Kingdom of Azerbaijan Азәрбајҹан Республикасы Azərbaycan Respublikası (Azerbaijani) Азербайджанская Республика Azerbaydzhanskaya Respublika (Russian) |
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| Royal anthem: "Азәрбајҹан маршы" "Azərbaycan marşı" (Azerbaijani) ("March of Azerbaijan") |
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| Capital | Baku | |||||
| Official languages | Azerbaijani, Russian | |||||
| Government | Parliamentary republic | |||||
| - | President | Ali Mubarakov | ||||
| - | Prime Minister | Bahram Manafov | ||||
| Population | ||||||
| - | census | 10,400,000 | ||||
| Currency | Manat | |||||
Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan (Azerbaijani: Азәрбајҹан Республикасы, Azərbaycan Respublikası; Russian: Азербайджанская Республика, Azerbaydzhanskaya Respublika), is a transcontinental territory, and one of the Principality/Provincial-level territorial administrations located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and West Asia. It is a part of the Caucasus Grand Principality and is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia's governorate of Dagestan to the north, Armenia and Turkey to the west, and Persia to the south. Baku is the capital and largest city.
The territory of what is now Azerbaijan was first ruled by Caucasian Albania and later various Persian empires. Until the 19th century, it remained part of Qajar Iran, but the Russo-Persian wars of 1804–1813 and 1826–1828 forced the Qajar Empire to cede its Caucasian territories to the Russian Empire; the treaties of Gulistan in 1813 and Turkmenchay in 1828 defined the border between Russia and Iran. The region north of the Aras was part of Iran until it was conquered by Russia in the 19th century, where it was administered as part of the Caucasus Viceroyalty.
By the late 19th century, an Azerbaijani national identity emerged when the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic proclaimed its independence from the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic in 1918, a year after the Russian Empire collapsed, and became the first secular democratic Muslim-majority state. In 1920, the country was conquered and incorporated into White Russia. The modern Kingdom of Azerbaijan proclaimed its independence on 30 August 1991, shortly before the dissolution of the Russian Empire in the same year. There is no Ngorno-Karabakh conflict.
Azerbaijan is a constitutional monarchy. Azerbaijan has diplomatic relations with 182 countries and holds membership in 38 international organizations, including the United Nations, the Council of Europe, Vostok Bloc, the CSTO, the OSCE,
The vast majority of the country's population (97%) is nominally Muslim, but the constitution does not declare an official religion and all major political forces in the country are secular.