The Talysh people (, ) or Talyshis, Talyshes, Talyshs, Talishis, Talishes, Talishs, Talesh are an Iranian ethnic group, with the majority residing in Azerbaijan and a minority in Iran. They are the indigenous people of the Talish, a region on the western shore of the Caspian Sea shared between Azerbaijan and Iran. The main city of the Talysh people and their homeland is Lankaran, the majority of the population of which is ethnically Talysh. They speak the Talysh language, closely related to Tati and Zaza languages and is one of the Northwestern Iranian languages. The majority of Talyshis in Azerbaijan are Shiite Muslims, and predominantly Sunni in Iran.
The Talysh people are famous for their longevity and centenarianism.
Origins
The Talyshis have traditionally inhabited the Talish district in the southwestern part of the Caspian Sea, which is usually considered to extend more than 150 km. Today, the northern part of Talish is located in the Republic of Azerbaijan, encompassing the districts of Lankaran, Astara, Lerik, Masally, and Yardimli. Within these five districts there are over 350 Talysh villages and towns. The southern part of Talish encompasses the western part of the Gilan province of Iran, extending to the village of Kapurchal. The most important center of the Talysh people and their ethnic homeland is the city of Lankaran, the majority of the population of which is ethnically Talysh. Like many other peoples of the republic, such as Tats and Kurds, the Talysh were subjected to forced assimilation by the Azerbaijani authorities.
The 1939 census stated that Talysh people constituted the fifth largest national community in Azerbaijan SSR, following Azeris, Russians, Armenians, and Lezgins, numbering 87,510 people. However, the Talysh population of the republic, according to the 1959 census, was only 85 individuals. The official explanation of the authorities for the almost complete disappearance of thousands of the Talyshes in this census was that "Talyshes voluntarily and en masse self-identified as Azeri to census workers". In her book, Krista Goff shows through documentary evidence that the Central Statistical Administration in Moscow had plans to include a Talysh nationality category in the 1959 census, but this category was excluded during the process of collecting and reporting the census in Azerbaijan itself.
The leadership of the Azerbaijan SSR used the manipulated census data in Soviet ethnography, creating a narrative about the "voluntary and complete assimilation" of the Talysh people, and that it occurred "naturally over time rather than from artificial manipulations of minority communities and identifications". Subsequently, there followed the production of a large amount of encyclopedic, ethnographic, linguistic, historical-geographical and other material that developed and reproduced narratives designed to justify the national "erasure" of the Talysh and strengthen the official myth of their "voluntary assimilation". Soviet ethnographers emphasized their common features in culture and life with the Azerbaijanis and presented the "assimilation" of the Iranian-speaking Talysh by the Turkic-speaking Azerbaijanis as an "impressive achievement" of the Soviet state, "ethnohistorical progress". So, for example, the Great Soviet Encyclopedia began to say that "in the USSR, the Talysh almost merged with the Azerbaijanis, who are very close in material and spiritual culture, and therefore were not identified in the 1970 census". According to researchers, "erasing" the Talysh from censuses, like some other peoples, was one of the main ways to increase the "titular" Azerbaijani majority in the republic and homogenize it.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty voiced their concerns about the arrest of Novruzali Mamedov, Chairman of the Talysh Cultural Centre and editor-in-chief of the Tolyshi Sado newspaper. According to a U.S. government interview with Khilal Mamedov, a Talysh rights activist, Mr. Mamedov: "Accused the Azerbaijani leadership of Turkic nationalism and of seeking to suppress non-Turkic minorities…. He said the Azerbaijani leadership seeks to minimize contacts between the Talysh communities in Azerbaijan and Iran and to run Azerbaijan into a monoethnic state."
The National Talysh Movement (NTM) was formally created in 2007 by Talysh leaders exiled in the Netherlands. The members of the organization include those who were in support of the Talysh-Mughan Autonomous Republic such as Alikram Hummatov, the self-proclaimed president of Talysh-Mughan. The movement favors an autonomous region within Azerbaijan. It also demands the promotion of democratic, cultural, and linguistic rights of all minorities within Azerbaijan.
According to some sources, the Azerbaijani government has also implemented a policy of forceful integration of all minorities, including Talysh, Tat, and Lezgins.
Currently, the Talysh community in Azerbaijan is oppressed by poverty, unemployment and lack of basic infrastructure such as electricity.
Talysh have also settled in other parts of Republic of Azerbaijan. Pockets of Talysh can be found south of the Kura River in the Bilasuvar, Neftchala, and Jalilabad districts. Large numbers of Talysh have also moved to the urban surroundings of the capital, Baku. In particular, the cities of Bina and Sumqayıt have seen an influx of Talysh.
Language
The Talysh language is a Northwestern Iranian language, being part of Tatic language family. Despite the absence of older Talysh texts, it is considered to be descended from Old Azeri, the indigenous Iranian language of Iranian Azerbaijan.
Talysh has three major dialects, Southern Talyshi (Masali, Masulei, Shandermani and others), Central Talyshi (Asalemi, Hashtpari and others) and Northern Talyshi (spoken in four closely linked dialect sections of Lerik, Masally, Lankaran, Astara in Azerbaijan Republic and in the dialects of Astara, Sayyadlar, Vizane, as well as Anbaran and neighbouring villages in Iran). A transitional stage of these dialects also exist, such as in Jow Kandan-e Bozorg, where a transition between Northern to Central Talyshi is spoken. Linguist Donald Stilo argues that Northern and Southern Talyshi should be regarded as individual languages in the same manner as the Kurdish languages, due to the low intelligibility between the two.
Literature
The Old Azeri quatrains of Safi-ad-din Ardabili are considered to be a variant of Talysh. There are two other collections of poetry from the Middle Ages, which are typically regarded as Gilaki, though also occasionally as Talysh; the quatrains by the 13th-century writer Sayyed Sharif al-Din, also known as Sharafshah of Dula or Dulab (i.e. Talishdula[b]); and the poems of Qasim-i Anvar, who lived in the 14th and 15th centuries.
Culture and religion
thumb|Circa 1860 Star Talish rug (detail)|upright
The Safavids' campaign of Shi'ite proselytism in Talish remained unfinished because of the district's mountainous, remote location. Because of this, a substantial number of the Talyshis in Iran and the Azerbaijan Republic are adherents of Sunni Islam. The majority of the Talyshis in the Iranian portion of Talish are Sunnis and adherents of the Naqshbandi order. On the other hand, the majority of Talyshis in the Azerbaijani portion of Talish are Shi'ites, with the exception of around twenty-four mountain villages.
Despite the fact that the Talyshis in both Iran and Azerbaijan have a distinctive Iranian identity, its importance in Azerbaijan is considerably bigger. Their identity in Azerbaijan is built on the conflict between Iranians and Turks. They have developed a strong sense of self-identity as a result of consistently receiving unfaithful treatment on behalf of Azerbaijan. One of the main drivers of the growing Iranian identity of the Talyshis in Azerbaijan was the rise of the Pan-Turkist ideology in the country after the Soviet era. The Talyshi identity in Azerbaijan has grown significantly during the past few decades. Even after the Talysh-Mughan Autonomous Republic was abolished, Talyshis in Azerbaijan and Russia's diaspora firmly believe in the possibility of an independent Talysh state.
Meanwhile, among the Talyshis of Iran, the search for Iranian forebears among the South Caspian indigenous peoples is an essential sign of their Iranianness.
Demographics
thumb|Percentage of people speaking Talysh as their native language in provinces of Iran, 2011
The topic of the Talyshis' population size is among the most difficult areas of research. For various reasons, precise statistics for the Talyshi population in Iran and the Azerbaijan Republic are unavailable. This is demonstrated in the official data on the Talyshis and other ethnic minorities in the Azerbaijan Republic. According to the census conducted by the Russian Empire in 1894, there were 88,499 Talyshis in the area that corresponds to the southwestern part of the later Azerbaijan Republic. However, the number of Talyshis became downplayed during the Soviet era due to the "title nations enlargement" plan.
Data from the Soviet census conducted in 1926 state that there were 77,300 Talyshis residing in the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic at that time. According to the 1937 Soviet census, the Talysh population had increased to 99,200. However, the Soviet census in 1939 claims that the Talysh population had decreased to 87,500. The Soviet census in 1959 claims that the Talysh population had decreased even more, now numbering eighty five. The Talyshis are not included in any Soviet population census from 1970 and 1979. However, during the Glasnost era of the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the Talyshis reappear abruptly again in the amount of 21,200 in the 1989 census of the Azerbaijan Soviet Republic, the final census of the Soviet era.
According to the official 1999 census of the Republic of Azerbaijan the number of Talysh people in the Republic of Azerbaijan was 76,000.
Talysh nationalists have always asserted that the number of Talysh in Azerbaijan is substantially higher than the official statistics. According to unofficial statistics, between 200,000 and 300,000 Talysh citizens live in Azerbaijan. The number of Talysh speakers in 2003 was estimated to be at least 400,000 in the Republic of Azerbaijan.
According to Swedish scholar on Eurasia Svante E. Cornell Azerbaijani government denies Lezgins claim that the number of Lezgins is many times higher than official numbers, but in private many Azeris acknowledge the fact that Lezgins – for that matter Talysh or the Kurdish population of Azerbaijan is far higher than the official figure.
Obtaining accurate statistics is difficult, due to the unavailability of reliable sources, intermarriage, and the decline of the Talysh language.
The Talysh are the ethnic group experiencing the highest growth rate in modern Azerbaijan. Another patriline, haplogroup R1, is also seen to range from 1/4 to up to 1/2, while R1a1, a marker associated with Eastern Indo-European, which includes Indo-Iranian peoples of Central/South Eurasia, only reaches to under 5%, along with haplogroup G.