Tales from the Caspian Sea

Alexander the Great, it was still asserted into the early 19th century, had built the gates that separated East and West at the eastern edge of the Caucasus: what is now Azerbaijan lay beyond.

In ‘Tales from the Caspian Sea’, Bettany Hughes investigates the rich cultural history of the Caspian, a region which nourished the ancient world’s oldest theocracy, in the form of a Zoroastrian state, and pioneered an early Muslim-majority democracy in 1918. Her investigation of Azerbaijan - “the land of fire” - begins in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains with visits to the archaeological sites that are actively reanimating the history of the region.

Hughes discovers the landscape of Azerbaijan, which has been a centre of ancient trade on the Silk Road, inspired the poetry of the acclaimed poet Nizami Ganjavi and is a land that has been at the forefront of the development of civilisations and geopolitics to this day.