Qabala

Qabala carries one of the oldest names in Azerbaijan. The ancient city of Gabala, some way out on the plain from the modern town, was the capital of Caucasian Albania, the kingdom that ruled much of the country before the Arab conquests, and it is recorded by classical writers as an important place in the first centuries of the common era. Its earthworks, ruined walls and the remains of its main gate mark a site occupied for well over a thousand years, through Albanian, Sasanian and later Muslim rule, before it declined and was abandoned.

The settlement that became the modern town developed separately in the foothills and was known for a long period as Kutkashen, a district centre of orchards, forest and grazing under Russian and then Soviet administration. It was renamed Qabala in 1991, reviving the ancient name. Hazelnuts, timber and livestock supported the district, and a large Soviet radar station built nearby in the 1980s, leased afterwards by Russia, closed in 2012.

From the 2000s the town was rebuilt as Azerbaijan's main mountain resort. Hotels, an airport, a stadium and a cable car onto the ridge above appeared within a decade, an international music festival was founded in 2009, and the plain below the town was planted with new orchards. The result is a small administrative town with a resort economy attached to it, and a population that swells several times over in the holiday seasons.

The district's character comes from its mixture. Azerbaijani villages of the foothills sit alongside Nij, the principal village of the Udi, a small Christian people who speak a language descended from that of Caucasian Albania and keep their own church; the presence of the ancient capital nearby gives that history a physical form. Sunni Islam is more common in the northwest than in the south and east of the country, and religious variety is unremarkable here.

Everyday customs are those of the region: tea offered before conversation, guests fed at length and pressed to eat more, elders greeted first, weddings that take over a street for a day. The forest is part of social life — families drive out to picnic beside rivers and lakes at weekends, and tea gardens under the trees are a standard destination rather than a tourist novelty.

The resort has added another layer. The Gabala International Music Festival brought classical musicians to the town each summer from 2009 to 2018, the football club gave a small district town a place in the national league, and hotels employ people from across the region. Villagers and resort workers live in close contact, and locals tend to describe the town by what it was before the building began as much as by what it is now. Hazelnut growing remains the thread that runs through family life in the villages.

Qabala itself is a small town, while the surrounding district counts many times its number of people across the villages. The centre holds the administration, the market, schools, the bus station and everyday shops; the hotels and the cable car stand apart in the woods above; and most people live in the orchard villages spread along the plain and the lower slopes.

Hazelnuts dominate the rural economy, grown across the district and sold on for export, with walnuts, chestnuts, fruit, tobacco and livestock alongside them, and processing plants and cold stores near the main road. Tourism is the other employer, in hotels, restaurants, the cable car and driving, and it is seasonal: busy in summer, again at New Year and through the ski months, slow in between. Public-sector work and the airport account for many of the remaining jobs.

Daily rhythm is rural. Mornings start early with the market and the orchards; afternoons are slow, with men in the tea houses; summer evenings fill the parks and the roadside restaurants. Wages are modest and many households depend on money sent from relatives working in Baku or abroad. Water, new building on the slopes and pressure on the forest are the district's recurring arguments, along with the question of what happens in the quiet months between seasons.

Qabala eats from its orchards and its grills. Hazelnuts are everywhere — eaten plain, roasted, crushed into sweets and pastes, and sold by the sack at the market — and walnuts, chestnuts, persimmons and quinces follow the same seasons. Preserves are made from almost everything: cornelian cherry, walnut, quince and figs boiled into mürəbbə, the whole-fruit jam eaten by the spoonful with tea.

Grilled meat is the standard meal out. Lamb, chicken and river trout are cooked over charcoal and brought with lavash, the thin flatbread baked on a curved iron sheet, sumac, herbs and pickles. Sadj, a dish of meat and vegetables fried at the table on an iron plate, is common in the restaurants along the resort road. Home cooking runs to dolma of vine or cabbage leaves, dovğa, a warm yoghurt soup with herbs, qutab filled with greens or pumpkin, and plov on occasions.

Dairy comes down from the summer pastures: fresh curd cheese, thick yoghurt, butter and matured sheep's cheese. Mountain honey is a local speciality, sold at roadside stalls with the nuts. Piti and the layered nut halva of Shaki, an hour and a half west, appear on menus here too. Meals end with strong black tea in pear-shaped armudu glasses, taken with jam or a lump of sugar rather than milk.