Discovering Craftsmen’s quarter in ancient (rabad) – analogy of (outer city) Kamil IBRAHIMOV Doctor of History

The emergence of the concept of «Icherisheher» has a two hundred-year history. In THE 19TH CENTURY, especially after the in- tensified development of THE oil industry in 1850-1920, the city be- gan to grow at an accelerated pace and went beyond its walls. Another reason for the appear- ance of the outer city is the pop- ulation growth in the fortress, accelerated urbanization and increased production due to the development of capitalism. It is from this period that separation into the inner and outer cities began.

4 www.irs-az.com View of the Black City, early 19th century

n the Middle Ages, the outer city Shahristan – the walls, there emerged oil wells in Balakhani indicates that in was part of the city, which was out- large commercial and artisan quar- 1554, this well was dug and handed Iside the fortress walls. In fact, there ters - rabads. Craftsmen and mer- over to the master Allahyar Mam- were craftsmen’s quarters here. Some chants became the majority among madnur oglu. At the beginning of the of them built houses and lived in the city residents. 16th century, there were 50 such wells same place. As the process of pro- People of different professions around Baku. duction was accompanied by noise, settled in the area around the ba- In 1803, Baku resident Gasimbay smoke and exhaust waste, the rabat zaars. In the bazaars, three rows of Mansurbayov dug two oil wells near was located behind the walls. None craftspeople emerged, depending on Bibiheybat. In 1847, the discovery of of the Bakuvians wanted to live in the their professions. Progress in industri- oil in Bibiheybat deposits went down outer city. This place was inhabited al life allowed for the transformation in the world history of black gold as mainly by villagers and visitors from of cities into feudal cities. the beginning of industrial oil pro- other cities. Therefore, inhabitants of In the 10th-13th centuries, in Baku duction. the fortress always looked down on and in the outer city – rabad – there With the development of capi- residents of the outer city and called were various sectors of crafts. Archae- talism, Baku millionaires, who made them «barefoot». ological materials and sources show a fortune on oil revenues, began to The rapid growth in various that carpet-weaving, spinning, jew- build houses outside the city walls branches of handicrafts and success elry, carpentry and manufacture of – one greater than another. After in foreign and domestic trade led to glass, pottery and leather developed that, the appearance of ancient Baku important changes in the socioeco- in this period. changed. In the late 19th - early 20th nomic structure of cities. Outside An inscription found in one of the centuries, beautiful European-looking www.irs-az.com 5 Discovering Azerbaijan

thousands of poods of oil per day, and a man who was not known to anyone yesterday became the owner of a vast fortune. As if by magic, Haji Zeynalabidin Tagiyev, Musa Nagi- yev, Shamsi Asadullayev, Murtuza Mukhtarov, Said Mirbabayev, Manta- shev, Mirzoyev, Shibayev, and others become millionaires. An insignificant city on the Ab- sheron Peninsula grew at an unusu- ally fast pace, the likes of which nei- ther Russia, nor Europe in general had seen. People of different nationalities flocked to Baku from all over , Rus- sia and abroad in search of work and Black City. Nobel tanks happiness. The intensive exploitation of the buildings in the Baroque, Gothic, clas- at that time. As a result, Baku reached Baku oil fields began. Local and Rus- sical and neo-classical styles were a qualitatively new level of develop- sian capitalists began to set up joint- built in the outer city. ment, taking first place among other stock companies. Representatives The development of capitalism in cities of Azerbaijan by its socioeco- of major foreign capital rushed here Baku and the expansion of oil produc- nomic indicators in the second half of and subsequently occupied a lead- tion were the main causes of the ap- the 19th century. ing place. In a short time, offices and pearance of the territory around Baku, In the 1860s, it became obvious representatives of Swedish, British, where oil refineries were located. Not that the lease system of operating oil French, Belgian, German and Ameri- only plants and factories, but also sources was a worthless leftover from can firms settled in Baku. The most residential areas and houses of cul- the past, and there was a need for dif- famous among them were the com- ture were built and parks and public ferent organization of the oil business panies of the Nobel brothers and facilities were founded here. In Baku, in order to develop this industry. On Rothschilds. this area is known as «Black City» due 17 February 1872, new rules were ap- In 1874, the Swedish citizen Robert to the fact that oil and soot, which is proved under which state-owned oil Nobel visited Baku for the first time, released into the air by oil refineries, wells, which had been rented out, where he became interested in the oil cover the walls of the houses located were handed over to private individu- business. Intrigued by the prospects there in black. als in an auction. The repeal of the of developing the oil business, Robert The oil boom lease system led to a decisive break- paced Black City back and forth and After Azerbaijan was seized by through in the whole oil business. For visited many oil fields and refineries. Russia, a new military administration Baku, it was an event of enormous The enterprising young man quickly was established here. Baku became significance. realized that the oil business was the the center of Baku District of the Cas- The number of those buying and most lucrative and promising. De- pian region. With the approval of the selling oil sites surpassed all bounds. scribing his ideas in a letter to Ludvig, Caucasus governorship in 1846, the The writer and researcher, M. Suley- he persistently tried to persuade him territory was divided into new admin- manov, writes that everyone aban- to create a company. istrative-territorial units, according to doned their work and rushed to bays Initially, the Nobels concentrat- which Baku District was included in in Sabunchu in order to buy a plot of ed their activities in the village of the newly formed Shamakhi province. land, or to Black City in order to build Sabunchu, where they set up a com- In 1859, after a devastating earth- a plant and become a millionaire pany and purchased a small kerosene quake in Shamakhi, the provincial within a year or two. factory and several small oil-bearing center was relocated to Baku, and the Oil rigs that ousted primitive wells sites. Gradually increasing their lands province was renamed Baku. State everywhere often turned into large through the purchase and lease of oil institutions began to form in the city fountains, which provided tens of fields, they considerably expanded

6 www.irs-az.com Black City. Nobel tanks their activities. The Nobels rented by the company of the American mil- ness was published precisely in Baku plants in Black and White City for lionaire John D. Rockefeller - Standard - it was the first periodical devoted to purifying and processing petroleum Oil. Thus, the economic recovery of oil and mining, which was published residues. the late 19th century turned Baku into from 1899 to 1920. By the early 20th Soon, the Nobel brothers recruit- one of the largest centers of Russia century, nearly half of world oil was ed their financier friends to help them and the largest and most important extracted in Baku. – P. A. Bilderling, F. A. Blumberg, A. S. city in the Caucasus. In Black City, along with the oil in- Sundgren, B. F. Wunderlich, I. Y. Vabel- The outbreak of the oil rush is dustry, other sectors of the economy sky, M. J. Belyamin - and in 1879, the comparable only with the Klondike also began to develop. Cement, me- first foreign company and the largest Gold Rush. The intensive exploitation chanical, and beer factories, power oil company «Oil Production Fellow- of the Baku oil fields began, securing plants, foundries, textile and tobacco ship of the Nobel Brothers” with the large inflows of capital from foreign factories, steam-mills and banks were main capital of 3 million rubles was oil companies. constructed here. Trade companies founded in Baku. From 1873, the «oil belt» of Baku and shipping companies, the largest Apart from the Nobels, the Cas- began to take shape. It was known as of which was the Caucasus & Mercury, pian-Black Sea Company and the Black City. A little later, the industrial opened their representative offices Mazut trading company headed by district of Baku emerged, which in- here. 40 per cent of Russia’s maritime the Parisian banker, Rothschild, and cluded the «oil villages» of Surakhani, cargo transportation was carried out the company Royal Dutch Shell led Bibi Heybat, Balakhani and Sabunchu. through the Caspian Sea at the time. by Henri Deterding also settled in Here, in 1848, the world’s first oil well In 1883, a railway connecting Baku Baku; in the 1890s, British capitalists was drilled, the first tankers to trans- and Tbilisi was opened, in 1892 horse- led by James Whishaw founded sev- port oil were built (1880-1885), the drawn trams began to operate in the eral firms in Baku. Attempts to settle Baku-Batumi oil pipeline was laid city, and in 1900, the Baku-Petrovsk in the Baku oil fields were also made (1897-1907), and the journal Oil Busi- (now Makhachkala) railroad, which www.irs-az.com 7 Discovering Azerbaijan

Nobel, Rothschild, Mantashev and Mirzoyev stopped working, and the strike was joined by workers from Bibi Heybat, Black and White City and the Balakhani-Sabunchu industrial area. On the first day of this great strike, it was joined by workers and employ- ees of 40 firms. On 30 December, among a huge crowd of workers, the first collective agreement in history, known as the «Fuel Oil Constitution», was signed at the Electric Power fac- tory. This agreement was the biggest achievement of Baku workers and significantly improved their financial situation. Emergence of Black City World’s first oil tanker Zoroaster Numerous oil refineries in the ear- provided access to the central prov- tion, the Baku City Council, a technical ly 1870s haphazardly occupied large inces of Russia and Europe, was built. school (the building of the University tracts of urban land. The intensive In 1868-1879, the first telegraph line of Economics), Ismayiliyya (Presidium growth of the oil industry encour- between Baku, Tbilisi and Krasno- of the Academy of Sciences of Azer- aged the development of the terri- vodsk was laid, and in 1886, the first baijan), the Public Assembly (Philhar- tory, mostly in the easterly direction, telephone exchange was built. By monic Hall), etc. The city also became along three parallel tracks of roads 1917, the city was provided with wa- greener, the Seafront Boulevard with (later Balakhani, Surakhani and Tele- ter through the Shollar water pipeline, a nice complex of urban baths and fonnaya). Such proximity to the sub- which operates smoothly to this day. gardens such as Mikhaylovskiy (now urb did not contribute to its growth Baku was developing not only Philharmonic Park), Mariinskiy (Molo- or favorable living conditions. The economically but also culturally. In kan), Nobelevskiy (Nizami Park) and fact is that the factory buildings had 1873, the first Azerbaijani National Kolyubakinsky (now Fountain Park) already occupied large areas and rep- Theater was founded. In 1875, the first were laid out. resented a well-organized, but gen- newspaper was published. In 1894, Thus, the economic recovery in erally uncomfortable area with huge the prominent public figure, Nari- the late 19th century turned Baku into buildings and factory chimneys that man Narimanov, founded the first na- one of the biggest business centers constantly emitted soot and smoke. tional public library. In 1908, the East’s and the largest and most important Complaints from residents and first opera «Layla and Majnun» was city in the Caucasus. In the early 20th the revival of social life forced the staged. Printing developed, printing century, the development of Baku provincial administration to raise the houses opened, newspapers in Azer- continued, although this develop- issue of relocating oil refineries. In baijani and Russian began to be pub- ment was at times delayed by cri- 1870, the question of allotting land lished, including Baku, Kaspi,Bakinskiy ses. Falling oil prices inevitably led to for the construction of factories was Rabochiy, Hummat, Yoldash as well as lower wages, poor working condi- raised. This issue was so important various brochures, books and maga- tions and higher unemployment. The that soon, despite the fact that there zines. difficult economic situation caused was already a large number of oil re- By 1883, Baku had more than a series of workers’ protests in 1901. fineries near the three highways, the 45,000 residents, and in 1913, this fig- The largest one was the strike of Baku governor of the Caucasus decided to ure rose to 200,000. The environs of workers in July 1903, which acquired demolish 147 plants. This act actually the city improved, and the number of a universal nature. liquidated a large factory area inside architectural monuments that stood On 12 December 1904, the Orga- the city, in which oil industrialists had out for their extraordinary grace in- nization of Balakhani and Bibi Hey- invested large capital. creased. Among them were the rail- bat Workers called a general strike The violation of property rights in way station known as the Tiflis sta- of all industrial workers. The fields of urban and public interest on such a

8 www.irs-az.com scale was an extraordinary fact in the Villa Petrolea in the Black City history of capitalist Baku. To relocate the factory district to the eastern part of the city, a draft plan of the new ter- ritory was drawn up in 1876. Here, new factories were built instead of those that moved out of the city. To improve sanitary conditions in the city, it was strictly forbidden to build factories outside Black City. Thus, Black City emerged partly on the pastures of the village of Kes- hla, which was home to orchards and gardens of local residents. Black City got its name from blackened fac- tory buildings. An industrial area was founded at a distance of over 2 km Black City was also developed. access. The land plots of peasants of away from residential neighborhoods The Black City coastline began to the village of were suitable of the suburban area. be used only after the wetland was for that, and another industrial estate Black and White City liquidated. In the future, the layout soon emerged there. It was the so- For the first time in the history of Black City remained unchanged, called White City, a natural extension of urban planning in Russia, a plan while its buildings were constantly of Black City. It was in White City that based on the principle of regularity reconstructed and renewed based on tendencies of industrial factory dis- of development was drawn up for an technological advances and improve- tricts of Baku manifested themselves. industrial area. According to the plan, ments in factory production. The rectangular grid of the plan of Black City got a rectangular network Once the territory of Black City Black City, which adhered to a certain of quarters. Wide and straight roads was almost developed within the order, gave way to other principles of connected large blocks of the indus- project boundaries, factory own- the development of vacant lands in trial area. Originally, plants were built ers began looking for new easy-to- the period of advanced capitalism. only in the southern quarters of Black use lands. Since the nature of plants Here, everything was subordinated to City. In connection with the devel- changed, even large blocks of Black the interests of industrialists and tech- opment of the oil industry, the pace City did not meet the requirements nical requirements of factory build- of the construction of oil refineries of new factories. Owners needed vast ing. During the development of the increased, and the northern part of areas, which could provide railway territory of White City, a common and www.irs-az.com 9 Discovering Azerbaijan

The structure of service institu- tions included primary schools for workers’ children, pharmacies, health care services, hospitals, baths, kitch- ens and bakeries. The Nobels had a careful ap- proach to the training of educated workers for their companies and spared no money on education. For senior civil servants, they built such types of entertainment facilities as halls for entertainment events, bil- liards and bowling. There was housing of two types - apartments for married workers and employees and barracks for bache- lors. In Baku, Muslim workers were al- located special facilities for perform- ing religious rites. For senior employees of the Baku management, Ludvig Nobel built a special village with a garden outside Black City in 1882-1883. Among the mass of oil tanks, warehouses and oil refineries, there appeared a large green area covering about 10 hect- ares. The well-known expert E. Bekle Map created by Russian engineers in 1913 was invited to create it. This choice was not accidental: under the lead- ership of E. Bekle, many gardens and regular layout was not considered. but it was considered acceptable for parks of Warsaw were created. Only the territory of ​​individual plants the Baku proletariat. But the adminis- Having visited the site soaked with with surrounding areas was more or trative and technical staff would not oil waste, Bekle demanded the delivery less organized, and some attention agree to work and live in such condi- of fertile soil for the park. Soon, barges was paid to their improvement. By tions even for a large reward. carrying fresh soil from Lankaran Dis- the end of 1902, there were up to 20 At the same time, the topic of trict started to arrive at the Black City major oil refineries and trading com- housing construction for workers was wharf. More complicated was the is- panies linked to the oil industry here: one of the most important issues in sue of delivering fresh water for irriga- the factories Montashev & Co., Cas- architecture. Camps for workers and tion. However, the Nobel brothers’ firm pian-Black Sea Society, the Chemical employees - «Nobel towns» – began found a clever solution and «an order Plant of Shibayev, the residential vil- to emerge in the Nobel brothers’ oil was issued that tankers returning from lage of Nobel - Villa Petrolea, etc. production fields. the Astrakhan raid should be filled Villa Petrolea During the construction of settle- with Volga water as ballast and head Through the efforts of the Nobel ments, the Nobel brothers developed for the Black City wharf». brothers, an oil villa (Villa Petrolea) a new type of social settlements for In the end, at the junction of Black was created on the border of Black workers. These settlements included and White Cities, there appeared a and White Cities as a settlement for vital functions - working, living and garden known as “Villa Petrolea” (now company personnel. recreation. The Nobel town did not Nizami Park). As an experienced gar- The emergence of the «oil villa» is fit into the existing urban areas. It was dener, E. Bekle studied the natural explained very simply. The factory area re-built, and realized the role of urban characteristics of the Absheron Penin- of the​​ city was unfavorable in terms of town planning, Europeanizing under- sula and paid special attention to the natural indicators and landscaping, developed land at the same time.

10 www.irs-az.com Black City. Kerosene plant. Ville Noire selection of trees in order to use them oped by an unnamed architect with a unique example for the world arbo- to effectively resolve the planning and the direct involvement of E. Bekle. retum architecture of the time. Gar- dimensional structure of the Villa. This settlement, which emerged dens were a mandatory element of Bekle chose planting material in in the middle of factories with smok- settlements located even in difficult Lankaran, Tbilisi, Batumi and other ing chimneys, oil tanks with poison- climatic areas. cities and ordered it from gardens in ous green waste and facilities that Russia and Europe. The Villa Park had emitted steam day and night seemed References about 80,000 bushes and trees, in- a truly fabulous abode. The appear- cluding a lot of fruit trees. ance of a magnificent park, located in 1. The Nobels and Baku Oil. Baku, The layout of the Villa Petrolea was the vast territory of Black City, had a 2009 determined by the terrain, location of positive impact on the landscape ar- 2. Sh. Fatullayev-Figarov. Urban dwellings and other buildings and the chitecture of Absheron. Construction in Baku in the 19th- choice of the directions of the main The researcher of Baku architec- early 20th Centuries. L., 1978 avenues. Numerous paths and lanes ture, Sh. Fatullayev, writes: «Concern- 3. F. I. Saymonov. Description of the led to facilities, in front of which sites ing the architecture of the industrial Caspian Sea. 1763 (P - 1440. Li- with flower beds were laid out or trees districts of Baku, it is necessary to note brary of the National Academy of grouped together. It was impossible the architectural phenomenon of the Sciences of Azerbaijan) to establish the architect of the master time - the so-called «Villa Petrolea»- a 4. gilman Ilkin. Baku and Bakuvians. plan and buildings with typical south- complex of buildings erected in the Baku, 1998 ern terraces, porches and balconies. vast park belonging to the Society of 5. Fon Der Nonne. Plan of Baku But there is no doubt that there was the Nobel Brothers. 1889-1900. an architect: it is evidenced by the The buildings of this complex, 6. Kamil Farhadoglu. Baku Icharisha- general plan of the Villa, the cleverly which are still in Black City, were not har, second volume. Baku, 2006 made vertical layout considering the only the first successful example of 7. http://www.ourbaku.com/index. terraces and the compositional idea of ​​ landscape architecture in the indus- php the park. Apparently, it was all devel- trial area of the​​ city, but in many ways, 8. http://library.aliyev-heritage.org www.irs-az.com 11