The people

Azerbaijan has a growing and youthful population. The Turkic-speaking Azerbaijanis (Azeris) , who make up more than some four-fifths of the country’s population, are predominantly Shīʾite Muslims. They ; the remaining population comprises only small concentrations of minorities—among them, Lezgians (who speak a Caucasian language), Russians, and Armenians. Ethnic Azerbaijanis combine in themselves the dominant Turkic strain, which flooded arrived in Azerbaijan especially during the Oğuz Oghuz Seljuq migrations of the 11th century, with mixtures of older inhabitants—Iranians and others—who had lived in Transcaucasia since ancient times. About At the end of the 20th century, about 13 million Azerbaijanis live lived abroad, most of them in Iran.



The Azerbaijani language is a member of the West Oghuz group of the southwestern (Oghuz) branch of the Turkic languages. The literary tradition dates to the 14th century. The Arabic script was used until the 20th century; the Cyrillic alphabet was introduced in 1939. In 1992 the Azerbaijani government switched from the Cyrillic to the Roman alphabet as its official orthography.

Russians and Armenians make up sizable minorities in Azerbaijan , but militant nationalism, political uncertainty, and the growing strength of Islām is forcing many of these minorities to become refugees and return to their homelands.

In detached Naxçıvan almost all the inhabitants are Azerbaijanis, whereas the population of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, lying wholly within Azerbaijan, is predominantly Armenian. The subunits of Naxçıvan and Nagorno-Karabakh were established by the Soviet Union to minimize friction between the two nationalities, but Christian Armenians and Muslim Azerbaijanis each claim both areas.
