I refer to American-Israeli historian and past president of the Foreign Policy Section of the American Political Science Association, Brenda Shaffer’s interview with News.Az Azerbaijani website (see http://www.news.az/articles/politics/77678) where once again Shaffer’s pro-Azerbaijani views and sentiments reveal themselves.
Her supposedly “expertise” on the history of Azerbaijan is apparent in her book “The Azerbaijani Turks” (Hoover Institute Press, Stanford, 1992) where towing the line of the anti-Armenian Azerbaijani academician Zia M. Buniatov, she quotes form his works which claim:
The idea of Azerbaijan…. is correctly used in respect to the territories of Northern and Southern Azerbaijan beginning with the 6th century [BCE]…. According to Persian and Arabic sources…. From the 8th century both Northern and Southern Azerbaijan wereunderstood by the name Azerbaijan.
The above quotation from Buniatov is a complete distortion of history, since:
a) According to Greek geographer Strabo and others, the territory of Lesser Media (north-western Iran) was renamed in honour of the Median military leader who fought against Alexander’s army during the second century BCE. AthropateneAfter the Arab invasion this name gradually evolved to Adherbijan… Azerbaijan). Hence at the time mentioned by Shaffer/Buniatovno Azerbaijan existed anywhere, a fact confirmed by all ancient historians.
and
b) No Arab historic or geographic literature exists prior to the ninth and tenth centuries as put forward by Buniatov and certainly, no Arab or Persian literature ever mentions the invented terminology of Northern or Southern Azerbaijan. In all Islamic literature there is only one Azerbaijan, which is thenorth-western Iranian province of Azerbaijan, always located south of the Araxes River. Ms Shaffer should be well aware that the name “Azerbaijan” north of the Araxes for the first time appeared in 1918.
An expert historian should be well awareof the above facts and not repeat other’s fabrications, using them for her own anti-Armenian and now anti-Iranian rhetoric. It seems Ms Shaffer has now found another platform for distributing her views.
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