ORIGINAL AZARBAIJANIS (ETHNIC IRANIANS)
Original Azarbaijanis are ethnic Iranians that underwent a recent language change in or about the 13th century. Original Azarbaijanis spoke an Iranian language that that was later blended with Turkic. This is well documented:
Original-Azari Was an Iranian-Language related to Persian:
“We need not take seriously Moqaddasī’s assertion that Azerbaijan had seventy languages, a state of affairs more correctly applicable to the Caucasus region to the north; but the basically Iranian population spoke an aberrant, dialectical form of Persian (called by Masʿūdī al-āḏarīya) as well as standard Persian, and the geographers state that the former was difficult to understand.” (See Bosworth,C. E,”AZERBAIJAN iv. Islamic History to 1941″,Encyclopædia Iranica,Vol. III, Fasc. 2-3, pp.224-231.)
“The long and complex history of Azari (q.v.), a major Iranian language and the original language of the region, and its partial replacement with Azeri Turkish, the present-day language of Azerbaijan, is surveyed in detail and with a wealth of citations from historical sources elsewhere in the Encyclopaedia (R. N. Frye, “PEOPLES OF IRAN” in Encyclopædia Iranica; AZERBAIJAN vii.)
“The Persians are a people whose borders are the Mahat Mountains and Azarbaijan ….” (Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn al-Husayn Al-Masudi (896-956); Al Mas’udi, Kitab al-Tanbih wa-l-Ishraf, De Goeje, M.J. (ed.), Leiden, Brill, 1894, pp. 77-8.)
“Azarbaijan was the domain of Adhari (Azari), an important Iranian dialect which Masudi mentions together with Dari and Pahlavi.” (Lazard, Gilbert 1975, “The Rise of the New Persian Language” in Frye, R. N., The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 4, pp. 595-632, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 599.)
“NEW AZERIS”
Many of the “New Azeris” in the Republic of Azerbaijan (a new country) are not real ethnic Azaris. In fact, that land was the former province of Iran (called “Aran”) and was renamed after being taken by Russia. After Russia took over that land, Stalin started to repopulate it and to filter out traces of Iranian languages. Some of the people there are real Azaris and some of the people are not, yet they all are basically forced to call themselves ‘Azerbaijanis’ which is technically incorrect. The ethnic groups in the Republic of Azerbaijan (or as people from Tabriz call it: ‘Aliof-bademjoon‘) are varied and include: Talesh (Iranians), Tats (Iranians), Real Azaris (Iranians), Lezgins, Turkmen, Tatars, Armenians and so on. However, they are all basically forced to call themselves ‘Azerbaijanis.’
