Igrar Aliyev

Igrar Habib oglu Aliyev (Azerbaijani: İqrar Əliyev) (14 March 1924, Baku – 11 June 2004, Baku) was a Soviet and Azerbaijani historian. Aliyev was the author of 160 peer reviewed journal publications and books. Many of his books are devoted to the Medes and Median Empire. Among his writings are: "The History Of Media"(Baku, 1960), "A Historical Survey of Atropatena" (Baku, 1989), "History of Azerbaijan (Baku, 1993, and in Russian, 1995). "Nagorno Karabakh: History, Facts and Events", No. 22-34 (Baku: Elm, 1982), "On Problems Related to the Ethnic History of the Azerbaijani People" (Baku: Nurlan, 2002), "The History of Aturpatakan" (also translated into Persian, published in Iran in 1999).

Aliyev was a director of the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan. He followed the methodology of the world-famous Soviet academician V. V. Struve, who was a leading specialist in the field of ancient Oriental studies. Aliyev knew ancient dead languages including Sumerian, Akkadian and Old Persian. His works specialized in ancient Media, Atropatena and Caucasian Albania and are cited by Western experts in the relevant fields.

A number of Aliyev's assertions in his works are highly controversial, particularly in the area relating to the history of Artsakh and Caucasian Albania. Like many other Azerbaijani historians, Aliyev contends that the Christian Armenians of Artsakh systematically erased and appropriated the Caucasian Albanians' culture as their own:

Following this dirty intrigue [the reaction of the Armenian pontiff to the attempted split by the Church of Albania during the Arab periods], the Arabs put an end to the sovereignty of the Albania, and the Albanian Church was subordinated to the Armenian. That was the beginning of a progressive de-ethnicization of the Albanian nation. Thus the darkest forecasts were realized. The Armenians (for the nth time) began to oppress the Albanians.

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