History of the Caspian

The first mentions of the Caspian Sea are found on ancient clay tablets (9th century BC) discovered during excavations of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria. There it is called the "great eastern sea". Several centuries later, information about the Caspian Sea appears in the works of geographers and writers of the ancient world. The author of the "Description of the Earth", the "father of geography" Hecataeus of Miletus (546-480 BC), described it as the Hyrcanian Sea. In the 5th century BC Herodotus was the first to suggest that it was not connected to any other sea, although many scholars of that time considered the Caspian a northern gulf of the World Ocean, which, as they believed, surrounded all the land then known. Aristotle (384-322 BC) was convinced that the Hyrcanian Sea was connected by underground currents to the Pontus Euxinus (the Black Sea). Alexander the Great also studied the connection of the Caspian with other seas during his campaigns. As early as 323 BC he sent the navigator Patrocles to survey the shores of the Caspian Sea. Patrocles reached the Kara-Bogaz-Gol bay and took it for the mouth of a river connecting the Caspian with the ocean. The famous geographer of antiquity Strabo, in his book "Geography", depicted the Caspian as stretched along a parallel from west to east. Pliny the Elder (27-29), author of the multi-volume "Natural History", noted a peculiarity of the sea – having many names, the best known of which are Caspian and Hyrcanian.

Familiar with the works of ancient authors, Arab scholars expanded knowledge of the Caspian Sea. The works of al-Khwarizmi (9th century), al-Istakhri, al-Masudi (10th century), Hamid al-Garnati (12th century), Yaqut al-Hamawi, Zakariya al-Qazwini and others contain information about coastal towns and countries, the rivers flowing into the sea, islands, and oil extracted in Baku. The revival of trade relations considerably developed Europeans' ideas about the Middle East and Central Asia. In the Middle Ages, information about the Caspian Sea appears in the accounts of Persian, Turkish and European travellers. For example, a description of the Caspian was given by the famous traveller Marco Polo (13th century). The "Catalan Atlas" (1378) by the sailor Abraham Cresques was in its time sent to the French king Charles VI (the Mad) and was displayed in the Louvre. During his journey to India together with merchants from Tver, Afanasy Nikitin (15th century) visited the Caspian and described this journey in his "Journey Beyond Three Seas". A detailed, though not entirely accurate, map of the Caspian Sea was compiled by the German scholar and traveller Adam Olearius (1674). In connection with the Caspian campaigns of Peter I, Russian hydrographers compiled detailed nautical charts. From the beginning of the 18th century, research of the Caspian Sea's waters became systematic and comprehensive.

Over its thousand-year history, the Caspian Sea has had about 70 names. The numerous peoples who inhabited its shores each named it in their own way. Thus, ancient authors called the Caspian Sea Hyrcanian, after the coastal country of Hyrcania (the land of Wolves), and the Arabs called it Khazar, after the Khazars, a Turkic people who professed Judaism and lived on the northwestern coast. Incidentally, this name is still used in modern Azerbaijani, Turkish and Persian. The fire worshippers of Absheron called the Caspian the sea of Vargana and Chekaet-De-ti, the Arabs Jurjan, the Chinese Sihai (i.e. the Western Sea), the Iranians Kolzum, the Hindus Vorukasha, the Turkmens Kukkuz, the Kazakhs Atyrau, the Turks Kuchuk-Deniz, the Tatars Ak-Deniz. In Turkic sources "Ak-Deniz" is understood both as the White Sea and as the Great Sea. The Mongols called the Caspian Chagan-nor, which also means White Sea, lake. The Russians called it the "Blue Sea", and later Khvalynsk or Khvalissk. In Old Russian, Khvari (Khorezm) was pronounced Khvali. The Caspian Sea was called the "Khvalynsk Sea", i.e. the Khorezm Sea. After the neighbouring countries and cities, the sea was called Saray (the capital of the Golden Horde), Tabasaran, Albanian, Derbent, Shamakhi, Absheron, Shirvan, Salyan, Mugan, Abeskun, Khorasan, Gilan, Mazandaran, Turkmen, Avar, Persian, Deylem, Kurgan. In other sources it is called the Sea of Foreigners, Bakuk, Kungar, Torm, Sirsap, Eren, Vrakan, Guzgun, Pahlavi, Sarey, Dorts, Kemrut, Qizilbash (the Persians were called Qizilbash because of their custom of dyeing their hair with henna), the sea of Etil, since the Etil (Itil) is the Volga, which flows into the Caspian Sea; Persian sources also mention Gurgan, Shizir, Gyurzum, the sea of Bab and others.

After the capture of Constantinople by Mehmed II in 1453, European merchants began looking for new trade routes to the East that bypassed the Ottoman Empire. From that time, the main route from Europe to Azerbaijan became the Volga-Caspian route through Russia. The importance of Baku as a port on this route can be seen from the fact that, starting from the 15th century, various medieval authors use the name Baku Sea to refer to the Caspian Sea.

The Caspian got its modern name from the ancient tribes of the Caspians, who inhabited the right bank of the Kura near the sea in the 2nd millennium BC.
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