Lahic

Lahic's origins are traced in local tradition to settlers from the Persian region of Lahijan, which would explain the Tat language still spoken in its streets, an Iranian tongue unrelated to Azerbaijani. Whatever its beginnings, the village was established in the hills of Shirvan long before the modern era, and its position was its protection: a shelf of level ground high above the Girdimanchay, reached only through a gorge, defensible and far from the armies that crossed the plain.

Its wealth came from metalwork. By the 18th and 19th centuries Lahic was one of the main craft centres of the South Caucasus, with streets of workshops producing copper vessels, weapons, armour and tools that were traded across the region and beyond it. Travellers described a village of hundreds of smiths, with its own quarters, mosques, bathhouses and caravanserais, and a piped water and drainage system built of stone channels that was remarkable for a settlement of its size and altitude. Carpets, leather and dyeing supported the same trade.

Russian rule from the early 19th century, and then industrial production, undercut the handmade metal trade, and the village declined through the 20th century as younger people left for Baku and for jobs on the plain. The Soviet period preserved it partly by neglect: little was rebuilt, and the stone houses, balconies and cobbles survived. Lahic was declared a historical and cultural reserve in 1980 and has been revived by tourism, with the copper craftsmanship of the village added to UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage list in 2015, and its crafts sold again from the same shopfronts.

The first thing visitors notice is the language. The people of Lahic are Tats and speak a form of Persian at home, while using Azerbaijani outside, a survival that gives the village a distinct identity within Shirvan. It is one of several mountain communities in the region — alongside the Molokan Russians of Ivanovka and the silk weavers of Basqal — that have kept a separate tradition in a small area.

Craft is the core of that identity. Copperworking is passed down within families, with apprentices learning to raise, hammer and engrave vessels by hand, and the patterns used on trays and jugs belong to a recognised local repertoire. Carpet weaving, leatherwork, knitting and woodwork have long been practised alongside it, and the village has always had a reputation for careful, exacting work, which is part of how it describes itself.

Social life follows the pattern of the Azerbaijani mountains: the quarters and their mosques as points of belonging, tea offered at every encounter, elders consulted, and weddings and funerals attended by the whole village. Observance is Shia Muslim and generally quiet, with Novruz the biggest occasion of the year, when bonfires are lit in the lanes. Many families now divide their time between the village and Baku, returning for the summer and for holidays, and it is common to find houses opened only in the warm months.

Lahic is home to about 860 people, a fraction of the population it had when the metal trade was at its height. The permanent residents are older on average than the national norm, and much of the working-age population has moved to Ismayilli, Shamakhi or Baku, returning in summer when visitors come and guesthouses fill.

The economy now rests on three things: crafts sold from the workshops, tourism, and smallholder farming on the slopes — cattle and sheep taken up to summer pasture, orchards, beehives and vegetable plots behind the houses. Most households combine all three with money sent home from the cities. The season is short and sharply defined, busy from May to October and very quiet through the winter, when snow closes the road from time to time and life turns inward.

Day-to-day concerns are those of a remote mountain village: the state of the gorge road, which is the single link to everything; the reliability of water, power and mobile signal; the school and the clinic; and whether enough young people stay for the crafts to be handed on. Restoration work is a steady presence, since the village is a protected historical reserve and repairs to houses, paving and channels are regulated and continuing.

Cooking here is mountain cooking, with lamb and dairy at the centre and little that does not come from the surrounding slopes. Lamb is grilled over wood or stewed in bozbash, a broth with chickpeas, chestnuts, plums or quince; dolma is made from vine leaves in summer and from cabbage in winter; and dovga, a soup of yoghurt, herbs and rice served hot or cold, appears at most tables. Plov, rice steamed with saffron and served with a separate meat and fruit stew, marks weddings and holidays.

Bread is baked in the tendir, a clay oven sunk into the ground, and the hot flat rounds are eaten with sheep's cheese, butter and honey. Qutab — thin folded pancakes filled with greens, pumpkin or cheese and cooked on a griddle — are a common quick meal, and pickles and preserves line the shelves of every house against the winter.

The produce of the district is what visitors take home: honey from the high meadows, walnuts and hazelnuts, mulberries fresh or dried, and thick preserves of cornelian cherry, white cherry and walnut eaten by the spoonful with tea. Down in the valley, Ismayilli and Shamakhi are wine country, and bottles from their wineries turn up on village tables. Tea itself is constant, poured black into pear-shaped armudu glasses, sweetened with jam rather than milk, and drunk from early morning until late.