Fire country near Baku: Ateshgah, Yanardag and Gala

Just outside Baku, the Absheron Peninsula holds a cluster of places that explain why Azerbaijan is so often called a land of fire: the Ateshgah temple, the burning hillside of Yanardag, and the ethnographic reserve of Gala.

This is one of the few regions where traces of a fire cult, and of ancient Zoroastrianism, can still be seen. Oil seeps from the ground, and natural gas breaks out in flaming jets — a landscape that has long drawn fire worshippers from far away. Baku, its oil, and its “burning earth” were known well beyond the city in antiquity.

Zoroastrianism was the official religion of ancient states that emerged in the 7th century BC, including Mann and Media. It spread across what is now Azerbaijan in part because oil and gas sources here could ignite on their own. The temple of Ateshgah is the monument that has survived from that world.

The ethnographic open-air museum of Gala stands where archaeologists once excavated. The village itself is about five thousand years old, and some of its neighbourhoods have come down to the present. A visit usually looks at ancient dwellings and at how people once lived, farmed and kept their traditions.

The name comes from Azerbaijani: yanar, “burning”, and dag, “mountain”. Absheron once had many spots where natural gas reached the surface and caught fire by itself. After large-scale oil and gas development, those places grew rarer. Today Yanardag is the only site on the peninsula where this still happens: natural gas comes out of the ground and burns.

The three stops fit comfortably into a single outing from Baku, with a return to the city the same day. A meal in a national restaurant can be added at the end if you want one.

Photo: Diego Delso, delso.photo, License CC-BY-SA 4.0.