view derbend harbour city wall fortification Russia Caucasus strategic location Caspian Sea Caucasus mountains
derbend is the southernmost city in Russia. Derbent has an important strategic location in the Caucasus: the city is situated on a narrow, 3-kilometre strip of land between the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus mountains. Historically, this position allowed the rulers of Derbent to control land traffic between the Eurasian Steppe and the Middle East. The only other practicable crossing of the Caucasus ridge was over the Darial Gorge. The first intensive settlement in the Derbent area dates from the 8th century BCE; the site was intermittently controlled by the Persian monarchs, starting from the 6th century BCE. Until the 4th century CE it was part of Caucasian Albania, and is traditionally identified with Albana, the capital. The modern name is a Persian word (دربند Darband) meaning "closed gates", which came into use in the end of the 5th or the beginning of the 6th century AD, when the city was refounded by Kavadh I of the Sassanid dynasty of Persia. The twenty-metre-high walls with thirty north-looking towers are believed to belong to the time of Kavadh's son, Khosrau I of Persia. The Armenian chronicler Movses Kagankatvatsi wrote about "the wondrous walls, for whose construction the Persian kings exhausted our country, recruiting architects and collecting building materials with a view of constructing a great edifice stretching between the Caucasus Mountains and the Great Eastern Sea". Derbent became a strong military outpost and harbour of the Sassanid empire. During the 5th and 6th centuries Derbent becomes also an important centre for spreading the Christian faith in the Caucasus. Movses Kagankatvatsi left a graphic description of the sack of Derbent by the hordes of Tong Yabghu of the Western Turkic Khaganate in 627. His successor, Buri-sad, proved unable to consolidate Tong Yabghu's conquests, and the city was retaken by the Persians. In 654 Derbent was captured by the Arabs, who transformed it in an important administrative centre and introduced Islam
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Photo credit: © 19th era / Alamy / Afripics
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