliefs. Such people should not be dismissed as a passive group unable to decide for them-
> selves and prone to be tempted by illusory spiritual prospects. These people seek another God for
> themselves in the hope of realizing their new ideas about the meaning of life and about themselves.
> This is especially true of the recent converts as distinct from a large group of Bahais who inherited the
> religion from their families.
> It seems that in the future too, Islam, even divided into several madhabs, will remain firmly
> rooted in Azerbaijan; Bahaism stands no chance of replacing it.
> 
> C o n c l u s i o n
> Today, the consolidation of people within Bahai public reorganization has already demonstrat-
> ed its usefulness in many countries and regions, Azerbaijan being no exception in this respect. Baha-
> ism can be described as a new religion, the term being partly accepted by the academic community
> with respect to the religious universalist movements.
> Its geographic scope makes Bahaism an interesting example of trans-cultural processes and
> trends caused by the fact that its ranks are swelling with representatives from all kinds of religious and
> cultural traditions. We are in fact watching an inter-civilizational and inter-religious dialog.
> 
> Sudaba ZEINALOVA
> 
> Ph.D. (Hist.), Senior researcher
> at the A. Bakikhanov Institute of History,
> Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences
> (Baku, Azerbaijan).
> 
> THE EVANGELICAL-LUTHERAN COMMUNITY
> IN AZERBAIJAN:
> A RETROSPECTIVE ANALYSIS
> 
> Abstract
> 
> T     his article looks at the life of the Prot-
> estant religious community in Azerbaij-
> an, studies the history of how the Ger-
> man population that formed the foundation
> munity migrated to Azerbaijan, and sheds
> light on the activity of the Lutheran church.
> A scientific analysis of the ethnoconfessional
> diversity that exists today in Azerbaijan recon-
> of the Protestant, Evangelical-Lutheran com-          firms the peace-loving and respectful attitude
>
> — *Bahaism in Azerbaijan (Used by permission of the curator)*