Lankaran

Lankaran grew on the narrow, wet strip between the Talysh Mountains and the Caspian, a corridor that has always faced south towards Persia. It came into its own in the 18th century, when the collapse of Persian central authority allowed a Talysh khanate to form, with Lankaran as its seat. Caught between Russia and Persia, the khans manoeuvred between the two until the wars of the early 19th century settled the question: Russian troops stormed the fortress at Lankaran at the very start of 1813, and the Treaty of Gulistan later that year confirmed Russian control. The khanate was abolished within a generation.

Under the Russian Empire the town became a garrison and administrative centre with a small port, exporting fish, rice and timber. Its remoteness also made it a place of exile. In 1919, during the collapse of empire, a short-lived Mughan Soviet Republic was proclaimed here before being overtaken by events, and Soviet power followed in 1920.

The Soviet decades reshaped the economy rather than the town. Tea was planted on the humid plain and became the region's signature crop, citrus groves and vegetable greenhouses spread alongside it, and canneries and tea factories gave the city its industry. In 1993, amid the disorder of the early independence years, a Talysh-Mughan Autonomous Republic was declared in Lankaran; it lasted from June to August. Since then the city has lived on agriculture and trade, with a road, a railway and an airport tying it to Baku and the Iranian border an hour to the south.

The south is the homeland of the Talysh, an Iranian-speaking people whose language is heard in the mountain villages and many lowland ones, and most Talysh speakers are bilingual in Azerbaijani. That double inheritance colours the city: place names, songs, dishes and turns of phrase all carry it, and families keep ties with relatives across the border in Iranian Talysh country and Gilan. Shia Islam predominates, and observance here is somewhat more visible than in Baku without being strict.

Tea is more than a crop. It is the medium of hospitality and the reason the tea house, where men gather through the long humid afternoon over black tea in armudu glasses, is the city's real public institution. Guests are offered tea almost before they sit down, and a refusal has to be managed carefully.

Weddings are large and loud, held in banqueting halls with zurna and drum, and Novruz is the festival everyone keeps, with bonfires and trays of sweets. The region has a long-standing reputation for longevity: the shepherd Shirali Muslimov, from a village in the Lerik highlands above the city, was a Soviet-era celebrity whose claimed age of 168 was never verified and is disputed. Crafts run to basketry, woodwork and carpet weaving, and the forest, the sea and the gardens supply most of what local identity is built on.

Close to 90,000 people live in the city and many more in the surrounding district, most of them in large villages among the tea gardens and citrus groves. Lankaran is low-rise and green, with the market as its centre of gravity: mornings are busy with produce coming in from the plain, afternoons slow in the heat, and evenings fill the squares and the seafront.

Agriculture drives the economy. Tea, lemons, mandarins and persimmons, rice, early vegetables grown under plastic for Baku and Russia, and livestock support most households, along with Caspian fishing, small-scale forestry and cross-border trade through Astara. Processing plants, the market trade and public-sector jobs make up much of the city's own employment, and summer tourism from Baku adds to it.

Humidity shapes the rhythm of the day, with work done early and the afternoon taken slowly. Money sent home by relatives working in Russia matters to many families, and emigration of the young is a common worry, together with rural jobs, the state of village roads and the reliability of the harvests. The Iranian border an hour south is a fact of daily life, bringing trade, traffic and a steady flow of visitors through the city.

Southern cooking is among the most distinctive in Azerbaijan, and its emblem is lavangi: a chicken or a Caspian fish stuffed with a dense paste of ground walnuts, fried onion and sour dried plum or alcha, then baked until the skin crisps. It appears at every celebration and on most restaurant menus in the city. Rice from the lowland paddies goes into plov, often made with fish or chicken rather than lamb, and kutum, the local Caspian fish, is grilled, smoked or stuffed in the same way, served with narsharab, a thick sour pomegranate sauce.

The gardens supply the rest. Lemons, mandarins and persimmons come in through late autumn, pomegranates and figs before them, and the market sells jams made from citrus peel, walnut and fig, along with honey from the Talysh forests and pickled vegetables. Herbs are used by the handful, in stuffed vine leaves, in kuku, a thick herb omelette, and in dovga, the yoghurt soup eaten warm or cold. Bread comes from clay tandir ovens.

Tea is the drink and the local product in one. Grown, dried and packed within the district, it is served strong and black in armudu glasses with lemon, a spoonful of jam or a lump of sugar held between the teeth, and Lankaran kulcha, a layered sweet pastry, is its usual companion.