July• 2019 | 115The city skyline frames Baku Bay
on the Caspian Seaaren’t new tourists enjoy-
ing a youthful adventure.
They’re locals conversing
in Russian and Azeri and
enjoying the fruit of their
nation’s burgeoning pros-
per it y.
Over the centuries,
Azeris have survived by
adapting. They bent to the
will of the Persians, fell in
line under the Russians,
yet never quite submitted.
“The best way to retain our
identity, that core of lan-
guage, music and cuisine
that differentiates us from
our neighbours, was through flexibil-
ity,” explains history enthusiast Fuad
Akhundov. This led to tolerance. It’s
no accident that three distinct Jewish
communities have survived pashas,
caliphs and commissars.
Despite Ibrahimova’s fears, Baku
could never become Dubai. This is
an ancient place. Early one morning
I wander through the walled Inner
City, much of which was built be-
tween the 12th and 16th centuries. I
gaze at the Muhammad Mosque and
its minaret, which became known as
the Broken Tower after it was bombed
by Russian warships in the 1720s
(and later rebuilt). When a class of
preteens in blue and white uniforms
file past, I realise that the labyrinth of
streets and alleys around me is more
than a World Heritage tourist attrac-
tion. It’s a living neighbourhood.
MOST CITIESvalue sturdy, handsome
buildings over dilapidated structures,
but I’m wondering if Baku’s mania
for restoration has gone too far. “The
problem,” says a young woman named
Ayan, “is that you can no longer
tell what is new and what is old.”
The Muhammad Mosque has been
scrubbed to its original golden col-
our, wiping away centuries of history.
The historic mansions, too – built in
the 1800s with money made from oil,
which has been extracted from around
Baku since the third century – have
been scoured to a generic cleanliness.
“Oil made Baku,” Zohrab Husey-
nov, a mechanical engineer who
works in the petroleum industry,
tells me one evening as we share
a cab. “The reason Baku is big and
beautiful and ugly and crowded is
because of oil.”