Introduction

Unlike the Muslim-majority North Caucasus, which since the 1920s has been part of the Russian Federation, the Soviet South Caucasus, or Transcaucasia, was divided into three union republics of historically Muslim Azerbaijan and Christian Armenia and Georgia. Among the decisive factors for the politico-administrative inequality between the Caucasus’ northern and southern parts may have been Transcaucasia's mostly peaceful history of incorporation into the Russian Empire and the comparatively greater number of ethnic Georgians, Armenians and Azerbaijanis among the Bolshevik leadership. In terms of population size Transcaucasia was on par with the North Caucasus; by the end of the 1930s the largest republic was Georgia (3.5 million), followed by Azerbaijan (3.2 million) and Armenia (1.3 million). A major difference between the Muslim North Caucasus and Muslim Azerbaijan relates to the prevalence among Azerbaijanis (Azeris) of Shī‘ī Twelver Islam, which has affected the nature of their Islamic leadership and its relationship with the state. Significant also was the existence in Azerbaijan of a sizeable Sunnī minority (Lezgins, Avars, Kurds and some others) and of the Christian Armenian population in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast’ (NKAO). Christian Georgia has had significant Muslim minorities, represented by Meskhetian Turks (Ahiska Turks) and Adjarians, both of Sunnī Ḥanafī orientation.

Due to Azerbaijan's oil riches its level of industrialization in the late imperial Russian and Soviet periods was significantly higher than in other Muslim-majority parts of Eurasia (with the possible exception of the Volga region). Consequently, the degree of societal secularization there was greater, while Azerbaijanis’ Turkism-based national consciousness began to compete with, or even to supersede, their Shī‘ī Islamic identity. The decline in the Azerbaijanis’ religiosity was accompanied by the significantly reduced influence of both the official and unofficial Islamic authorities. The Transcaucasian muftīate (DUMZ, in Russian) which, unlike in the imperial Russian period, was established in Baku became de facto co-opted within the Azerbaijani Soviet political establishment.

The chapter focuses on the Islamic and Islamo-national leadership in Soviet Azerbaijan. First, it offers a brief account of the region's Islamic and Islamo-national dynamic prior to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. It then examines the political standing of Azerbaijani Muslim and national leaders during the Russian Civil War and during the time of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR, 1918–20), in particular.