Azerbaijan, Baku / Trend corr S. Aghayeva / The venue for a scientific conference on history and other problems in the Caucasus Albania, which refers to Azerbaijan's past and the Azerbaijani people, should be held in Baku, not Yerevan, the Azerbaijani historian-ethnologist, Professor Rauf Huseynzadeh, said on 31 August. He was speaking on the intentions by the Armenian scientists to organize an international scientific conference in Armenia.
Between 3 to 5 September the Mitk analytical centre will organize, jointly with the Oriental Studies Institute of the Armenian National Academy of Sciences, an international conference on 'Statehood of Caucasus Albania and its Ethnic and Cultural Heritage'. The main purpose of the conference is to establish grounds to develop general historical conceptions on ethnic composition, culture, borders, and real ethnic and political successors of Caucasus Albania.
"Armenian scientists, who wrongly consider themselves to be direct successors of the Caucasus Albanians, do not have the right to speak on Caucasus Albania," the Azerbaijani scientist noted. According to him, Armenians are just trying to mark another new history of Armenia.
According to Russian and Armenian studies of the 19th and 20th centuries, Armenians came to the Caucasus, i.e. Asia, from Thrace which is located at the junction of Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece, i.e. Europe. The Armenian state was destroyed three times which resulted in them dispersing throughout the world. Therefore the Armenian diaspora was realised, Huseynzadeh said. All in all, for the 1,400 years the Armenians did not have their own state.
According to Huseynzadeh, even Moses Khorenski, who lived in the 5th century and is considered by the Armenians to be the father of their history, wrote a book entitled 'History of Armenians', not the 'History of Armenia'.
The Albanian state (4th century B.C. - 8th century A.M.), which actually occupied the same territory for 1,000 years - between the Araz River in the south and the Big Caucasus Range in the north - played an important role in the history of the Caucasus people, as well as in the history of the Azerbaijani people. "It so happened that it is the Azerbaijani people which are one of the main successors of the Caucasus Albania's historical and cultural heritage. Albania is one of the earliest states which existed in the territory of historical Azerbaijan," Huseynzadeh said. "We do not invent anything, but rest upon the very Armenians' arguments," he said. In her book 'Source and Time. Narration about Armenians' famous Armenian scientist-historian Viada Arutunova-Fidanyan points 17 Armenian states in the map, Azerbaijani historian added.
We are preparing a book about the Caucasus which will produce scientific proof of who the Armenians are, where they came from to the Caucasus, and why they are not Caucasians of origin. In this book we rely upon manuals written by Armenian scientists.
The Conference is dedicated to the Caucasus Albania should be held in Azerbaijan under the patronage of the Institute of History named after Bakikhanov of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences and the Caucasus Institute of Strategic Researches.