Azerbaijan's second city — the birthplace of the medieval poet Nizami, a Silk Road caravanserai intact since the 17th century, and piti lamb stew cooked in individual clay pots
Ganja is Azerbaijan's second-largest city — a historic Silk Road city in the foothills of the Lesser Caucasus that was for centuries one of the most important cities between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea. The city is the birthplace of Nizami Ganjavi (1141–1209), one of the greatest poets of the Islamic world — his romantic epic Khamsa (Five Poems) influenced Persian, Turkish, and Azerbaijani literature for eight centuries. Ganja's historic centre contains the Caravanserai of Ganja (1671), one of the best-preserved Safavid-era caravanserais in the Caucasus, and the Shah Abbas Mosque comple…
Ganja has been continuously inhabited since at least the 5th century CE and was one of the largest and most prosperous cities in the medieval Islamic world. It served as the capital of the Caucasian Albania kingdom and later the Rawwadid dynasty. The city was repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt — by the Seljuk Turks (1063), the Mongols (1231), and twice by earthquakes (1139 and 1235). The Safavid Shah Abbas I relocated Ganja's population to Persia and renamed the city Gandzak after the city was ceded to Russia in 1804. The city was named Elizavetpol (after Empress Elizabeth) under Russian rule,…