THE HARDWORKING PEOPLE OF OLD BAKU

The best way of understanding how the lives of our forefathers really did differ from our own is to find out how they earned a living. Over these years many professions have drastically changed, and some seem strange today. In his book "Old Baku", the celebrated opera singer, composer and playwright Huseyn Qulu Sarabski recalled the professions of Baku's residents at the beginning of the last century: "There were always plenty of tradesmen here: stonemasons, carpenters, blacksmiths, painters, carpet-weavers, jewellers, hatters, watchmakers, stone hewers, potters, manufacturers of building materials, stone engravers, furriers, potters, kir-layers, kankany -the well-diggers, the smiths who shooed the horses, the cradle-makers, the knife- and scissor-makers and grinders, the felt-makers, cobblers, sword- and sabre-makers, the enamellers, precious stone setters, hairdressers and barbers, dyers and many other types of skilled tradespeople, top-notch in their crafts, who had always worthily served Baku's residents."

"All trades are important"

Highly skilled tradespeople did not turn up in the city until the mid-1870s. At that time, Baku's population began to grow at an unprecedented rate. Owing to the oil boom, the standard of living rose, so there was a need for the services of different kinds of skilled tradespeople and craftsmen.

The most prestigious and profitable of the trades was that of the papakha [Caucasian fur cap] makers. At the beginning of the 20th century a good hatter could earn up to 150 roubles per month, while the average wage of the oilmen was 15 roubles per month. The rich of various generations wanted to have these hats from one and the same family firm, in which the profession had been passed down from father to son. The most expensive papakhas were made from astrakhan fur, of which the grey, slightly ash-coloured, closely curled lambs' wool was the most expensive. The cost of such a papakha could sometimes be as much as 100 roubles.

The profession of bath-house attendant may appear rather strange these days. But back in the 1950s before most of the residents of the USSR had acquired their own flats, the public bath-houses were very popular. In those times, the work of the bath-house attendant boiled down to collecting money from the customers and keeping the bath-house clean. In the years before the revolution the bath-house attendant would also sell aromatic toiletries (which were substitutes for shampoos), soap and special hair preparations. Buzovna clay was in the greatest demand. You can still get it now, but with great difficulty. It provided an excellent amount of lather, and the hair became soft and fine like cat fur. 

When you look at photographs from the turn of the 20th century, you can see that people were rather poor at the time when the industrial era was starting. You could sense that from the working environment. Thus, most of the hairdressers and barbers in Baku did not have their own premises, but more often than not worked outside on the street among the single-storey houses, where there were a lot of sheltered blind alleys. In the poor quarters of Nagornaya and Cambarakand you could hear the barber's voice as he walked past with his bucket, soap and mirror, offering his services. The stalls in these quarters were not very smart either, cobbled together from bits and bobs of left-over building materials.

The residents of the poor districts themselves often worked in the oilfields, doing the heavy, and at that time still manual, work, for a very modest wage. These were the "kankanshiki" who dug the wells, the oil bailers and sludge pumpers, drawing the oil out of the wells with pumps and pouring it into tanks, the cindircis, collecting the oil from the earth and the surface of the sea with rags, and the sail-makers, who sewed and patched the sails.

Above them in status were the sailors, the mechanics, stone hewers and stone masons, the carpenters and other, more highly skilled tradesmen.

The skilled basket-makers

Another trade which has died away today is that of basket-making. It appeared in the mid-19th century and disappeared in just over 50 years. The basket-makers made soft woven baskets known as "zambils". This trade emerged owing to the growing goods turnover from Baku. More and more trains and steamships arrived at the city, and the basket-weavers used to stand at the station and on the dockside, selling their hand-made containers. 

At that time, Baku really was a city of contrasts. The people who lived in the hilly areas hardly ever came into contact with the residents in the centre. Officers with their ladies would not walk along the pise [rammed earth] roads of Cambarakand. But it only took 10 minutes to walk down from the slums into the smart areas of the city and come across those whose shops at times stood out for their deliberately luxury goods.

In his book "Past Days" the remarkable writer and historian Manaf Suleymanov recalls that one of the most expensive shops at the turn of the century was the Zeitz confectionary shop. The shop was more like a museum, both inside and out, for sugar statues were on display in the window and pictures hung on the high walls inside. A central place above the counters was occupied by a huge picture on a mythical subject, illustrating a poem by [the English poet Lord] Byron, in which the hero Mazeppa is racing through the darkness strapped to a wild horse and surrounded by wolves. The remaining wall surface was crowned with garlands of flowers under which stuffed wild animals stood. Nevertheless, that was a confectioners and not a museum. Goods were delivered to this sweet-shop from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Warsaw and Paris.

The cakes there were sufficiently expensive, and Zeitz resorted to all kinds of cunning ways to attract customers. Manaf Suleymanov writes: "In order to attract customers, the shop's owner only employed beautiful young women. Their white-toothed smiles, coquettish outfits, silk ribbons and carefully dressed hair charmed the men who never left the confectioner's empty-handed."

Bodyguards

Another profession that has died out is that of the bodyguard, the qocu. Yes, it is that very same "qocu" that later came to be known as "robbers". In the beginning, "qocu" was the name given to the personal bodyguards of the oil magnates. The fact is that in the 19th century the city, which was rapidly becoming wealthy, attracted many good-for-nothings from other provinces. A particular misfortune at that time was the arrival of the "kito" (or "kento") from Tiflis [now Tbilisi]. This is what these people called themselves who had weapons and in principle did not work anywhere.

They meant real trouble for the merchants and industrialists who started to employ their own bodyguards from physically strong weapon-owning people, who were known as "qocu". Historians recall that qocu was actually the nickname of one of these people. He was also a newcomer, was famed throughout the city for his exceptional strength and was distinguished for being able to break even the most indomitable horses. The "qocu" soon drove the "kento" out of the city, but, when the demand for bodyguards declined, the "qocu" filled the "vacuum" [left by the "kento" gangsters] since they had no other profession.

The changes in the economy, architecture, demography, as well as in the life-style in Baku in just a few years gave rise to numerous interesting trades and in some cases elevated them to an art, but today they have already all but disappeared. But, when we learn about this past, we get a better understanding of the city in which we live.