Azerbaijan

A very misunderstood country who Armenians claim never had a statehood until 1918 just because in their previous statehoods they did not call themselves ‘Azerbaijan’ throughout most of the period. The country had created a large 551 year lasting empire under various Azerbaijani dynasties, the Qoyunlus, Safavids, Afsharids and Qajars. The descendants of the Azerbaijanis include the Oghuz Turks that came to the Caucasus in 11th century AD, the Medians, an Iranic people who were indigenous to northwestern Iran (Iranian Azerbaijan) and the Mannaeans, the oldest ancestors of the Azerbaijanis (Proto-Azeris, you can say), a Caucasian people (Indigenous to the Caucasus) who weee a tribe but had then migrated at around the 1st millennium BC to northwestern Iran (Again, Iranian Azerbaijan) to create a kingdom called Mannaea. The word Azerbaijan is actually a couple millennia evolving from the 4th century BC kingdom name Atropatene.