Apple orchards, mountain carpets, and the largest Jewish mountain community outside Israel — Azerbaijan's Caucasus highland town
Quba is a mountain town of 25,000 in northern Azerbaijan, 170km north of Baku in the foothills of the Greater Caucasus, encircled by apple, pear, and cherry orchards and surrounded by some of the most productive carpet-weaving villages in the Caucasus. The town is particularly known as the gateway to Krasnaya Sloboda (Red Village), directly across the Qudyal River — the largest Jewish mountain community outside Israel, home to around 4,000 Mountain Jews whose ancestors have lived in the Caucasus since antiquity, with synagogues, kosher restaurants, and an entirely distinct cultural identity f…
Quba served as the capital of the Quba Khanate from 1747 under the khan Huseynali, who extended its territory across much of northern Azerbaijan and into present-day Dagestan before Russian annexation in 1806. The Mountain Jews (Juhuro people) of the Quba-Qonaqkend region are among the oldest Jewish communities in the world, with origins traced to the Achaemenid Persian deportations of the 6th century BC; they speak Juhuri (Judeo-Tat), a Persian-derived language distinct from both Azerbaijani and Hebrew. The carpet-weaving tradition of the Quba region (Quba-Shirvan carpet group) produces the…