About

Lankaran is a city in Azerbaijan, located near the southern border with Iran. It is a center for subtropical crop cultivation and a city of gastronomy. The name Lankaran does not appear in medieval Arabic geographical texts and began to be recorded in Western sources from the 16th and 17th centuries. During the Safavid dynasty, it was the center of the Talysh region, and Ismail I, who later founded the Safavid dynasty, received support from the Talysh people when building his early power base. In the late 16th century, the Talysh ruler Amir Hamza Khan resisted the migration policies of Shah Abbas I but was defeated. In the late 17th century, as Iranian central power weakened, local rulers attempted independence, and during the Russo-Persian War of 1722–1723, the Russian forces of Peter I occupied the city. It became Russian territory under the Treaty of Saint Petersburg in 1723 but was returned to Persia following the Treaty of Resht in 1732. Russian troops briefly entered in 1796 but soon withdrew, and in 1809, the city was burned during an attack by Persian forces. During the Russo-Persian War of 1812–1813, Russian commander Pyotr Kotlyarevsky captured the Lankaran fortress, and under the Treaty of Gulistan in 1813, Persia officially recognized Lankaran as territory of the Russian Empire. In the mid-19th century, Lankaran served as a military center for the Caspian region and Baku Province; by 1862, it had about 900 houses, Armenian and Muslim markets, a Russian Orthodox cathedral, an Armenian church, and three mosques. Residents were mainly engaged in agriculture, with commerce and industry not yet significantly developed. During the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1922, Lankaran nominally belonged to the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic but was effectively outside central government control. In August 1918, Russian and Talysh intellectuals established the Provisional Military Dictatorship of Mughan to maintain ties with Russia, and in December of the same year, the Talysh Representative Council unanimously agreed to establish a local government as part of Russia. In April 1919, the Lankaran Revolutionary Committee staged a coup and founded the Mughan Soviet Republic. In January 1990, activists from the Azerbaijan Popular Front demanding independence occupied city administrative offices, effectively paralyzing Soviet authority. Following Azerbaijani independence in 1991, Lankaran became a city of the independent nation, and from June to August 1993, it served as the center of the Talysh-Mughan Autonomous Republic, which claimed autonomy within Azerbaijan. Lankaran has a developed agricultural sector, primarily cultivating subtropical crops such as tea, citrus fruits, and rice.