Архитектура древнего и раннесредневекового Азербайджана

Discovery of two temples with altars of a very interesting and complex composition was most valuable The altar in one of them of a double-plane composition, crowned by the sculp, tured head of Mitra was the first to be found in the Transcaucasian temples of the 2nd mil. BC The Baba-dervish temples and the temple found 2 km from them in Sari-tepe settlement on the suburbs of Kazakh town had a lot of similarities The spatial multiplane design of altars and rooms in these three temples ad ded well thought out artistic and cult expressiveness to every one of them The Sun symbols in the Baba-dervish and Sari-tepe temples are more pronounced than the Moon ones Architecture of the ancient Azerbaijan fortress—like towns and citadels had purely regional volumetric—spatial and layout features as well as much in common with the Eastern ancieit fortresses The Nakhichevan defence complexes of the 2nd mil B. C formed an interesting and peculiar group of fortresses—like towns (Kuhltepe, Sharur, Chalkan gala, etc ) Also notable were the structureses of Shirvano— Apsheron group of towns, Khacheno—Art-sakh, Kazakh and many others Architecture and art in the anti jue and early medieval Caucasian Albania were developing in an interesting and perfectly original way. Though in the 1st century A D. Christianity was already introduced in the Caucasian Albania by the sermons of apostle Yelisei who founded he first church in the Transcaucasus in Ghiss (Ghish), it was only at the beginning of the 1-th century that Albania led by its Tsar and dukes adopted Christianity. It was adopted, as a national religion but in parallel with Christianity the people of Albania continued worshipping their old Gods— Mitra, Akhura Mazda, etc., unlike Georgia and Armenia were this religion became universal. For almost five centuries (4 th—8 th) architecture and art of the above religions tied by the unity of the people were developing side by side influencing each other. In the 8 th century the Arabs conquered Albania, Georgia and Armenia. Non-christian part of the Albanian people was forced to adapt Islam. And again for many centuries architecture and art of the Christian and Moslem population of the Caucasian Albania were influencing each other in their development Old pre-Christian religions were professed only by the Highlanders. Architecture and art works of that time had original and peculiar features inherent, to both religions often having layout structure or decorative symbolics inherent to heathen architecture—it is examplified by temples and great number of stone crosses (khachdash) in t he Albanian nekropolises. Long-time investigations and analysis of numerous ancient settlements, dwelling houses, cult structures, memorials and fortresses helped to do a lot of reconstructions (more than 50) related to several historical ages beginning from the Neolithic to the early Middle ones. These reconsiructions gave back to the science of archi tecture the images of settlements and structures which seemed to be irrevocably lost. This monograph permitted to trace back the sources of the Azerbaijan architecttirets origin and creative relations with the Ancient Eeastern countries, to find the real grounds for the ancient buildings of this or that type to appear. We hope we have managed to reveal rich sources of folk architecture which fed ancient architects with creative ideas for logical and progressive choice of architectural forms, structures and building materials In accordance with the epochs requirements that were used for construction works on the territory of modern Azerbaijan for several milleniums.