INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

The moral potential of Azerbaijani nation was formed by various layers, connected with pagan beliefs, Tenqrism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam.

All these cultural and historical layers have left their own mark on the artistic culture and subjects of material culture, which characterize the culture and art of ancient Caucasian Albania.

Understanding of cultural baggage, inherited from this ancient state in the South Caucasus, predetermined new researches not only in the sphere of written history and culture, but also researches of the prehistoric past. About the prehistoric period we can estimate by remnants of material culture, works of art, which reflect the ideology, ritual practice and aesthetic norms forming the national identity of Azerbaijanis.

In this sphere very rich factual and methodological material is collected. That material predetermines the consideration of Albanian culture and art in the context of the spiritual, religious and aesthetic norms of the primitive, ancient and early medieval stage of development of ethnos, which formed the basis of a future Azerbaijani nation. Ethnic image, cultural stereotypes of our ancestors were formed in close contact and interaction with the sedentary, semi-nomadic and nomadic culture of the steppe tribes which settled in the vast areas from Eastern Europe to Northern China.

In the richest cultural complex of our Alban ancestors sculptural arts (both its monumental and chamber forms) played one of the most important functions in ethnic cultural and artistic self-identification. The name of the term “paganism”, (bütpərəstlik–paganism, büt – idol. Azerb.) which means idolatry, indicates the great significance of sculptural arts in the spirituality of this period.

In this book, brought to readers’ notice the pre-Islamic (pagan) sculptural arts of Caucasian Albania is investigated in the context of ritual and ceremony practice generated by the pagan worldview of our ancestors. At the same time, taking into account the fact that the ethnic and cultural community of our Albanian ancestors, their ceremonial practice and artistic canons represent the early rudiments of the ancient Türkic metaculture, the synchronic monuments of the Turkic people were also included in the study.

Such comparative method of research allowed to restore the missed links of semantic and formal character in the study of the place, role and significance of Albanian sculptural art in the history of Azerbaijani art.