FOREIGN LABEL-TAGS ON OUR ARTEFACTS

The well-known Azerbaijani art historian, academician, professor and director of the Institute for Architecture and Arts of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, Rasim Afandi, is one of those who founded the national school of art history. He is the author of more than 200 scientific works that cover, without exaggeration, all problems and subjects of Azerbaijani arts. One of the subjects of his research is Azerbaijani artefacts kept in foreign museums. This subject is topical as never before nowadays.

The starting point of Rasim Afandi's close attention to monuments of our culture, which are now kept abroad, was his trip to Egypt in 1960. He visited many museums there together with painter Latif Karimov and the rector of the Technical Institute, Anvar Qasimzada. Almost everywhere, guides spoke about the history of France and Turkey. Then this group of Azerbaijani scientists visited a museum founded by Muhammad Ali (who was Turkish by origin) in Alexandria in the 19th century. This was the Caucasus Museum which had exhibits from all three countries of the South Caucasus (the then Transcaucasian republics of the USSR). Rasim Afandi especially remembered a collection of daggers on one of which he read an inscription made by a Saki workman.

This is an attribute of Azerbaijan

Since then, the patriotic scientist Rasim Afandi has been travelling to various countries (he has happened to visit many countries) for more than 40 years, demonstrating slides and pictures of our artefacts to his colleagues. He himself takes their pictures in all museums and keeps vast correspondence on this subject. We have to say that the problem which emerges when a really Azerbaijani piece of work is discovered in foreign state and private collections is always the same - wrong attribution. It is no secret that monuments of Azerbaijani culture are mainly wrongly attributed in foreign collections, and what is more, such a parametre as cultural affiliation is often distorted deliberately - it is replaced by the geographical parametre (a typical well-known example is the Sheikh Safi Carpet that suddenly became "Persian"). "Take the well-known star globe that is kept at the mathematics and physics salon of the Dresden Museum and was created by Muhammad Muvayyid al-Urudi in 1279," the academician says. "It is attributed to the Arab world. Meanwhile, this globe was made for the Maraga observatory - the brainchild of the great Azerbaijani scientist Nasraddin Tusi. In the opinion of a number of researchers, this is the second oldest globe in the world."

Very often, you can sense "an Armenian hand" in such replacements of the attribution of exhibits that are of Azerbaijani origin. Sometimes we can talk about a whole group of artefacts, especially carpets. According to Afandi, Armenians who have collections abroad, among all Azerbaijani artefacts, are interested in carpets most of all. They present not only Karabakh carpets, but also carpets from other regions of Azerbaijan as Armenian ones on a mass scale. For example, the private collection of Berdj Abadjian (USA), which is one of the best ones in America, has a Karabakh carpet made in 1802. Abadjian himself, as can be seen from his name, is an ethnic Armenian, and this is notable. Is it worth saying that this carpet is presented as being Armenian in the collection?

We have to say that in the first half of the last century, some very considerable Armenian claims in this sphere were repelled with credit. For example, our well-known countryman Muhammad Agaoglu managed to prove that the Ajdahali carpets (Dragon carpets) are not Armenian, as they were presented in America and Europe at the initiative of Armenian collectors, but are Azerbaijani - they were woven in Samaxi, Quba, Karabakh and Tabriz in the past. Muhammad Agaoglu himself is such a great person that he deserves a separate conversation. We can only mention that this orientalist was a professor at Harvard and published in the States a magazine called "Art Islam" and at some point, headed the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

It is not known what is worse for a monument - to be attributed to the culture of another people or to be destroyed. Alas, Rasim Afandi knows of such stories as well... Here is one of them. In the oriental hall of the Louvre, he had seen gravestones in the form of sheep. "Such monuments that look like ancient Azerbaijani totemic sheep and horses are common in the western and southern regions of our country," the scientist explained. You can still see them in Naxcivan and Lerik. As for those on the Armenian-occupied territories, I am afraid that they have not survived... The caretaker of the oriental hall explained to us that these monuments had been found on the territory of ancient Armenia (!). I was outraged. During our further conversion, we found out that the caretaker was ethnic Armenian, and everything became clear to me... In the USSR, the authorities did not pay special attention to these monuments. Meanwhile, such gravestones can also be found in Central Asia, which proves their Turkic origin once again, as well as in northern Spain in the Basque area. Incidentally, well-known Russian scientists A. Belenitskiy and A. Bernshtam said the following about these monuments: "If such sculptures exist somewhere, this means that Turks had lived there." So these figures could shed light on the relationship between Basque and Azerbaijani cultures. By the way, the Basque language is partly like our language. For example, "saat" means a clock both in Azerbaijani and Basque, as well as in Georgian (as is known, the Georgians have long been working on the version of their relationship with the Basque people).

We have to point out that wonderful samples of such gravestones were available near the village of Urud in Armenia's Sisian District - there was a whole ancient graveyard there. Sisian District, formerly Zangazur, is a region of Azerbaijan which was handed over to Armenia under the Soviets in the first half of the last century. But the Armenians are trying to keep quiet about this, presenting this territory as their own. Rasim Afandi visited there many times under the Soviets, took pictures and made notes.

"There was an absolutely captivating sheep figure at that graveyard - both in terms of beauty and scientific importance," he said. There was a date on it - 1578, and the inscription was made in Arabic script, but in the Azerbaijani language! Madame Taylor who headed the oriental department of the Louvre at the time and who now holds the post of deputy minister of culture in France, told me when she saw a picture of this gravestone: "This could be the best monument in the Louvre collection!"

Memory of artefacts

The last pictures of this graveyard museum taken by Rasim Afandi date to 1985. "In 1985, the leadership of Sisian District issued an instruction to demolish the ancient graveyard and build a road in its place under the pretext of "renovating the territory of the district". I have to say that local residents of Azerbaijani nationality - in fact, original residents of this area - faced pressure from the district authorities long before the beginning of the Karabakh conflict. The pressure was so strong that by the mid-1980s, some of them had already moved to the Naxcivan ASSR which was beyond the mountain pass just 30km away.

But the destruction of the graveyard was too much even for the policy of the then Armenian authorities. Sisian Azerbaijanis rose up: "These are the graves of our ancestors!" Men behaved calmly, but women turned on the workers who were building the road, carrying anything they could use. But as was expected, this revolt ended in nothing - the road was built in the end. However, it proved possible to save some of these figures - they are kept at the Naxcivan State Museum now. Two other similar monuments adorn our republican carpet museum in Baku. It proved impossible to save the others. After the collapse of the USSR, I was told that these stone figures had been seen in Sisian District. They were broken into pieces and thrown into a river..."

Now these priceless works of our ancestors have remained only in Afandi's book "Stone plastic arts" which focuses on those same gravestones of ancient Azerbaijan. We only managed to save our memory of artefacts... But this is good as well in view of the aggressive intentions of our neighbours. This book, which was published in the 1980s, is only one of the numerous works of Academician Rasim Afandi. This scientist is now working on new publications. Quite recently, we started issuing a series of booklets on the art history of Western Azerbaijan (in Azerbaijani and English) at the request of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Rasim Afandi wrote texts for these booklets. Their subject is the "Stone plastic arts of Western Azerbaijan" and "Carpets of Western Azerbaijan". This series was presented recently at an exhibition in the gallery of the Museum Centre dedicated to the arts of this region. Now he is working on a book called "Azerbaijani monuments of arts in world museums". It has already been included in the thematic plan of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and will see the light probably in autumn this year.