By Oleg Kushati, exclusively to VK
VK published Oleg Kushati’s materials about Azerbaijani places of interest unknown to the wide public
Cobblestone roads
The first cobblestone roads appeared in Europe in the 14th century in Paris and Prague. In Russia they appeared in the 17th century. The first European underground sewer system appeared in the mid-19th century, and in the 20th century in Russia. So it is even hard to imagine the sanitary condition of European and Russian towns before that.
The history of the Azeri mountain village of Basqal started in the 6th century AD. A public bathhouse was constructed here in the 16th century, the streets were paved with stone and underneath them there was a fully-functional sewer system. Historians say that these facilities were created in the Azerbaijani village much earlier than in Russia or Europe. There is a town in the Ismaillinsk district of Azerbaijan, called Lagich, located near the village, where the sewer system was constructed in the 6th century, so it is possible that Basqal's inhabitants constructed a similar system in the same epoch.
Today some 1000 people live in the village, but a lot of tourists visit it in summer. The village still retains its medieval charm. People here can still explain why the ancient builders put wooden padding between the stones when they constructed houses: it was needed to counteract the effects of the earthquakes, which are not rare here.
The residents of the village have always taken up trade and crafts, while cattle-breeding has never been as developed here as in other villages of the region.
One of the traditional crafts of the region is the making of specific silk shawls called ‘kelagai’, which appeared in the 5th century. The Great Silk Road passed through the village in the 15th century, which naturally became the most prosperous period for Basqal.
Kelagai became a traditional part of Azeri female costume and a sort of a symbol of Azerbaijani women’s femininity. Usually younger women wore kelagai of light colors while older ones preferred dark colors. All the shawls have complex and specific patterns imprinted on them. The traditional color for a wedding kelagai is red with green. There are a lot of different patterns of wearing the kelagai, but it always indicates whether the woman wearing it is married or not. They say that the famous traveller Marco Polo saw the kelagai here in the 13th century. Today only at the Basqal factory is the ancient technology of painting the kelagai observed. However, only 17 masters work there today who produce 10 handmade kelagai per day. When they tried to make this production an industrial one, the quality of the product dropped significantly, so they decided to carry on with the tradition – and they only won from that.
One of the local craftsmen, Uba Abasali, who showed me the whole process of kelagai making, told me an interesting story of how this craft was ‘exported’ to Uzbekistan in Soviet times: a kelagai craftsmen was arrested by the KGB and then was re-settled in Samarkand. But he didn’t give up and re-launched his kelagai-making enterprise there.
Today kelagai production is one of the most successful souvenir production businesses in the country.
