Mythologies of the Talysh Tribe
The Talysh tribe are an autochthonous segment of the southwestern pre-Caspian line, whose origins are rooted in the local indigenous ethnic landscape, [2] and who thus represent an integral and organic element of the historical Iranian ethno-linguo-cultural continuum. Its division into two parts, the northern and southern Talyshi, in the 19th century was the result of the Russian-Persian War of 1804-1813, after which the Talyshi people found themselves not only in two political entities, but also in two fundamentally different civilisational paradigms. Since 1813, northern Talysh has been ruled successively by the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and, since 1991, the Republic of Azerbaijan (a former Soviet republic), with its current distinctly Turkish political and cultural vector. This vector towards Turkey is not only the result of the political developments in the region during the last three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, although it has certainly gained new...