MAKING ONE'S MARK

More often than not stereotypes reinforce negative images of someone or something in the public consciousness, or at least that is the accepted view. But this is not the whole story about these entrenched ideas. There are positive stereotypes, such as the image of the tolerance of our people which was not created yesterday but over centuries of living side by side with representatives of different ethnic groups. Any tourist who visits Azerbaijan or specialist who comes here on business will notice not only the hospitality of householders but their kindliness and openness regardless of ethnic affiliation - majority or minority. Many say that in our century of clear separation along national lines, this is not something one often comes across. This is what everyone says, first of all, international experts who monitor human rights. When she visited our country, UN representative Asma Jahangir saw fit to suggest that an organization that brings together the majority of countries of the world should study the experience of Azerbaijan in this area, as she thinks it is invaluable and needs to be spread more widely. In the past few years, the maintenance of tolerance in our country and state support for work in this regard have indeed often been the subject of academic research and been considered on different international stages. Azerbaijan's experience in this area has been considered at the Council of Europe, and in UN committees, and at OSCE parliamentary assemblies, not to mention the various countries of the world where this has been done bilaterally. But this is experience, a finished product, which can be researched, studied and applied at home.

The subject of this article, Doctor of History, Professor Qamarsah Cavadov, throughout his conscious life worked so that we, his contemporaries and, we dare to think, descendants, could maintain peace and friendship with the ethnic minorities living alongside us. He did not only research the lives of these ethnic groups in the modern day and describe them to the world, when necessary, in their darkest hour, he came to their defence. 

He was (unfortunately, we have to write about him in the past tense, as a cruel disease took the scholar at the height of his creative powers - the age of 66) a marvellous person, whose heart beat in unison with Azerbaijan, which he loved without fine words, putting his feelings into his work. He well understood the importance of his work for his motherland, especially during its time of trouble, the tough 1990s, but considered it inappropriate to talk about it: he did not like grandiloquence, he was too modest to indulge in vulgar boasting. He worked as a true intellectual and that was his reward.

Unique ethnic groups should be preserved for all mankind

Academic and other literature of the post-Soviet period has often discussed the question: "Should minority ethnic groups be artificially preserved? It's no secret that many of the national minorities have left the stage of history, having assimilated with other ethnic groups or simply disappeared for various reasons. Perhaps that is their historic fate?" The scholar was asked once: "Should the development of numerically insignificant peoples be supported or left to natural assimilation?" The anthropologist was indignant: "It is variety that makes the world interesting. How can we talk in the 20th century about the natural assimilation of numerically insignificant peoples, national minorities and ethnic groups? The democratic values, which are the basis of relations in the international community today, consist of observing the rights of everyone, regardless of the language they speak or the religion they profess." Cavadov was categorically opposed to that point of view. He thought that allowing a people to die out or disappear from the face of the earth was tantamount to not helping someone in need of rescue and support, to standing by instead of hurrying to help and doing everything possible. He considered the historical experience of Azerbaijan where for many centuries representatives of more than 100 peoples have lived as neighbours with Azerbaijanis, the most numerous indigenous ethnic group, a shining example of how the danger of the disappearance of numerically insignificant ethnicities and ethnic groups can be averted. He therefore considered it essential to describe the ethnic groups living in our country, preserving for science their origin, language, material and spiritual culture, handicrafts and numbers. This was the genesis of his monographs, The Talysh, The Udins (co-authored with Rauf Huseynov), The Numerically Insignificant Peoples and National Minorities of Azerbaijan. The articles listed in the contents page of the latter are sufficient to reveal the breadth and depth of the coverage of the topic, the author's scientific detail, his knowledge of the history and contemporary problems of ethnic and national relations in the country. Tats and Kurds, Lezgins and Tsakhurs, Ingiloys and Kryz, ethnic groups of Christian origin living in Azerbaijan - all were the subjects of his academic interest. While talking about the peculiarities and uniqueness of every people in his academic monographs, Professor Cavadov always stressed what they had in common which made them fully fledged citizens of the country which he loved infinitely. Representatives of these peoples, ethnic groups and national minorities belonging to different language families, when necessary came to the defence of Azerbaijan - the motherland that was the same for all. And therefore he wanted not only the motherland to be beloved of all who live on this land, but for the motherland to repay in kind its sons who live on this land but are so different from one another. He wrote many kind words about famous people who were citizens of Azerbaijan and genuinely considered themselves to be Azerbaijani but were also representatives of numerically insignificant peoples.

He collected a vast amount of material and published a monograph with the modest title, The Talysh, which can rightly be called an encyclopaedia of this people, something that no representative of this group has managed to do. 

The academic's last book, published after his death, I Wrote in Order to Leave a Mark on the Earth (Yazmisam ki, izim qala), includes his journalistic work. It also reveals Cavadov's civic position, which made him shout out on the printed page what was worrying him. And a great deal worried him. The need to know the history of one's people, embodied not only in cultural monuments but in agricultural implements. His doctoral dissertation was called simply, with no pomposity, People's Agricultural Technology in Azerbaijan. Historical and Anthro-pological Research. When you read his articles about how and why Azerbaijani peasants gave different names to different times of the year, you share his regret that this knowledge has sadly been lost. We are backed up by famous scholars from different corners of the Union, whose comments on Cavadov's scientific work are included in the book. The results of his research substantiated and proved a truth, which some are trying to dispute today, that Azerbaijanis are a settled people with an ancient history of agriculture. 

Academic reliability the priority

The monograph The Udins. Historical and Anthropological Research by two doctors - historian Rauf Huseynov and anthropologist Qamarsah Cavadov - was aptly described by a reviewer as an historical-anthropological treatise. It reflected a historical and political overview, economy and material culture, customs and traditions and many aspects of the spiritual culture of this autochthonous ethnos of Azerbaijan. 

Writing about the Albanian tribes after the Arab conquest of Azerbaijan, the authors rightly said that the Christians of Albania, who came under the sphere of influence of the Armenian Gregorian Church, began to lose their language and culture. Moreover, on the basis of the evidence they had assembled the scholars confirmed that only around what was Kutkashen and Vartashen (today's Qabala and Oguz) did the Christian Udins manage to preserve to our day their identity and language. Genuine academic integrity did not allow them to keep silent when in the 1990s during the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagornyy Karabakh some "patriots" saw the Udins living in these districts as Armenians, which of course led to various kinds of misunderstanding and conflict. Qamarsah Cavadov and Rauf Huseynov published articles rejecting the speculation that the Udins were Armenian. The scholars proved that out of those people who had settled in Azerbaijan in ancient times some numerically insignificant ethnic groups which took part in the formation of the Azerbaijani people had been preserved: Kryz and Budugs, Khinaliqers and Ingiloys and also the Udins (who call themselves Udi or Uti). For 200 years the origin and history of the Udins has not only drawn the attention of scholars, they have sometimes been the object of political and quasi-academic speculation aimed at boosting the false claims on the past and land of the Azerbaijanis, the historians said. One article by the two venerable scholars showed that "after the Arab conquest of Azerbaijan in the 7th century and the inclusion of the whole country in the Arab Caliphate, the overwhelming mass of the local, indigenous population, including the Udins, adopted Islam. But some of them kept their previous faith, as a result of which in the 7th century, by will of the Arab caliph, they were included in the Armenian Gregorian Church which from the 6th century had been trying to have the autocephalous Albanian Church made subordinate to it. True, the Albanian catholicos and his chancellery were preserved after the 8th century, but the process of the de-ethnization and Armenian-ization of the Albanian Christians had begun in earnest." The scholars proved that the Udin language, which is part of the Caucasian language family, like its speakers, has nothing in common with anything Armenian: either historically or ethnically, either culturally or territorially, or in any other way. Neither in the past nor present have the Udins been recorded in the territory named Armenia. Linking the Udins, through ignorance or deliberately, to the Armenian ethnos is historical nonsense, if not political and confessional ambition. The watertight academic proof cited by the scholars, devoid of any populism or cheap sensationalism, was able to shatter the public mood and change the situation for the better. The scholars said: "Much is done in the Azerbaijan Republic to preserve the Udins, one of the oldest, autochthonous ethnic groups on Azerbaijani land, to have survived to our day with of the oldest local languages, the spiritual and material culture of the distant past. This is important and necessary not only because the Udins belong to the indigenous settlers in the Trans-Caucasus and the Caucasus as a whole, but because they preserved for us and future generations a small part of the past Azerbaijani ethnos, which represents an irreplaceable and irretrievable part of humanity."

Just one thing could shake Cavadov's equilibrium - a lack of academic integrity. He once lost his temper with a dissertation student whose work was based on research that had allegedly been done in Agdam District. The academic asked indignantly: "Have you been to the area occupied by the Armenians? And did you conduct research there? You should be ashamed of yourself." And when he talked about this afterwards, it took him a long time to calm down. The academic world well knew Professor Cavadov's unflinching attitude towards that kind of thing. He waged an open war against plagiarism which he found in the work of one of his colleagues - he wrote newspaper articles and spoke at academic gatherings. And with the years he lost none of his deep respect for science and would let no-one drag its name through the mud. As they grow older, people adapt more to compromise, become more amenable on moral issues. But not Qamarsah Cavadov. Academic integrity, balanced analysis of new phenomena, restraint and patience towards others' opinions combined in him with a fierce rejection of anything that damaged science, that was opposed to it. And he fought against this although sometimes he saw around him examples of conformity and accommodation. And one can only hope that at least some of his master's and PhD students, whom he prepared for academic life, absorbed some of the principles of their teacher although it would be difficult to be like Professor Cavadov. The age of wisdom did not teach him compromise despite the changing world order and change in the public and political system, the change in the moral compass and the pragmatism that swept society. He retained his principles, the loss of which he considered dangerous not only for himself but for society as a whole.