Church of Caucasian Albania

The Albanian Apostolic Church or the Church of Caucasian Albania was an ancient briefly independent church. It later fell under the religious jurisdiction of the Armenian Apostolic Church that existed from the 5th century to 1830 and was centered in Caucasian Albania, a region mostly located in present-day Azerbaijan. It was one of the earliest national Christian churches.

In the early 8th century, the church tried to embrace Chalcedonianism, but this attempt was foiled by the rest of the Armenian Church with the help of the Arabs.

In medieval times, the monastery of Gandzasar served as the See of the Catholicosate of Aghvank of the Armenian Apostolic Church, which continued to exist until 1828 (or 1836) when it was formally abolished by the Russian authorities, following the forced cession of the last territories in the Caucasus maintained under Iranian Qajar rule per the Treaty of Turkmenchay and the Russo-Persian War (1826-1828).

According to Strabo, who travelled to the region in the 1st century BC, the local tribes practised polytheism. Among the worshipped deities, Strabo names the gods of the sun, the sky, and above of all, the moon, and equates them to the Greek gods Helios, Zeus, and Selene respectively. The skeleton of a human bound in fetters found in 1950, during the archeological excavations in Mingachevir, indicates that the ancestors of Caucasian Albanians practiced human sacrifice.

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