Private Absheron Tour

Your Tour itinerary: Ateshgah – Fire Temple, YanarDagh – Fire Mountain

Private Absheron Peninsula Tour includes a combination of the three most interesting places not far from Baku such as Fire Temple and Fire Mountain. Our guide will help you not to get lost in the maze of the history of the Absheron Peninsula.

1. Ateshgah

The earliest references to fire from underground in the Absheron Peninsula are found in Prisk Paniisky (Vth c.), In Arab sources of the 7th-10th centuries. Zoroastrians, who lived in the South Caucasus, honored the unquenchable fire and built temples. One of these temples is Ateshgah, which can be translated as “Place of Fire.” But it is not solely a temple, although this opinion wanders from source to source. This is a monastery complex. The plan is a pentagonal structure with a toothed external wall and an entrance portal. In the center of the courtyard is the quadrangular main altar, inside of which is an unquenchable fire, to which the fierce Absheron winds were not terrible.

Centuries passed before, in the Middle Ages, trade and the Silk Road did not associate Hindu merchants from the Punjabi Kangar with the abandoned Zoroastrian complex in Surakhani, and the 16th century. Hindus are drawn here on a pilgrimage.

The central altar, built in the Persian architectural layout in the form of Chahartagh – four arches facing the four sides of the world, combines the attributes of the Hindu religion, among which can be identified a trident (Trishul) and an inscription in Sanskrit. The altar was restored, as the inscription decorated with the image of a swastika says, at the expense of the merchant Kanchanagar in 1810.

Since Ateshgah was built by residents of the surrounding settlements, its appearance combines the features of local architectural traditions and elements of ancient altars of the sacred fire.

The declining Ateshgah began to be restored in the 30s, the bulk of the restoration work was carried out in the 60s. As a result, in 1975, Ateshgah was opened to the public as a cultural and tourist site. In the XXI century. Ateshgah received the status of historical and cultural reserve.

2. Yanardagh

The “fault” is the geological processes of the peninsula, which gave rise to natural outcrops of natural gas and gas condensate, the Kirmakinskaya oil valley and oil shale, with which Azerbaijan is rich. One of the most spectacular places like this is Yanardag.

“Yanardag” in translation – “Burning Mountain.” Our ancestors, not knowing how to explain the numerous fires, the emergence of unreasonable, in their opinion, fire, deified this phenomenon. Fire is nothing else than plasma, the fourth state of matter is in addition to the liquid, solid and gaseous.

In a person who observes a flame for a long time, specific hallucinogenic processes are created in the cerebral cortex, which also played a particular role in the formation of these beliefs. Zoroaster built his philosophy on the idea of ​​the eternal struggle of two principles: good and evil, his teachings had clear rules and canons, and that is why we can safely speak of Zoroastrianism as the most systematic and organized religion in the history of humankind. Almost monotheistic. The religion of this in ancient times was pervasive: it covered nearly the entire Middle and Near East. From ancient times, its adherents gathered in Baku from all over the world, especially from India, Iran and other countries.

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