Campaign of Caucasian Albania and Armenia 624 A.D.

III Campaign of Albania and Armenia 624 A.D. Of the three Caucasian countries which border on the north of Armenia Colchis Iberia and Albania Albania is the most easterly Bounded on the east by the Caspian on the west by Iberia it is separated from Armenia on the south by the Cyrus which mixing its waters with the great Armenian river Araxes at some distance from its mouth flows along with it into the Hyrcanian Sea In this country Heraclius recruited his army with Colchian Iberian and Abasgian allies and entered into negotiation with the Khazars a Hunnic people of the trans Caucasian steppes "

The campaign of 624 consisted of a series of movements and counter movements to and fro between Albania and Armenia wherein both sides exhibited dexterity but the Eoman Emperor proved himself superior At first he was opposed by two Persian armies one commanded by a new general Sarablagas 1 the other by the inevitable Shahr Barz The object of Sarablagas was to prevent the Romans from entering Persia and accordingly having garrisoned the passes of Azerbiyan he stationed himself on the lower Cyrus near its junction with the Araxes Heraclius however marched in a north westerly direction and crossed the river considerably higher up but his advance was retarded by a mutiny of his Caucasian allies and in the meantime Shahr Barz who had entered Armenia from the south west had arrived on the scene of action and effected a junction with his colleague Sarablagas When these tidings arrived the obstructives in the Eoman camp were pathetically penitent and bade Heraclius lead them where he would He then advanced towards the place where the Persians were stationed defeated some of their outposts and passing on marched to the Araxes "

Avarians claim autonomy within Azerbaijan

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Institute of Oriental Studies at the RA Academy of Sciences and Mitk analytical center initiated an international conference titled “The state system of Caucasian Albania and its ethnic and cultural heritage.”

Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Professor Ruben Safrastyan said the topic is both of scientific and political interest. “The state system of medieval Caucasian Albania needs serious and impartial investigation and I am hopeful that scientists from Azerbaijan will join our work,” he said.

According to Mitk head Eduard Abrahamyan, examination of the past and present of Caucasian Albania and Albanian peoples will lead to a better understanding of modern ethno-political processes in the Caucasus.

For his part, Armenian political scientist Levon Melik-Shahnazaryan told a PanARMENIAN.Net that participation of representatives of Dagestani peoples will help to understand the problems of their self-identity in Azerbaijan. “The conference is rather a political than academic event. This can be proved by the statement of Dagestani Avarians who claim autonomy within Azerbaijan,” he said.

Professor of Dagestani State University Timur Aytberov said Baku pursues a policy of extermination of aborigine Dagestani peoples residing in some regions of Azerbaijan. “The Avarian people are going to assert their rights by all legal ways including the experience of Celtic peoples,” he said.

Caucasian Albania, also known as Alvank in Armenian, Ardhan in Parthian, Arran in Persian and Al-Ran in Arabic was an ancient kingdom, which existed on the territory of present-day Republic of Azerbaijan and southern Dagestan. The name "Albania" is Latin, and denotes "mountainous land". The native name for the country is unknown.

The population of Caucasian Albania descends from the union of 26 tribes speaking various dialects of the Nakh-Dagestani family of languages. The only known Albanian language is the Alvan or Gargarean language.

According to Movses Kaghankatvatzi, the Albanian alphabet was invented by Mesrob Mashtots, an Armenian monk, theologian and linguist.

Professor Buniatov

Professor Buniatov one of the worst revisionists of Caucasian Albania.

He chose as his main field of study the "ancient history of Azerbaijan" aind in particular "Caucasian Albania". And he devised the theory that the Karabakh Armenian rulers, like the Belgarians and Hasan-Jalal were not really Armenians but Armenianized Albanians.

The "Albanians" Buniatov was referring to has nothing to do with the nation in the Balkans. This was the name the Romans gave to a Caucasian people when they first made incursions into the Caucasus in the first century B.C.

"Buniatov's academy reissued thirty thousand copies of a forgotten racist tract by the turn of the century Russian polemcisit Vasil Velichko, later Buniatov began a poisonous quarrel for which Caucasian Albanians themselves should take none of them blame. (Their true history has not become any clearer as a result). Buniatov’s scholarly credentials were dubious. It later transpired that the two articles he published in 1960 and 1965 on Caucasian Albania were direct plagiarism. Under his own name, he had simply published, unattributed, translations of two articles, originally written in English by Western scholars C.F.J. Dowsett and Robert Hensen."

Source: Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War by Thomas De Waal (Aug 25, 2004) , pages 152-153, 143