(CNN) — “This hearth has burned 4,000 years and not stopped,” says Aliyeva Rahila. “Even the rain coming right here, snow, wind — it by no means stops burning.”
Ahead, tall flames dance restlessly throughout a 10-meter stretch of hillside, creating a scorching day even warmer.
A facet impact of the rustic’s abundant herbal fuel reserves, which once in a while leak to the skin, Yanar Dag is one among a number of spontaneously going on fires to have fascinated and apprehensive vacationers to Azerbaijan over the millennia.
It’s why the rustic earned the moniker the “land of fireplace.”
Ancient faith
Such fires had been as soon as abundant in Azerbaijan, however as a result of they resulted in a discount of fuel power underground, interfering with industrial fuel extraction, maximum were snuffed out.
Yanar Dag is among the few final examples, and most likely probably the most spectacular.
At one time they performed a key function within the historical Zoroastrian faith, which was once based in Iran and flourished in Azerbaijan within the first millennium BCE.
For Zoroastrians, hearth is a hyperlink between people and the supernatural international, and a medium during which religious perception and knowledge will also be won. It’s purifying, life-sustaining and a very important a part of worship.
Today, maximum guests who arrive on the no-frills Yanar Dag guests’ middle come for the spectacle moderately than non secular success.
The enjoy is maximum spectacular at evening, or in wintry weather. When snow falls, the flakes dissolve within the air with out ever touching the bottom, says Rahila.
Despite the claimed antiquity of the Yanar Dag flames — some argue that this actual hearth might most effective were ignited within the Fifties — it is a lengthy 30-minute pressure north from the middle of Baku simply to peer it. The middle gives just a small cafe and there may be now not a lot else within the house.
Ateshgah Fire Temple
For a deeper perception into Azerbaijan’s historical past of fireplace worship, guests must head east of Baku to Ateshgah Fire Temple.
“Since earlier period, they suspect that [their] god is right here,” says our information, as we input the pentagonal complicated which was once constructed within the seventeenth and 18th century via Indian settlers in Baku.
Fire rituals at this web site date again to the tenth century or previous. The identify Ateshgah comes from the Persian for “house of fireplace” and the center piece of the complicated is a cupola-topped altar shrine, constructed upon a herbal fuel vent.
A herbal, everlasting flame burned right here at the central altar till 1969, however in this day and age the fireplace is fed from Baku’s primary fuel provide and is most effective lit for guests.
The temple is related to Zoroastrianism however it is as a Hindu position of worship that its historical past is healthier documented.
Merchants and ascetics
Built like a caravanserai-style vacationers’ inn, the complicated has a walled courtyard surrounded via 24 cells and rooms.
These had been variously utilized by pilgrims, passing traders (whose donations had been a very important supply of source of revenue) and resident ascetics, a few of whom submitted themselves to ordeals reminiscent of mendacity on caustic quicklime, dressed in heavy chains, or holding an arm in a single place for years on finish.
The temple fell out of use as a spot of worship within the overdue nineteenth century, at a time when the improvement of the encircling oil fields supposed that veneration of Mammon was once gaining a more potent dangle.
The complicated changed into a museum in 1975, was once nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998, and nowadays welcomes round 15,000 guests a 12 months.
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